Okay, so Joe the Plumber is still famous, making joint appearances with Sarah Palin and stuff like that. Which is weird and cool, in a sort-of professional wrestling way, where one guy yanks a fan out of the crowd and trains him for a match against his rival. But it sure does make one of the far-right narratives about the guy ineffective: That he’s just an ordinary fella who came under undeserved scrutiny by the lapdog media after he dared question big, bad Obama, and he never sought any of this out.

You know what else makes that a hard thing to sell? When the dude hires a publicist.