The African World
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.Executive Editor
October 23, 2008 - Issue 296, BlackCommentator.com
http://www.blackcommentator.
The 'Joe the Plumber' story has unraveled, yet Senator McCain
continues to make reference to what is, in fact, a mythical
character. Sure, there is a Joe, but he is not what he
described himself to be. This has been exposed. Yet, McCain
continues to reference 'Joe the Plumber' as if to lend
credibility to his story.
It would be easy enough to laugh off the story of a white man
who would like to believe that he will, someday, be the
person that he presented himself to be, but the story tells
us as much about the consciousness of many middle income and
working class whites as it tells us about the propaganda
strategy of the political Right.
It is not just that Joe the Plumber, aka Joe Wurzelbacher,
aka Sam J. Wurzelbacher, is not the person that Senator Obama
believed him to be. Wurzelbacher, to paraphrase Frank
Sinatra, seems to have 'high hopes,' that is, he is prepared
to ignore his current situation of being a low to moderate
income, working class, single parent who would benefit from
Senator Obama's tax plan. Instead, he has embraced an
identity that makes it easier for him to identify with the
politics of McCain/Palin.
This incident highlights the desperate attempts by a section
of the white working class to find some means to identify
with a candidate who has a platform and approach contrary to
their short and long-term economic interests. There are only
three ways to pull that off, and Joe the Plumber found one:
invent a new identity. A second way is to focus on issues
that have little to do with one's living standard, i.e., so-
called cultural issues. The third way is to simply
acknowledge that one cannot vote for a Black man.
Yet the Joe the Plumber incident also tells us something
about the messages being advanced by the Right, and
specifically, by the McCain/Palin campaign. In a fit of
desperation, the McCain/Palin campaign is suggesting that it
does not matter whether or not Joe the Plumber is a myth. In
fact, the McCain/Palin campaign has refused to acknowledge
that the story is just this side of a hoax. Rather, they
continue to reference this man as if his story is completely
credible. In doing this, they raise, once again, the
irrationalist side of their right-wing politics. In effect,
the McCain/Palin campaign is saying that facts are
irrelevant.
Wurzelbacher's aspirations speak to the dream of climbing the
ladder of success and upward mobility, a dream that has
proved to be a myth for many; a myth that has been preached
to all citizens and residents of the USA, but absorbed
largely by the white population. It is a myth that says if
you work hard, you advance; if you are dedicated to your job,
your living standard improves; and if you work hard and prove
your value to the company (and to society) the living
standard of your children will always be better than your
own.
So, the question that arises is simple but profound: what
happens when one finds out that this story line is true for
only small numbers of people? There seem to be 2-3 answers.
One can get angry and recognize that one has been hood-winked
by the system and, as a result, turn on the system, i.e.,
move to the Left. In the alternative, one can feel betrayed
and turn on those who one perceives to have been the source
of the betrayal. Or, one can engage in fantasy, and pretend
that one's current circumstances are only temporary, to soon
be replaced by something a lot better.
Wurzelbacher is currently fantasizing, but this fantasy can
easily morph into option #2, or the right-wing populism about
which I and others have been warning. In either case, options
#2 and #3 correspond to the message that sections of the
political Right wish to advance. They say, in essence, that
the only reason that you - the white worker or white small
business person - are not succeeding has little to do with
the system, but has to do with the 'other.' In the case of
the current economic crisis, the problem for McCain and the
Right is not the system, but a few greedy individuals. This
is the sort of message that Wurzelbacher wants to hear. The
message goes: there is nothing wrong with the system; there
is nothing that should really stop him from becoming the
person he wants to believe he can be; the only obstacles are
some greedy, shady individuals, and, quite possibly, the tax
plan of a Black man that allegedly might take money away from
him…money that he does not currently possess.
The myth that surrounds Joe the Plumber is a powerful one. It
is a myth that many people insist on believing despite a
great deal of evidence that it is largely a fraud. Although
whites have always had a relative advantage over people of
color, this has never meant that whites automatically succeed
or rise to the upper crust. Nevertheless, in challenging the
myth, one is calling into question a belief system that so
many people, particularly within white America, have grown to
accept.
Senator Obama has described the current economic crisis as
being far more than a crisis created by some individuals. He
has pointed to the results of thirty years of deregulation.
This is an important contrast with Senator McCain. Yet it is
not enough. Wurzelbacher/Joe the Plumber, and others like
him, deeply wish to believe the myth with which they have
grown up. The myth in its entirety must be shattered. That
can only happen by confronting the truth that the current
economic crisis and the thirty plus year decline in the
living standards of the average working person are not the
result of some 'other', e.g., Jews, Blacks, minorities,
immigrants, but, as I raised in my last commentary, are the
result of a very amoral economic system.
[BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com, a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of the book, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA.]
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