Opinion: And no one interviews lacrosse Moms either
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John McCain: ‘And of course, I’ve been talking about the economy. Of course, I’ve talked to people like Joe the assistant professor of cultural studies to tell him that I’m not going to spread his wealth around. I’m going to let him keep his wealth. And of course, we’re talking about positive plan of action to restore this economy and restore jobs in America.’ No, that is not a fully accurate quote from Wednesday’s debate, in which McCain endlessly invoked not Joe the Professor but Joe the Plumber. It was another example of the homage politicians pay to blue-collar workers, even those who aspire to ownership of a business (a dream off-limits to low-paid academics). It doesn’t matter that Joe the Plumber was swiftly demythologized with a little fact-checking. Politicians will still exalt cite blue-collar workers, real and imagined, in their stump speeches. McCain is a Republican, but Democrats, if anything, are more enamored of Joe Six-Pack. He is the unspoken subject of appeals for programs that benefit ‘working people,’ a term that is not meant to conjure up images ofadjunct faculty, computer troubleshooters or journalists (‘I met a laid-off editorial writer at one of my campaign stops...) Speaking of journalists, we also worship at the altar -- or barstool -- of the working man. If I had a dollar for every story in which political reporters take the pulse of the people in a beer garden, I’d be ineligible for Barack Obama’s tax cuts. This story is the hoariest of journalistic cliches, yet it appears election after election -- and in non-election journalism as well. |
Years ago, the Harvard Lampoon published a parody of The Wall Street Journal that included a hilarious takeoff of the man-in-the-bar story. Under the headline ‘When Talking Finance, Joe Six-Pack Sounds Like a Professor or Something,’ the story pulled a switcheroo in which blue-collar barflies commented about the economy with erudite references to obscure financial instruments.
There was a time when it made statistical sense for politicians and journalists to fixate on blue-collar workers. But the economy has changed. In my native city of Pittsburgh, where the economic center of gravity has shifted from manufacturing to health care and high technology, it would make more sense for visiting reporters to canvass voters in a Starbucks than a workingman’s bar. But old archetypes die hard. Pittsburgh’s NFL team is still the Steelers (or Stillers, as it’s pronounced there), not the Geeks or Transplanters.
I have a theory about the continued canonziation of blue-collar workers: People who push paper -- or buttons on a keyboard -- are secretly a bit guilty about the non-physical nature of their labor. Never mind that plumbers often make more than assistant professors -- teaching isn’t really ‘hard work.’ Of course, neither is being a U.S. senator.