The debate confirmed what we've down for a long time: plumbers have a curious way of focusing cultural anxiety and cultural tensions.
Last night, Joe Wurzelbacher became an instant media God because he was name-checked by John McCain and then meme-morphed throughout the evening into a roving symbol of whatever the candidates chose to make him.
But long before Joe's catapult, plumbers have been crystallizers. For many, they have represented the futility of education, because their compensation seems outsized compared to those who've put in their Ivy League years. It's our folklore; "My plumber earns more than I do" is the rant. Which is why Mr. Wurzelbacher, who seeks to buy out his employer, is not exactly the kind of classically sympathetic figure politicians latch onto.
You can feel the pain of disabled moms without health insurance, but it's hard to tear up over a guy who's going to charge you $150 for a ten-minute fix of a running toilet -- only for it to exhibit the same symptoms an hour after he's gone.
In a New York Times story last year, Lawrence Kotlikoff, a Professor of Economics at Boston University, confirmed the drainage disparity we've all implicitly believed:
"....the startling conclusion {is} that over a lifetime a plumber has a higher standard of living than a physician with a general practice because the doctor starts earning later, pays higher taxes and high malpractice insurance premiums."
In the Europe, plumber compensation plays a different cultural role. Anxiety over the influx of low-cast Eastern European labor, as a result of the EU, spawned the cliché of the Polish plumber. The phrase was conceived in France, and in a clever act of kung-fu marketing, the Polish Tourist Board took a stud model and created a sexy, winking poster inviting French tourists to visit Poland. (They also did a version with a hot Polish nurse.)
A Freudian would have a field day with why the plumber -- rather than the electrician or the dry-wall guy -- has become a symbol for whatever we're fearing. Is it because he has his hands all over our pipes? Does he remind us of the trauma of toilet training, having to part with that which we love? Is it a sexual threat -- after all, most of the time he shows up during the day, when traditionally women have been home alone. (Perhaps the "plumber's crack" cracks are simply a way to defuse all that sexual tension, to give him some cover.)
And now we have the perfectly named "Joe the Plumber" as latest plumberian metaphor. He's the new everyman, if your idea of an everyman is someone who can earn as much $125 an hour. In today's economy, blue collar is the new white.