Washington Post staff writer Paul Farhi penned a nasty little critique of Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher in Thursday's paper, deriding the conservative critic of Barack Obama as "a leftover artifact from a forgotten time." Grouping Wurzelbacher in with other "campaign distractions," Farhi panned, "He's Clara Peller, Willie Horton or Gennifer Flowers -- names that are the questions in a 'Jeopardy!' category called 'Presidential Campaign Distractions.'" (Of course, Wurzelbacher's "distraction" was to challenge the economic policy of Obama.)
The Washington Post writer gleefully recounted how only 11 people showed up to a Joe the Plumber book signing event in Washington D.C. Farhi added odd asides, such as noting Wurzelbacher's "shiny bullet head." Even the headline, which read "Joe the Author, Plumbing New Lows in Interest," adopted a condescending tone.
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The Wurzelbacher piece wasn't the only such article in Thursday's Style section of the Post. Another piece looked at young conservatives in Washington D.C. who don't support the Obama administration. The headline screamed, "Right, and Left Out: Young Conservatives Can't Get With the Program." The picture that went along with the print edition was of a right-leaning happy hour event in D.C. and that caption ominously noted, "Like some other young conservatives, Margaret Taylor, center, with Nick Loris and Katie Engdahl, prefers not to identify the organization she works with."
Post staff writer Ian Shapira asserted in the piece, "Some at this happy hour won't name their employers in social settings with contemporaries because they fear it will create awkwardness." It apparently didn't occur to Mr. Shapira that some conservatives might just be cautious about talking to a liberal paper such as the Washington Post.
I was actually at this early February event. Like many others, I learned in advance that a Post writer and photographer would be present and had planned on being careful at the happy hour. It seems more likely that young conservatives were worried less about creating awkwardness and more about the biases of the famously liberal Washington paper.
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