I heard it from Anderson Cooper, in full sneer, on CNN. I join Michelle Malkin’s opinion:
If a community organizer can be president and a Saturday Night Live comedian can be a U.S. senator, why can’t a plumber be a reporter?
Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe The Plumber, is headed to Israel to interview ordinary citizens about life in the crosshairs of jihad. He’ll be filing dispatches for conservative Internet video broadcasting site, PJTV.com (to which I also contribute). Predictably, the very idea of a non-credentialed public figure attempting to “do journalism” has catty elite journalists hacking up hairballs.
CNN television anchor Kyra Phillips sneered (in her most objective and professional manner, of course): “Oh, Lord, Joe The Plumber’s got a new gig. It’s got nothing to do with the pipes, it’s got everything to do with Gaza.” After catching her breath during a commercial break, she embellished her teleprompter lines with ad-libbed contempt (something only seasoned professional journalists have experience doing, you see): “Now Joe The Plumber wants to flush out the truth as a war correspondent. I know, there are just no words.”
…
Joe The Plumber’s new gig is an affront to the Fraternal Order of The Professional Journalist because it underscores hard truths: An Ivy League journalism degree does not a truth-teller make. International war broadcasting experience does not a truth-seeker make. Look at Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post fabulist Janet Cooke. Or New York Times fiction writer Jayson Blair. Or Boston Globe fabricators Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle. Or former CBS News Captain Queeg Dan Rather.
Zing!