The XX Factor: What women really think.

Joe and the Feeding Frenzy

Rosa,
I'm glad we can agree on something! I, too, feel sorry for Joe. The way the media has responded to him today has been appalling. For a time, the lead story on NYTimes.com was "Joe the Plumber is under scrutiny, " even highlighting ominously that "his full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher." It's not exactly uncommon for people to go by their middle names. MSNBC.com's lead story right now digs into Wurzelbacher's background (even citing his DIVORCE RECORDS), saying that the plumber he works for might be fined because Joe doesn't have proper licensing. And, horrors, the business might take in only $100,000, not $250,000, and that's revenue, not profits. But who knows? Earlier media reports I've seen have been riddled with errors, saying that Joe already owns the business or runs the business, or that Wurzelbacher said he wouldn't be able to BUY the business if Obama's tax plan kicked in. I might have misheard Wurzelbacher in the original video, but I don't remember him saying that.

Forgive me for sounding like a knee-jerk reactionary, but how can people look at the scrutiny Wurzelbacher has received in the last 24 hours and not think there is some kind of bias at play? John McCain cites a regular old American in his debate-something that can annoy me when it's a sob story about how the government has failed someone—and people cheer for the guy, identify with the guy, and so he has to be taken down? Obama has a pretty comfortable lead in the polls right now. He can't possibly be afraid of Joe the Plumber. I don't get the media feeding frenzy.

I might feel bad for Joe, but I'm not worried about him. (And I think you might be disappointed if you expect him to blame the attention on McCain.) He's got a good perspective on it all. "I'll have my 15 minutes," he told MSNBC. After Nov. 4, "I won't be recognized again, and that'll be fine with me." I just wish the media had the same good common sense.

Hurray for Joe the Plumber

Can we look at a larger point about Joe the Plumber? Joe Wurzelbacher is, after all, a plumber. He didn't have his well-off parents send him off for his MBA or a law-school degree so he could get a cushy 9-to-5 job with an office and an assistant and good benefits. He's not a 25-year-old starting an Internet company with someone else's venture capital. He's gotten where he is today by unclogging our smelly toilets and fixing the pipes we probably should have had looked at before they burst.

He's been a plumber for 15 years. That's a lot of midnight calls and weekend shifts and probably a lot of years with low pay. If he's a smart small-business owner, and this interview seems to indicate he's not rash, he's going to take a chunk of those profits and expand his company—as he says, he would hire more plumbers, which requires more trucks and more equipment. All of which helps our economy.

Is $250,000 a year a lot of money? Certainly. But businesses with fewer than 20 employees account for over 20 million jobs in this country. That's not a small figure, and it's pretty comforting in a time when we watch unwieldy big businesses with eight-figure CEOs crashing down on a weekly basis. We should want our small businesses to succeed.

When I watch the video that made Joe famous, and I hear Barack Obama's comment that he wants to "spread the wealth around," I get chills down my spine. Joe wants to spread the wealth around, too. And it's his wealth. I trust him with it more than I trust the government. I hope he does get that plumbing business, and I hope he turns it into a $500,000-a-year business. And I won't begrudge him a single penny of it.