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“Whaddya Know” describes itself as “part 60 Minutes, part Oprah, and 100% like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” but there is a crucial difference between Joe and the hosts of those other shows.  Whereas Oprah and others fought tooth-and-nail to get where they want to be and thus try to make their shows all about themselves, Joe is an accidental celebrity.  He’s quietly taken on the role of a household name without adorning any of the ego that normally comes along with it, and that completely flavors the tone of the show.

Instead of taking place in a bright TV studio with a trained-seal audience, the set for the talk show-esque portion of the show looks like it was built inside a barn; the tone is folksy, intimate, humble.  Instead of hogging the spotlight in every conversation and interview, Joe is completely content to give guests his full attention and let them speak at length.  It’s a refreshing respite from the all-but-scripted, pandering-for-applause fake style of conventional talk shows.

However, those worried about Joe not having the chops or charisma to carry an entire show, rest your troubled hearts; he’s got plenty of backup.  Like Ed to his Johnny, like Andy to his Conan, like Garth to his Wayne, co-host Rodney Lee Conover is a quirky, energetic counter to Joe’s laid-back, dry humor. Their interplay with each other and guests such as Nick Searcy from the show Justified finds all parties comfortable and casual yet lively.

But an important thing about Joe is that its cameras aren’t stuck in one little room. As a multi-genre show, it features news packages that are truly educational while still featuring the show’s informality and wry humor. It’s a much-needed departure from the cookie-cutter templates of MSM news segments with their maddening poseur objectivity and condescending 5th-grade narration.

Now, when I say that the news segments are “educational,” I will admit that I was genuinely surprised by many of the revelations in these portions of the show– how California beaches experience more pollution in the absence of oil drilling due to seepage, or how Mexican military troops have escorted drug cartels across the border into Texas.

Other regular segments provide perspectives from an even wider range of voices. “Street Smarts” with Lewis Brown, a man who either is homeless or just looks it, shares his thoughts, promising, “My mouth don’t write checks my ass can’t cash.”  The segment “Ladies Out Loud” is fly-on-the-wall view of girl talk with a group of women, mostly mothers, discussing how local and national issues affect them and their families. It’s like The View, just with thoughts.  In “Joe’s Bar,” our plumber host interviews people who aren’t celebrities or conservative activists, just boots-on-the-ground individuals like teachers who share their personal experience and opinions on issues such as public unions in education.  For political junkies, YouTube star “Thomas Paine” hams up some common-sense punditry in response to viewers’ mail.

And this inclusion of diverse voices has continued into further episodes; during the recent demonstrations in Wisconsin, he’s been visiting residents of the state, filming and talking, asking open-ended questions, getting insider information. It’s engrossing, because unlike the vain celebrity flattering meant only for self-promotion of other talk shows, there’s a genuine interest in people and what they have to say. You can tell that Joe’s fundamental philosophy is that everyone has something to contribute in understanding our nation, and that sort of respect for all people, abandoned for decades by a cynical television establishment focusing only on the grotesque voyeurism and empty glamor, is more than refreshing.

I don’t make any excuses for conservative media; either it’s well-crafted and entertaining, or it isn’t. “Whaddya Know, Joe?” has been a very pleasant surprise, and I’ve found myself constantly checking the RightNetwork website for updates and new videos.  If your cable provider doesn’t carry RightNetwork, you can contact them and demand they do, but in the meantime, don’t wait to view “Joe” from their site.  It’s an engaging, delightful program that just might be bound for greatness.

There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.

His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others – especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn’t do enough.

But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don’t do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.

Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage – the GWB43 virus – has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president.

The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.

Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.

Next were the Mormons.

Then it was Rush Limbaugh – who hit back.

Next, tax-day “tea party” attendees were “tea bagged.”

Then there was a beauty contestant.

And a Cambridge cop, too.

And now we have town-hall “mobs.”

Smile … you’ve been “community organized.”

When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama.

This is their time, we’ve been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.

The origins of manufactured “politics of personal destruction” is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based “progressive” street agitator titled, “There Is Only the Fight.”

Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky’s techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, “Rules for Radicals.” In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight – all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.

“Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”

You can read the column in full here.

Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that “the wanted” of the show’s first two recent episodes (you can see them here; four more have been produced but are not presently scheduled) were Islamic terrorists.  This is an encouraging new development, considering that Western governments and media have increasingly made taboo any reference to a connection between Islam and acts of terror (of course, the Islamists themselves never got that memo, because they insist on quoting Islamic theology to justify their murder and mayhem). And the left-leaning entertainment industry has virtually ceased pitting heroes against the real-world threat of jihadis, falling back instead on more fashionable stock bogeymen like corporate executives, Marvel Comics supervillains, and, well, corporate executives. 

But now along comes a major network TV show that makes no apology for identifying and targeting Islamic terrorists, and its investigative team even makes unqualified reference to jihad, another taboo word and a concept that Islamist apologists have nearly indoctrinated us into believing has nothing to do with waging holy war against infidels.What’s next, the apocalypse?

Carstens, Ciralsky, Tyler

The aforementioned elite team consists of producer/journalist Adam Ciralsky, former Green Beret Roger Carstens, former Navy SEAL Scott Tyler, and war crimes prosecutor David Crane. In episode one, they zero in on an extremist imam in Oslo called Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam, a group closely allied with al Qaeda and at the forefront of anti-coalition attacks in Iraq. Krekar is wanted for prosecution in Iraq but is being sheltered by the Norwegian government, which refuses to extradite him to a country that might mistreat or execute him. (Personally, I don’t see the problem with shipping these murdering, openly bigoted supremacists off to any country that might mete out the serious justice they deserve, but that’s why I’m not a politician).

In episode two, the team heads to Hamburg in pursuit of terrorist financier Mamoun Darkazanli, who is credited with funneling money to the 9/11 hijackers – but Germany is waiting for an official indictment from Spain before they hand him over (it’s complicated). 

Liberal critics of the show ridicule the team for “hunting down” suspects who are practically listed in the phone book, but they’re missing the point: it’s outrageous not because these evil men are hidden among us, but precisely because they’re living openly in, and being protected by, countries whose very downfall these Islamists are plotting.  Sadly, “The Wanted” doesn’t provide the satisfying closure of a “Law and Order”; in both episodes, the best the team can manage is to pressure the European governments to quit stalling and finally cooperate on legal action against the suspects.

Mullah Krekar

The show is “really about the rule of law,” Carstens says.“It’s about justice; it’s about human rights; it’s about facing those that are accused – and that’s the key word – facing those that are accused of the most egregious crimes against humanity and effect some sort of effort to get them to at least take responsibility for their actions or clear their name.”

Sounds reasonable, if unexciting.  And yet “The Wanted” seems to drive liberal entertainment bloggers into a frothy outrage.Slate’s critic derided its “frenetic pandering to base instincts” – base instincts such as the uncivilized urge to bring war criminals to justice, I presume.  Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press frets, “Is this supposed to be journalism?”  She and others worry that this show promotes vigilante journalism, the kind that led one cornered suspect to kill himself in the pedophile-hunting “To Catch a Predator” (frankly, if this show does lead to any terrorists killing themselves, then that’s a big plus in my book).  Lydia Khalil, who labels it “dangerous,” and Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik, who stretched for a hyperbolic denunciation of the show as “McCarthyism,” are apparently concerned that Ciralsky et al are targeting and smearing random innocents: “Who’s deciding who is a terrorist or war criminal?” he frets (for a show that liberals find so easy to sneeringly dismiss, it certainly inspires a lot of fretting).  Well Mr. Zurawik, it’s the State Department and other international agencies who have decided who the terrorists and war criminals are, not a rogue vigilante journalist at NBC, as you imply.

The New York Times too disapproves of “The Wanted” blurring the line between journalism and activism.  Of course, these same critics wouldn’t hesitate to give their imprimatur to the show if the suspects were Bush administration officials/torturers, whom the terrorist hunters could hold accountable for reading all our private e-mails and for callously disregarding the legal rights and cultural sensitivities of foreign Muslim fundamentalists who yearn to hack off infidel heads.  The Obama-era journalists who gleefully declared “Objectivity is passé!” suddenly feign blustery moral indignation, though, when a journalist assists a former SEAL and a Green Beret in the pursuit of the Western world’s real enemies.

If this show brings attention to “an overlooked story,” as NBC producer David Corvo calls it, then I’m all for it.  If more journalists committed themselves to shining a spotlight on, and actively taking down, such vile monsters as Mullah Krekar instead of targeting Joe the Plumber, dutifully transcribing every lie out of the mouth of Bristol Palin’s slimy ex-boyfriend, or giving us breathless updates on who gets Michael Jackson’s children, then maybe they’d earn a little more respect and trust from the public.

But liberal entertainment critics, who serve no useful function in society, are one thing; what about the people “The Wanted” represents?  One unnamed person in the Department of Defense’s special ops community said, “Everyone I’ve talked to said that it was well done, didn’t reveal a lot of our trade secrets – if you will – and left me feeling that somebody’s doing something about a problem we all know exists and, frankly, we can’t do anything about.”

The show’s critics do have legitimate complaints about some of its stylistic glitz, its forced tension (such as a lengthy car chase that fizzles out rather pointlessly), its exposition-heavy dialogue and staged conversations, and its lack of dramatic takedowns. Could “The Wanted” use a little retooling? Certainly. But it already gets its most unique, core elements right: it exposes the bureaucratic apathy of Western governments who coddle some of our most dangerous enemies, and – like “To Catch a Predator” – “The Wanted” raises viewer awareness of the monsters walking free among us.

This required a few passes to be sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks. You keep telling yourself to stop being amazed by hypocrisy and bias, but again and again someone like Philip Kennicott, a staff writer for the Washington Post, comes up with nonsense like this:

And didn’t we see George W. Bush depicted as the Joker not so long ago?

Yes, in an image by Drew Friedman published online by Vanity Fair on July 29, 2008. That drawing at least played into a view of Bush popular among his detractors, that the former president was unpredictable and fast on the draw when it came to geopolitics. But the danger many of Obama’s detractors detect is more of calculating, long-standing deception, that he is quietly and secretly marshaling a socialist agenda, a view that would be better served by imagery that recalled “The Manchurian Candidate.”

A few paragraphs later the R-word is finally (and predictably) let loose and the anonymity of the artist(s) becomes an issue:

So why the anonymity? Perhaps because the poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the “urban” makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can’t openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and ’70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling crime rates.

Anonymity troubles HuffPoster Earl Ofari Hutchinson, as well:

As silly and loose screwed as the depiction of Obama is as a socialist Joker, this writer did not scream for the posters to be summarily yanked down and tossed in a Hitlerian banned-book bonfire. Instead, the call was simply for the individual or groups slapping the posters up to publicly ID themselves and take credit for their work. Come forth and take public pride in branding the president a jokester and a socialist. Don’t slink around at midnight, taking the guerilla graffiti artist’s route, and smear walls with the posters when cars disappear around the bend. That’s not the joker’s MO. It’s certainly not befitting someone who’s bold enough to call the president the Joker and a socialist.

And so Phase II begins: Put the pressure on to out the culprit. 

Quashing a handbill that says so much with so little has proved impossible. The outrage increased “jOker’s” iconic stature and the attempt to stop its spread with a cry of “racism” not only didn’t work, it kinda backfired. But….

An individual or group can be destroyed, and all the Usual Suspects stand ready to Joe The Plumber/Carrie Prejean/Sarah Palin’s Family the artist(s) responsible for effectively turning the art-as-ideological-weapon tables. Oh, yes, they want a name…

And so, in these last remaining days of summer, as you head out to state fairs, family gatherings and townhall meetings, be sure to remind those who tsk-tsk your Obama-Joker shirt that putting “whiteface” on a black man is a-okay with the New York Times.

I don’t mean to judge them too harshly, but that’s what we’d say about a dude that flipped out in public like those two whack jobs at the White House Correspondence Dinner who harassed Donald Rumsfeld and his wife as they entered the building – as invited guests. I don’t know who these women are – and if they’ve lost family in Iraq or anywhere else, God Bless’em, but…damn. They’re the type of crazy that makes you realize the word crazy is overused.

Cindy Sheehan reportedly saw it and said, “That’s some crazy-ass women right there.” Roseanne Barr was heard to reply, “No sh*t Sheehan.”

Crazy women are more off-putting than crazy men. That’s why “Obsessed” was such a hit, men are scared of crazy women. Like the Rumsfeld-Code Pink video, it featured two women, one crazy from the get go. The other one was rational, but by the end, said, “I’ma show you crazy!!”

The news is dominated today by crazy women, and by one sane woman who’s being depicted as crazy – Carrie Prejean. Yeah, she’s as nutty as a Snickers, espousing crackpot beliefs that are in line with, oh, seventy-five percent of the population. Where’s the padded cell? Her situation and Alec Baldwin’s appearance on Letterman this week lead me to believe Right Wing Christian is the new gay. I know that was a fairly popular sentiment back when “The Passion of the Christ” came out, and I rejected it then. But the way Baldwin talked about his brother Stephen’s religious and political conversion, as if even knowing a Christian right winger was creepy, made me wonder if Alec thought his brother’s “condition” was contagious.

But back to crazy women and the lies they utter-stutter, and Nancy Pelosi’s stammering stuttering follow-up to her initial denial, which no one believes. She reminded me of the Mayor of Amity, repeating, “I was acting…I was acting in the town’s best interest. In the town’s best interest. I was acting in the town’s best interest!” She’s claiming now she was lied to. I sense that she’ll eventually crumble, admit she was briefed on EIT’s, and claim she was bullied into it. It will all come back to Bush.

After her two denials, can Democrats finally admit that Bush isn’t the first ineloquent politician in the world? Most are. The constant fawning over Obama because he is eloquent reeks of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Which inarticulate boob first used that phrase?

Back to the Shrill Patrol vs. Rumsfeld. I’ve always found the “war criminal” charge from the far left to be repetitive and redundant, not to mention repetitive and redundant. They think war’s a crime, anyway, so what’s a war criminal? I’m not looking for help from Webster’s on this – I won’t be swayed.

I hate when other people do this, but I’m gonna do it anyway. In their hearts, I don’t believe that these particular loons give a rip about “One million dead Iraqis.” A million sounds better than forty-three hundred, which would be roughly the number of Americans who have given their lives for their country in Iraq.

The left always embraces nuts like this, while we on the right are always put on the defensive when one of our likeminded cohorts does something ridiculous. Like in the case of Joe the Plumber, and his unwillingness to let his kids be around them thar “queers.” We distance, they embrace.

They’ve figured out, as evidenced by Obama’s Come to Jesus speech in Philadelphia, “A More Perfect Union” (Thanks, Obama, for only stealing the title this time). Wright was portrayed as his crazy uncle, the one who gets drunk and puts his you-know-what in the mashed potatoes. I know, Obama eventually had to denounce Wright, but he got way more chances than we tend to give our guys the boot the minute they signal the guy in the next stall over in a public restroom.

If we didn’t at least act as accomplices in the widespread shaming of Larry Craig, who knows? Maybe he’d be hassled to this day by hysterical crazies bellowing “AIRPORT CRIMINAL! AIRPORT CRIMINAL! HE PROPOSITIONED MILLIONS OF MEN IN THE PUBLIC RESTROOM!”

To which, I can only add as a side note to the Democratic Party: “Enjoy, he`s all yours.”

Which leads me to my next point: As a fan of Kemp, I`m always on the lookout for someone like him. On tv, I keep seeing Joe the Plumber, a pretty average guy who seems decent – except, you know, he doesn’t want the gays near his kids. Speaking of kids, there`s that Jonathan Krohn tyke on talk shows – reciting the conservative party line better than most dithering white haired weenies crawling the halls of the Capitol. He’s smart, but he weirds me out. Maybe because at 13 he’s already taller than me – or maybe because he just comes off as a novelty act, like a hairless cat reciting the alphabet (which is kinda cool).

Which is why I bring up these guys up – not because I hate them, but because I despise novelty. The left was always the three ring circus of novelty – its microcosm, the Huffington Post, reflected this with children writing blogs, next to the incompetent bomber, the conspiracy freak, and the bearded lady poet. Sometimes it was all the same person.

Now I’m not saying that the plumber or the paperboy don’t belong in the conservative movement. They just shouldn’t be IN FRONT of it. We’ll find our leaders, or hopefully, soon they’ll find us. But it’s not going to be a guy whose middle name is an article, or a boy still sleeping in a twin bed. We don’t, in fact, need anyone who “plays a role.” What’s needed is someone, like Kemp, who was both real, and smart – and not a cartoon.

Unless, of course, it`s a unicorn. Then I take back everything I just said.