Fact Trumps Fiction, Again

Amazing. This from the Onion over fifteen years ago.

In case you’ve not been following, Samuel Wurzelbacher (a/k/a Joe the Plumber and registered Republican) has become a celebrity. He has now hired a publicist for his burgeoning musical career, though he’s not an accomplished musician or songwriter…

Or a licensed plumber. Or a person named Joe.

And he’s considering running for congress. He is now more of a draw than John McCain to political rallies.

Here’s what Dick Cavett says in his NY Times column about Wurzelbacher:

This unfunny Ralph Kramden … seems to have effortlessly captured the imagination of those without much of it to spare. What will history make of this until-recently anonymous figure who has been elevated by the McCain forces to the level of a Cultural Icon, whose every utterance is treated as if from on high?

As Mark Twain said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn’t.” The Onion story was funny in 1993 because it was thought to be improbable.