A Sore Loser Mocks A Winner

I notice that Steyn is calling out Timothy Egan, one of the hacks over at the New York Times. Egan, through Steyn:

The unlicensed pipe fitter known as Joe the Plumber is out with a book this month, just as the last seconds on his 15 minutes are slipping away. I have a question for Joe: Do you want me to fix your leaky toilet? I didn't think so.

In other words, writing is Tim's game. Joe shouldn't be playing with his toys.

Steyn says Egan is pompous, which is fairly obvious. Look at the rag he write for. But is Egan right? Are Joe the Plumber's last minutes of fame slipping away?

I wouldn't count on that. Though Egan would never believe it, Joe the Plumber is a far more popular writer than Timothy Egan is, though Tiny Tim has been pounding the keyboard for years and Joe's just published his first book (a thought: who says Joe hasn't been writing for years, but simply hasn't been published? Do you think Egan called him to ask?)

Steyn's been picked on before for not being a "real writer," so it's not a surprise to see him stand up for Joe the Plumber. Most of the attacks on Steyn's writing credentials come from jealous bloggers that, like Timothy Egan, wish they had the fame of a Joe the Plumber or a Mark Steyn.

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: I don't know what people think writers do before they become fulltime writers, but I can assure them it isn't writing. Writers don't make jack until they publish a bestseller or get syndicated in dozens of newspapers. Until then, plumbing is as good a job as any.

So what makes a good writer? A J-school degree, or a monkey wrench? Plumbers live. College kids learn. For interesting stories I'll put my money on living over learning. When I hear about a writer going straight from the college quad to the newsroom, I know I've got a butthead on my hands. A writer straight from college is a parrot, not a writer. Unless their writing is solely about the babes at last year's sorority party, I couldn't give a damn what they have to say about anything.

I don't care what most 18 to 21-year-olds think, nor am I inclined to lay down 40 dollars on a hardcover to find out. Hand me a college grad and I'll hand you an array of morons I went to school with. Looking back on the Humanities guys I ran into at the weekly keggers, I can't think of anything they could say today that I would find remotely interesting unless they went out and lived for a while - you know, amongst the Great Unwashed. I'm far more interested to hear what a day-to-day plumber thinks about current events than any jackass whose life experience comes from English Lit 101.

In that vein, here's a list of people that never went to college but somehow managed have an impact, anyway. Sorry, Tim.

Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe (went to Virginia, but got booted out), Mark Twain (elementary school dropout), Herman Melville, Sammy Cahn, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Peter Bogdanovich, Luc Besson, Andrew Carnegie (elementary school dropout), Charlie Chaplin (same), Agatha Christie (home schooled), Joseph Conrad, Noel Coward (elementary school dropout), Thomas Edison (same), Benjamin Franklin (virtually no formal schooling, founded a country and co-wrote something called the Declaration of Independence), George Gershwin, Woody Guthrie, Louie L'Amour, John Major (former British PM), Thomas "These are the times that try men's souls" Paine, Jon Peters (elementary school dropout, produced The Color Purple, Rain Man, Batman).

How about a few presidents like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry Truman?

I cherry picked the names from this list. Read it, Tim, and let your snob's eyes weep.