PoliticalMatch.Com Introduces Joe the Plumber To Lisa the Lemming

According to Ed Rollins, Joe (the plumber)is a real guy living in Toledo, Ohio. He is representative of the millions of hardworking Americans who get up every day and go to work, and raise their kids and contribute to their communities.

I've got news for you, Ed. Joe may be a real guy living in Toledo but he's hardly representative of the millions of Americans in this country. Nor is he anyone whose opinions would count for too much with many of the other "real guys."

For one thing, many of the "guys" are "girls." And not many of them, guys OR girls, complain to a presidential candidate or a camera about the make-believe taxes that it'll cost them when they buy their first make-believe business with a make-believe salary - all the while pretending it's reality. Nor do they lead people on by claiming to be "undecided" when they've already registered as a Republican. FOr that matter, most of them aren't even home in the middle of the day chasing down a candidate who's walking around in their neighborhood - they're at work - and they, unlike Joe, can't afford to take the day off, not even if they're dying.

Not only that, most of them, unlike Joe, are already paying their taxes on their real property and their real income. In other words, they don't avoid their obligations and they don't have liens against their property for overdue and unpaid back taxes.

You do a grave disservice to the majority of working class Americans when you appoint a man like Joe the Plumber their representative. Even more so when you compare his influence upon them to Colin Powell's. Colin Powell has earned respect - he's proven himself time and time again to be a man of principal and honor while Joe the Plumber has, so far, proven himself to be capable of lying through his teeth on national television and of successfully avoiding the tax collector for the past year or so.

Call me crazy but I, personally, find Colin to be just a bit more credible. And his opinion counts for a hell of a lot more than Joe's does when it comes to foreign policies and economic principals.

Hell, now that I think about it, they've got the same plumbing credentials. I might trust him to fix my toilet, too. Might as well since neither of them are licensed to do so.

The difference is, I'd trust Colin to say so - Joe's already proven he won't mention it if you won't. And he'll deny it if you do - and then ask that you quit picking on him and leave him alone because it's the bogus questions that are important, not the character or the honesty of the bogus plumber asking them.

For what it's worth, I completely fail to understand why we must all be Joe Six-Pack or Joe-the-Plumber or Soccer Sarah - just who exactly benefits when we're all so neatly packaged and pidgeon-holed for mass consumption? And why is it decreed that it must be so?

Do we all act that much like lemmings? Does the McCain campaign think that if they can only scare us enough that we'll all congregate on the same cliff and follow them down?

Or do they just wish we would?