Joe the Plumber, a.k.a. Joe Wurzelbacher, became internationally famous literally overnight today, after last night’s debate name-checked him 26 times. Reporters have been camped out in his driveway ever since, and hanging on his every word. “I’m kind of like Britney Spears having a headache,” he told the AP. “Everybody wants to know about it.”
Oh, Joe the Plumber, you hit the nail on the head so hard there, you could get a job as a contractor! You are just like Britney Spears. Remember how fresh and innocent you were in that first video? All sassy with your pigtails and your little skirt? Or, um, with your bald head and not unattractive forearms? But then you started enjoying yourself a little too much. Did a few too many interviews. Got a little too big for your britches, there, didn’t ya? And now, before the sun has even set on your day as an American icon, the media bloodsuckers have come out to suck you dry until you are a glassy-eyed hollow shell of your former self, waggling inanely on the public stage, belly-fat hanging over your torn fishnets. That’s right, Joe, the 24-hour news cycle does not rest. The haters have done their homework, and the opposition research has found that you’ve been driving all over Malibu with your business hanging out and your kid upside-down in the car seat! Or whatever. Not exactly that. But these things:
1. Joe owes $1,182.98 in back taxes in Ohio.
2. Joe doesn’t believe in Social Security. “Social Security is a joke. … I don’t need another set of parents. … Let me invest my money,” he said.
3. Joe is actually called Sam, and is registered to vote as Samuel Wortzelbacher. “We have his named spelled W-O, instead of W-U,” Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said in a telephone interview. “Handwriting is sometimes hard to read. He has never corrected it in his registration card.”
4. Oh, he maybe is related to Charles Keating. What? No, that cannot be true, because that is insane.
5. But he is definitely not a licensed plumber. “He’s basically playing games with the world,” Thomas Joseph, an official at Local 50 of the plumber’s union, based in Toledo, told the Times.
Say it ain’t so, Joe! Enjoy the brand-name vodka while it’s still being comped. And see you on Celebrity Mole, sucker.
