Death Of A Truism

I want to dramatize Steve Benen's point. Forget the fact that "Joe the Plumber" is the nickname of a right-wing media personality who attained prominence during the 2008 election. Just take the name the way you would've taken it in 2007, while considering this sentence:

You don't hire Joe the Plumber to be your war correspondent in Israel.

Seems like a truism, doesn't it? The kind of thing somebody would say, and obviously it'd be sort of a straw man in whatever discussion you were having, but they would've made their point.

Of course, that's exactly what the craziest right-wing forces in the media did.