Samuel Wurzelbacher isn’t named Joe and he isn’t a plumber, but he is known as Joe the Plumber. For some reason people are fascinated by what he has to say. Now he’s emerging as some kind of explicitly Christian spokesman and telling Christianity Today how he interprets the faith:
People don’t understand the dictionary—it’s called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.
I leave it to you to unpack all that is wrong with that statement. Sam is seriously intolerant about gay people, but he also seems unfamiliar with Deism and the prevailing attitude about abortion in the state of Georgia.
Conservatism is about the basic rights of individuals. God created us. As far as the government goes, the Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values. It goes hand-in-hand. As far as the Republican Party? I felt connected to it because individual freedom should not be legislated by the federal government.
One thing I’ve been thinking about is taking the social issues out of national politics. For example, if Georgia wanted abortion and Alabama didn’t, that’s going to be up to the people in Georgia. I can’t sway them. Would I give them advice not to? Absolutely. Would I say it’s wrong? Yes. I’ll go to Alabama where they say, “I don’t want abortion.” Trying to get 350 million people to agree on an issue is not going to happen. That way, people can live the way they want to as opposed to being imposed on by the federal government.
I was struck by how seamlessly he moved from saying that the government shouldn’t legislate individual freedom to saying that Alabama would be right to outlaw reproductive freedom. I also like how unselfconsciously he assumes that individual woman in Alabama will be ‘living the way they want to’ once their reproductive freedom is taken away from them by their state government.
I especially enjoyed this next part:
We’ve lost our American history. Every state has “In God we trust” or “With God’s help” in their constitution. God is recognized as, if you will, America’s religion.
Of course, this ‘God’ guy was invented by non-Christians a long time ago, but Sam’s point could be improved if we put ‘In Christ We Trust’ on our currency and in our state constitutions. How about this exchange?
CT: Who do you see as the emerging Christian leaders?
SW: James Dobson. I love Dobson…
James Dobson retired two months ago.
Emerging from a crypt?
Stop making stuff up, Booman.
No one could have said that stuff for real.
you would hope.
who’s financing this idiot’s rambling?
l just read that the saracudda has joined the national council for a new america…oh boy! her and joe don’t represent much change in the, so called, way forward plan for what remains of the republican party….they really must have a death wish. power to ’em.
I, for one, am grateful for the circus sideshow that is Joe the Plumber. He may very well be impressive to the marginally-literate far left hand of the bell curve, but every remotely educated person of average or better intelligence who sees him is going to think, “This guy is a loon, and not a very bright one.” That he is now an icon of the Republican Party is almost as big a windfall for the left as Sarah Palin.
If I believed in God, I’d be tempted to think he sent Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin to afflict our enemies. Because, if I was a praying man, and I had asked God to afflict my enemies, I could not in a thousand years have come up with a pair of buffoons as ridiculous.
As my mother taught me when I was young, ridicule is a powerful weapon. Shouting insults is nowhere near as effective as laughing at your enemies, especially if the laughter ends up being contagious. To be blessed with a self-ridiculing opposition is almost too good to be true.
The word “God” appears nowhere in the US constitution, and I doubt seriously it appears in any state constitution.
No kidding. Even in the Declaration of Independence — whch in this respect is typical of many writings of the Founders — the closest you get is the rather weaselly phrase “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” which, considering the primary author, translates to a shout out to his fellow rationalists and a nervous nod in the direction of the religious loonies.
Thomas Jefferson at one point prepared a version of the Gospels for Native American consumption. He censored any reference to the miracles because he didn’t think the Indians would be dumb enough to fall for any of that nonsense. Like many of the Founders, Jefferson thought that Christian morals were a good idea, but was at best ambivalent to the accompanying mythology. And by “Christian morals”, be it understood that the Founders were talking about the Sermon on the Mount, not the weird, hateful crap that so-called fundamentalists made up later.
No, nowhere in the constitution. But definitely above the heads of the congress crowd and, don’t forget, on every dirty, crumpled, depreciating greenback, thanks to Mr. J. McCarthy, renowned right-wing extremist. If I’m not mistaken, the motto has been accepted only since the 1950s and before that, it was on the money for a period in and after the Civil War. The Founders, what do they have to say about anything nowadays?
This kind of wisdom gets around too. Looking out a restaurant window in Damascus, I saw a parked bus across the street on which was written ‘In god we trust’. Soon a whole bunch of Iranian women in their black chadors, chaperoned by one old man, came out of a hotel and boarded the bus. They were obviously going to visit a Shiite shrine. So, what’s the connection, you might say. Iran and the U.S. No way!
The motto first appeared on US currency after the Civil War. Its use on all currency became a mandate only in the 1950s on the watch of Boo’s beloved Eisenhower.
How appropriate that the enablers of the housing bubble and collapse are keeping the non-Joe non-plumber and Sara the non-abstinate as spokespeople for the non-patriotic and non-competent.
At least none of Sam’s premarital lovers have posted nude photos of him on the internet.
In addition to naming James Dobson as an emerging Christian leader, Wurzelbacher also said he enjoys watching the PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Faye, and when he finishes high school, he’s planning to attend Liberty University because he loves to hear Jerry Falwell preach. Also he believes Jimmy Swaggart is innocent because he was entrapped by that prostitute and her child.
Well, after Palin, we needed someone to remind us that bimboism is gender-neutral.
I kind of had the idea that Christianity Today was a sort of respectable publication as religion peddlers go. Exploiting the PR-manufactured buzz around a fake Joe who is a fake plumber to glean his theological wisdom is even sleazier than anything the Globe would stoop to. May we soon expect a Christianity Today feature on Ronald McDonald’s view on the meaning of the eucharist?
that is some serious stupid, right there.
I love how sam the pretend plumber always looks like the cat that ate the canary when he’s photographed. he knows he’s a nothing, he knows he’s a hoax, and he’s clearly taking advantage of all the attention and speaking fees he can command from the GOP rubes, who actually seem to think he’s the real deal. damn funny.