Egan imagines himself more qualified than Joe to write a book and in his column Egan asks Joe if he wants him to fix a leaky toilet? He then haughtily replies, "I didn't think so." You see, Egan thinks he is smarter than anyone as low as a Joe the Plumber.
And I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread. Not when too many riveting memoirs are kicked back at authors after 10 years of toil. Not when voices in Iran, North Korea or China struggle to get past a censor’s gate.
Sounds like sour grapes here from ol' Tim! Sounds to me like Timothy Egan has had a book or two of his own rejected by the publishing industry! Egan can't stand the fact that someone like Joe the Plumber, a man that he obviously despises for his lower status in life, has found the fortune of a moment in time that offers a book deal. This is the sort of upper class twitism that so infects the extreme left of the American illiterati, isn't it?
After Egan dismisses (without reading, by the way) a Joe the Plumber book, he starts in with the name calling.
Joe, a k a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was no good as a citizen, having failed to pay his full share of taxes, no good as a plumber, not being fully credentialed, and not even any good as a faux American icon. Who could forget poor John McCain at his most befuddled, calling out for his working-class surrogate on a day when Joe stiffed him.
Yep, just pure, unadulterated, overly emotional, grade school playground taunting. If this tripe is all he has to offer, maybe we are seeing why Timmy's books have been returned unread by all those publishers?
Naturally, Mr. sour grapes also found a way to smack at Governor Palin, too. It should be noted that no one has elected Egan to anything nor offered the second highest office in the land to this stuck-up, pseudo intellectual. It must hurt him pretty badly.
Unsurprisingly, Timmy Egan uses this whiny affair as an opportunity to pump up Barack Obama's supposedly wonderful writing abilities as evidenced by his two memoirs.
But, here is the thing. Few politicians or those momentarily newsworthy ever write their own books. Almost all of them have ghostwriters. Hillary Cllinton had one and there really isn't any proof that Obama actually wrote his own books. It is just assumed that he did. But one thing is sure and it is something that is already widely known. Joe the Plumber's forth coming book was not written by Joe Wurzelbacher alone. Joe has a co-author that is clearly acknowledged, unlike Hillary's ghostwriter who has been hidden from view and made out like she doesn't even exist.
So, what we have here is Timothy Eagan, imagining that publishing is a zero sum gain and when one person is published someone else must be denied, complaining that a "real" writer is somewhere not being published because Joe the Plumber is being published. But what Egan cynically refuses to reveal to his gullible readers is that a "real" writer IS being published along WITH Joe's book. Joe's co-author is named Thomas N. Tabback and it will be Tabback doing the heavy lifting. No one is pretending that Joe has written this book on his own. No one but Timothy Egan, that is.
So, Egan's whole point is sort of mooted, here. Egan’s snide slap at Joe is, in the end, just meaningless, partisan hatred to no real purpose. Well, no purpose, perhaps, but to make Egan feel better about himself. That and it is a way for him to get the snarky, congratulatory back slapping he's imagines he'll get at those far left cocktail parties that he finally expects to be invited to. Sadly, in all his vast writing experience, Egan seems never to have run across the word “humility.”
Mr Egan has revealed in other interviews that he's "had some really depressing times in journalism over the last five or six years." So, it isn't surprising that he once again forces us all to endure another example of his agonizingly maladjusted psyche. The man just cannot stand it when anyone else has success, especially if it is someone with an opposing political ideal.
And in that he is nothing special and is as common a lefty as they come.
(Photo by Don Gronning/Daily Record)
