When ordinary, average people enter a public arena, they expose themselves to public comment. Whether Joe the Plumber posed his question to candidate Obama as a "private citizen" or as a Republican plant, he asked it in front of a camera at a public event. Now that Joe is a speaker much in demand at campaign rallies and teabagging events, it is unreasonable to argue that his words and actions are immunized from scrutiny by his claim to be average or ordinary.
The argument that "average American" Carrie Prejean, Miss California, merits no criticism is even less persuasive. Prejean enters competitive pageants expecting to be judged. She scarcely has cause to complain if the mostly incoherent answer she gave on a nationally televised network broadcast has been judged by its audience. Taking advantage of the publicity that her answer generated, Prejean, like Joe the P, hasn't shied from the public spotlight.
Just as it isn't unfair to criticize the political positions that Prejean publicly advances, it isn't elitist to notice that Prejean has difficulty articulating a rational position.
And when Van Susteren asks her "what kind of rights that you think that a man and woman should have that maybe two men, two women, shouldn't have," Prejean comes up empty: "Well, I'm not a politician, so I can't give you an answer to that."
Perhaps that's why the National Organization for Marriage, with which Prejean seemed to be forming a strong alliance, has now backed away from her with the uncharitable statement:
"She is a spokesperson for her own views, as anyone watching her can tell."
Convinced that the liberal media unfairly attacks ordinary people like Joe and Carrie for their expression of ordinary opinions, Hawkins holds a mirror up to history and declares that "the right needs to play as dirty as the left." Conservatives, he contends, have done themselves no good by being "above it all" and engaging in "fair play" in politics. Hawkins must be unfamiliar with Karl Rove. And the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth. And Richard Nixon. And history.
Here's proof that Hawkins resides in Bizarro World:
Complaining bitterly about the Democrats’ “politics of personal destruction” or bellyaching that the media doesn’t treat us fairly ultimately accomplishes nothing. The public doesn’t care. Using the exact same tactics against the left that it uses against the right may very well be effective.
Hawkins urges the right to dig up dirt on the personal lives of Keith Olbermann and Maureen Dowd. He also suggests attacks on "poverty pimps like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP." Lovely man, Hawkins. You'd think the right would want to wash its hands of the Rovian tactics that turned off nearly everyone in the country, but Hawkins is certain that public apathy about conservative bellyaching justifies dirty politics.
Do you suppose ordinary, average, real Americans think smearing journalists with accusations about their private lives makes conservatism an attractive ideology? Someone should ask Joe and Carrie.
