Timothy Egan is so much better than the rest of us

So I ran across this Op-Ed piece today, where some guy named Timothy Egan pretty much rips Joe Wurzelbacher (AKA "Joe the Plumber") a new one. To quote:

Joe, a k a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was no good as a citizen, having failed to pay his full share of taxes, no good as a plumber, not being fully credentialed, and not even any good as a faux American icon. Who could forget poor John McCain at his most befuddled, calling out for his working-class surrogate on a day when Joe stiffed him.

With a résumé full of failure, he now thinks he can join the profession of Mark Twain, George Orwell and Joan Didion.

To quote The Church Lady, "Well, isn't that special". Editorial pieces such as this only cement the opinion that many in the traditional media looks down their noses at the "flyover country", much as Dickens' Pip looked down upon the very people that helped him in his time of need in Great Expectations. To roundly insult an entire segment of society betrays Mr. Egan's inner rage that someone who is "not a writer" could dare enter the esteemed ranks of "Dostoevsky or Norman Maclean".

But not to worry, Mr. Egan is not simply being insulting for the sake of insult - it's purely political. In the next paragraph, he asks...nay, implores publishers not to publish Sarah Palin's new book, with the fatally flawed logic of "Anyone who abuses the English language on such a regular basis should not be paid to put words in print." Nevermind that most public figures (the same non-writing public figures he runs down time and again) employ ghost writers, for the simple reason that they realize they are not professional writers. And I, for one, am eternally grateful that they do, despite the fact that "real writers"...well, I'll just quote the piece in question:

Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.

But don't worry, President Obama will make it all better:

Our next president is a writer, which may do something to elevate standards in the book industry. The last time a true writer occupied the White House was a hundred years ago, with Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote 13 books before his 40th birthday.

What a royal douchebag.