The irony meter redlines when the guy who gained fame from lying about his name and profession worries about professional bona fides.
December 16, 2013

Samuel Wurzelbacher has a beef with the above segment of All In with Chris Hayes. To be specific, he feels that the producers should have been more forthcoming about the resume of guest Sabrina Joy Stevens:

The guest panel during the segment included American Federation of Teachers President Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten, New Jersey reformer Derrell Bradford and an “education activist” by the name of Sabrina Stevens.

Weingarten didn’t require a long introduction and Bradford was clearly identified by his organization’s name and his work with Gov. Chris Christie and the state charter board, Alexander Russo reports.

Meanwhile, Stevens was only identified as an “education activist.”

What the show failed to mention, was that Stevens was until recently an AFT communications staffer, and had worked for the Denver teachers union before coming to the AFT.

Russo reports that Stevens recently left AFT to launch a new progressive education advocacy organization that’s describing itself as “a marketing department for progressive education – a campaign that never stops.”

And????

So the guy who has milked every last second of his fifteen minutes of fame being "Joe the Plumber" even though he is neither named Joe nor a plumber has issues with Sabrina Joy Stevens being labeled an unaffiliated education activist even though that is exactly what she is? Stupid much, "Joe"?

I am on listservs focusing on progressive education reform with Stevens, and she responded to this non-troversy by email:

Real story: the producer was confused about whether it was ok to offer my new title because we haven't launched, so they just defaulted to "education advocate".

Ooooh, the scandal! Meanwhile, aren't you reassured that Not-Joe the Not-Plumber has decided that Derrell Bradford was properly noted professionally? Except that they neglected to mention all the hedge fund money and former position as the head of a reform group dedicated to the privatization of school funds through vouchers.

Make no mistake, I would be really happy if the news media took greater care in disclosing the special interests and affiliations of *all* their guests.

But in this particular case, Non-Joe is just being hilariously hypocritical and dumb.

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