JOKE THE "PLUMBER"

Samuel Wurzelbacher, famously and mistakenly called "Joe the Plumber," is my candidate for Mr. Empty Teabag of 2010. He keeps turning up and keeps being treated as a hero for no reason.

John McCain tried to represent this $40,000-a-year plumbing supply business employee as an everyman we should all be able to identify with. What he really is is the quintessential teabagger.

In '08 Wurzelbacher heard Obama's plan for small businesses and pronounced it "socialist." The wildly inaccurate and emotion-driven use of "socialist" is a prime characteristic of teabaggers.

His humorlessness is also pure teabag. He is unable to get matters in perspective.

His self-pity is a third kind of bagger output. To hear him you would think he was being sent off to a gulag, when in fact no one has proposed doing anything to him.

Recently the pseudo-plumber complained that McCain "tried to use" him during the campaign. Well, duh! But how did that hurt Wurzelbacher? It turned him into a national figure, opening the way for his career as a "motivational speaker" and assuring that whatever he says on political issues, however inane, will get into the news. If he doesn't want to be a public figure, all he has to do is shut up. So here is a fourth teabag trait: the vehement but wholly empty complaint.

Similarly the teabaggers moan that they are losing their freedom. Exactly what freedom have they ever lost? And what freedom would Obama's plans cost them? The administration has said they can keep their present corporate-provided healthcare. So how are they fated to lose out?

The teabaggers are of two sorts. Some are rich. The rest identify with the rich. Wurzelbacher is of the latter sort. He wanted to have his own plumbing business and get rich; once he did so, he didn't want to pay taxes at a higher rate. He cried before he was hit. I also suspect he cried when he will never be in a position to get hit.

God help us if this whining loser represents the spirit of the American people!