I'm Going To Need A Few To Repair The Irony Detector

Joe the Plumber, loose in Israel as a war correspondent for Pajamas Media, seems to think he and other war correspondents shouldn't actually be corresponding.

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. 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’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

I'm gonna leave the response to this one to Tbogg.

I know we should ignore Wurzelbacher but he's the piñata of stupid and every time you whack him he disgorges more idiocy and then the right wingers have to clutch this idiot child ever tighter to their chicken-breasted bosoms.

The life lesson Joe's bringing out of a two-week plus slaughter of Palestinians inside a massive wall is that the entire journalistic world should be downright ashamed of acknowledging that there's any other valid viewpoint other than "Israel and/or the United States has any and every right to defend itself by destroying as much of the Islamic world as it sees fit."

I'd weep, but in order to have that kind of emotional investment I'd have to get past the monolithic idiocy of the right first.

[UPDATE] Jesse Taylor at Pandagon skewers Joe' employers.

Bob Owens compares Joe to Stephen Crane, dynamo war correspondent and author of The Red Badge of Courage. Because as we all know, The Red Badge of Courage was written after a highly publicized week-long publicity junket where Crane stood around and asked bizarre, pointless questions with his mouth gaping open, and then filed a dispatch declaring that he shouldn’t be allowed to do the job he was being paid to do.

But there is an obvious fear among so many members of the media so defensively and preemptively dismissive of “Joe the Plumber” trying his hand at reporting. Deep inside, they must wonder if an Ohio plumber could really be much worse than the so-called professionals we already have. There lies the fear that underlies those mocking Wurzelbacher in the media. It is a bruise to their egos when they realize that almost anyone can do what they do.

Here’s the thing: political blogging is built in no small part on the idea that many journalists do their job poorly, and therefore we need better reporters who do their job more competently. This is deeply undercut by the idea that journalism is a job babbling simpletons can do so long as they’re conservatives. How to solve this dilemma?

Apparently, more simpletons.

Makes sense to me. When you're devoted to spewing out mindless idiocy, you turn to idiots to make sure the job's done right.