Anthony Westbury: Fifteen minutes of fame and no regrets

Contact Anthony

Listen to Anthony at 9 a.m. Mondays on "Good Morning, Fort Pierce," on WIRA 1400 AM.

Is Scott "The Hugger" Van Duzer our version of Joe the Plumber?

It's a question several people have asked me in the wake of Van Duzer's appearance at a rally for Obama on Tuesday in Delray Beach.

Joe the Plumber, in case you'd forgotten, was the name the media gave to Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher during Obama's 2008 campaign against John McCain.

During a campaign stop in Ohio, Joe asked candidate Obama about his small business tax policy that targeted people making more than $250,000 a year. Obama responded that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Ah, there's a phrase that's come to haunt the President ever since.

Although Wurzelbacher never was a fully-fledged plumber, the name stuck and he was invited to appear on a number of national daytime television shows. McCain used his name several times during the campaign's third and final debate.

And even though Joe the Plumber held news conferences after the remark noting that Obama's "socialism" scared the pants off him, and he did make appearances at several McCain rallies in the ensuing weeks, Wurzelbacher ultimately refused to support either candidate.

He signed with a PR agent, appeared in a couple of TV commercials, wrote a book, "Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream," and parlayed his instant fame into a career as a motivational speaker.

Read the original here:
Anthony Westbury: Fifteen minutes of fame and no regrets