Gaza News Flash! Joe the Plumber is on the case…
Only now he’s Joe the Journalist. (Well, he wasn’t really a plumber, either.) As Sarah Pulliam reports, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. “Joe the Plumber” of campaign fame, told a local Ohio TV station that he plans to report from the Middle East for www.pjtv.com, a conservative Web site, for 10 days. Money quotes:
“Being a Christian I’m pretty well protected by God I believe,” Wurzelbacher said. “That’s not saying he’s going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance…I get to go over there and let their ‘Average Joes’ share their story, what they think, how they feel, especially with world opinion, maybe get a real story out there,” Wurzelbacher said.
Well, that should give us a clear picture of the situation.
NB: As Stuart the Journalist notes below, pjtv.com is not ”Christian,” just “conservative.”
Especially since he seems to believe wartime journalism should be limited to patriotic newsreels in movie theatres. That’s just the kind of straight talk this situation calls for!
It does seem kind of a ridiculous stunt, although with any sort of minimal fact-checking, he should be able to avoid making any journalistic mistakes as clearly wrong as saying that pjtv.com is a “conservative Christian” website.
This is indeed ridiculous–check it out, I think Joe the Plumber has actually jumped the shark!
http://www.pjtv.com/
There’s this:
Then this instant classic headline:
JOE WURZELBACHER COMES UNDER ROCKET ATTACK IN SOUTHERN ISRAEL – 01/11/09
Yes, they are aiming for Joe!
By the way, shouldn’t this phrase be in quotation marks, given that it’s word for word (down to the odd capitalization): “station that he plans to report from the Middle East for http://www.pjtv.com, a conservative Christian Web site, for 10 days.”
Joe should change his name to Joe Sixpack. Then he would have really helpe America by giving us the following salient, productive, helpful advice.
If you had purchased $1,000.00 of Delta Air Lines stock one year ago you
would have $49.00 left.
With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00.
With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.
But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank
all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling
REFUND, you would have $214.00 cash.
Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink
heavily and recycle.
It’s called the 401-Keg
A recent study found the average American walks about 900 miles a year.
Another study found Americans drink, on the average, 22 gallons of
alcohol a year. That means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to
the gallon.
Makes You Proud To Be An American!
Stuart Buck, not sure I follow you. Odd capitalization?
Not many people write “Web site” rather than “website.” It seems that you copied-and-pasted from that news article, but without quotation marks. Not a major offense, but combined with the uncritical reiteration of the (false) claim that Pajamas TV is “Christian,” it all just seems kind of ironic in a post criticizing someone else’s journalistic abilities.
As if you knew the first thing about journalism–or attribution, Stuart! Of course I cut and pasted and re-wrote it–and attributed it. Citing other’s information or writing as one’s own is plagiarism. You are correct about the “Christian” part of the Pulliam post (and I trust you have scored her) and you noted that error in the thread. That’s a good thing. But of course better to attack the mote in another’s eye when you have a timber sticking out of your own, eh? You and Joe the Journalist are a good pair.
“Web site” is actually still the standard in a lot of dictionaries (including Merriam-Webster) and style guides (including the CMS 15, in spite of its stated general preference for “a ‘down’ style”). The whole world would switch to “website” tomorrow if it were up to me, but still, it is pretty common in journalism, for whatever it’s worth.
–Not many people write “Web site” rather than “website.”–
AP style is “Web site,” capped b/c “Web” is a proper noun (short form for Worldwide Web).
My students have a difficult time breaking the “website” habit and gripe about that. I tell them to write to Norm Goldstein, AP style editor, whose contact information is on the title page of their books. AP rules do change over time. I remember when it was not allowed to use “gay” as a noun.
I don’t know what Joe’s certified skill set is, but I think his 15 minutes of fame are up.
It’s funny (or not) how critical the public is of the media and yet everyone wants to try it for themselves, I guess to show how any idiot can do it. And some can. But there’s a sense with journalism, even more than plumbing, that there’s nothing to it.
I’m ambivalent about the way journalism has in many respects become a white-collar profession with various certifications like accounting (and I periodically teach youngsters to gain such a degree). I do think it is a trade, at its core, and that there are rules one needs to learn in order to have a chance to do it well, and correctly. None of that guarantees a perfect outcome, especially not in the post-editing medium of the internet (Internet?). But then again, plumbers don’t fix every leak either.
As a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, I know quite a lot about attribution, for what it’s worth.
Maybe I’m being too picky, but I’m admittedly less inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt after the whole Robert George incident (you never even responded to Fr. Imbelli’s call for you to apologize, did you?)
I guess it’s not worth so much in your case. Whatever one’s experience, emotion can always trump reason, and much else.
Recommended reading from The Tablet:
Victory for victimhood
Simon Scott Plumme
While Israel may see some small immediate benefit from its huge military action in Gaza, long-term it will be the loser, as the victim status of Gazans, including Hamas – like its fellow traveller in south Lebanon, Hezbollah – is reinforced throughout the world
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/12516
I’m not a journalist; just someone who occasionally checks his facts.
Zing!
Stuart Buck: Whatever you are, I’d suggest you check your facts more than occasionally if you plan to make accusations.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to insinuate. As far as I know, no one has repeatedly had to point out that I managed to get the most easily checkable facts wrong.
I’m not insinuating anything. You made false accusations based on faulty knowledge (albeit about a piddling issue like the spelling of Web site or website). You can stop making a nuisance of yourself or you can take your snake oil someplace else. It’s as simple as that.
Unfortunately we don’t have a system for excluding a harassing commenter and Stuart Buck has continued an obsessive campaign here (I’ve deleted the subsequent string) so I’ll just shut this thread down–not that it was a post of any great moment. I have asked Stuart offline to refrain from posting on future threads until he complies with the rules of fair play and this blog.