Saturday, January 24, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Average Joe or American Imbecile?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/12/joe-the-plumber-fights-wi_n_157239.html
This article in the Huffington Post reads like something in the Onion - extremely entertaining. So Joe 'The Plumber' Wurzelbacher has apparently decided to become a journalist, covering the Gaza conflict for conservative website pjtv.com. He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants to let Israel's 'Average Joes' share their story.
Joe the Plumber's career philosophy...
"They're supposed to bring the news to you unbiased. They're supposed to actually report it and then let you make your opinion ... What I can provide are actual real questions and get real answers. I'm not talking manufactured answers, I'm not talking soundbites...And uh, not giving it any kind of slants.
Average Joe speaking to reporters...
"I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war (sic). I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them. Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer-and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers."
Is this guy for real? OHHH, yes....absurdly real...check out this exchange with an Israeli reporter:
Don't quit your day job, dude...
This article in the Huffington Post reads like something in the Onion - extremely entertaining. So Joe 'The Plumber' Wurzelbacher has apparently decided to become a journalist, covering the Gaza conflict for conservative website pjtv.com. He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants to let Israel's 'Average Joes' share their story.
Joe the Plumber's career philosophy...
"They're supposed to bring the news to you unbiased. They're supposed to actually report it and then let you make your opinion ... What I can provide are actual real questions and get real answers. I'm not talking manufactured answers, I'm not talking soundbites...And uh, not giving it any kind of slants.
Average Joe speaking to reporters...
"I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war (sic). I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what's happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it's asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them. Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to downer-and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers."
Is this guy for real? OHHH, yes....absurdly real...check out this exchange with an Israeli reporter:
JOE: The story here is people are being killed and the media's slanting it and trying to make it Hamas is, uh, as far as, that Israel's being bad. Do you believe Israel is bad?
REPORTER: Do I believe it?
JOE: Yeah, do you?!
REPORTER: I'm Israeli, so...
JOE: So answer the question!
REPORTER: No, I don't think Israel is bad.
JOE: Do you think Israel has every right to protect itself?
REPORTER: Yeah.
[pause]
JOE: You do?!
REPORTER: Yeah.
JOE: Have you said that on air?
REPORTER: I'm just a reporter.
Don't quit your day job, dude...
When I grow up, I want to be Studs Terkel
Historian Studs Terkel...love this guy. I've written about him before. I stumbled on this essay he wrote for NPR's 'This I Believe'...
"My own beliefs, my personal beliefs, came into being during the most traumatic moment in American history: the Great American Depression of the 1930s. I was 17 at the time, and I saw on the sidewalks pots and pans and bedsteads and mattresses. A family had just been evicted and there was an individual cry of despair, multiplied by millions. But that community had a number of people on that very block who were electricians and plumbers and carpenters and they appeared that same evening, the evening of the eviction, and moved these household goods back into the flat where they had been. They turned on the gas; they fixed the plumbing. It was a community in action accomplishing something.
And this is my belief, too: that it's the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be.
Einstein once observed that Westerners have a feeling the individual loses his freedom if he joins, say, a union or any group. Precisely the opposite's the case. The individual discovers his strength as an individual because he has, along the way, discovered others share his feelings -- he is not alone, and thus a community is formed. You might call it the prescient community or the prophetic community. It's always been there.
And I must say, it has always paid its dues, too. The community of the '30s and '40s and the Depression, fighting for rights of laborers and the rights of women and the rights of all people who are different from the majority, always paid their dues. But it was their presence as well as their prescience that made for whatever progress we have made.
And that's what Tom Paine meant when he said: "Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be."
Still quoting Tom Paine: "He sees his species not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy" -- you're either with us or against us, no. "He sees his species as kindred."
And that happens to be my belief, and I'll put it into three words: community in action."
"My own beliefs, my personal beliefs, came into being during the most traumatic moment in American history: the Great American Depression of the 1930s. I was 17 at the time, and I saw on the sidewalks pots and pans and bedsteads and mattresses. A family had just been evicted and there was an individual cry of despair, multiplied by millions. But that community had a number of people on that very block who were electricians and plumbers and carpenters and they appeared that same evening, the evening of the eviction, and moved these household goods back into the flat where they had been. They turned on the gas; they fixed the plumbing. It was a community in action accomplishing something.
And this is my belief, too: that it's the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be.
Einstein once observed that Westerners have a feeling the individual loses his freedom if he joins, say, a union or any group. Precisely the opposite's the case. The individual discovers his strength as an individual because he has, along the way, discovered others share his feelings -- he is not alone, and thus a community is formed. You might call it the prescient community or the prophetic community. It's always been there.
And I must say, it has always paid its dues, too. The community of the '30s and '40s and the Depression, fighting for rights of laborers and the rights of women and the rights of all people who are different from the majority, always paid their dues. But it was their presence as well as their prescience that made for whatever progress we have made.
And that's what Tom Paine meant when he said: "Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be."
Still quoting Tom Paine: "He sees his species not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy" -- you're either with us or against us, no. "He sees his species as kindred."
And that happens to be my belief, and I'll put it into three words: community in action."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)