jeudi 16 octobre 2008

Joe the Plumber: Addressing the Son of GOP/GOD


Hempstead, New York: October 16: Joe the Plumber descends on the debate like the Word (of the anti-tax Logos) made flesh. Joe is the incarnate Son of the GOD/GOP, an unknown known whose actual identity (nee Samuel J. Wurzelbacher) is effaced by the truncated simplicity of "Joe." This messianic plumber who, alas, is no plumber at all, an unlicensed, unauthorized freelancer in Ohio, an Ohioian ghost to whom Obama and McCain addressed their sacrificial offerings of "No Taxes, Joe." This repeated water-into-wine promise of an invisible and free government (loaves and fishes=you pay no taxes) is the coming of a fleshly god: the son of the GOP/GOD made flesh (Joe-the-Plumber) whose very name evokes a simplistic phallic everyman, the all-good American laborer who yet aspires to transform his self from an invisible being to a ruthlessly visible "owner of a small business." This mere man-to-owner-god-savior transformation threatened to be prevented by the (taxing-terrorist) Barack Obama and his Joe-castrating, Joe-crucifying tax proposal on people (who Joe is not yet nor ever will be) who make $250,000 or more. (McCain to Joe: "Forgive Barack, Joe, for he knows not what he does"). Alas in truth Joe is no God at all: not only not oppressed by taxes he actually owes back taxes. The tyrannical grip of the fictional Joe, the hall of mirrors which language addresses that which is not (Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe), and the falsely messianic narrative (aspiring owner crippled by a tax proposal which is-yet-to-be) are all proven too seductive to a bewildered and newly bankrupt America, and more, impenetrable to Truth.

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