Photo by STANGSTA

Photo by STANGSTA

I can’t believe that Joe the Plant Plumber is still dominating the headlines today, but some just won’t let it go.  Michelle Malkin, that clever minx whose acute critique of the left she calls "Bush Derangement Syndrome," has now coined a new phrase — "Joe the Plumber Derangement Syndrome."

Let us pause and savor the infinite subtlety, the rapier wit.

Anyway, it seems poor Joe is somehow the victim of Barack Obama and his fiendish online minions who have snooped into every crevice of his life.  

Here’s Malkin on Grahaem Frost, the 12 year-old kid she hounded relentlessly:

As for accusations that bloggers were unfairly attacking a 12-year-old, Ms. Malkin wrote on her blog, "If you don’t want questions, don’t foist these children onto the public stage." 

Yet John McCain bears no responsibility for bringing the guy’s name up in the first place and repeating it over and over again in a nationally televised debate watched by 38 million people.  Got it.

Danny Glover:

But why is it that political reporters only get curious when a conservative Joe America storms onto the scene? Why aren’t they just as curious when liberals trot out, say, a 12-year-old boy to give a national radio address?

It has been almost a year to the day since journalists dropped the ball on telling America more about Graeme Frost, the boy who made the case for sinking billions of dollars more into the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. But when Michelle Malkin and other curious conservative bloggers did the legwork the press wouldn’t, they earned the scorn of their mainstream colleagues.

Maybe because attacking a 12 year old kid, printing his address online and stalking his family is beneath contempt?  Or because the charges made against Frost were all bullshit?  Or because it’s unseemly that the Senate Minority Leader should be pushing this story and urging on such a pack of foaming, drooling, knuckle-dragging thugs, whose only goal is intimidation?

You might make the argument that it’s a shame that people have no more expectations of privacy once their names are elevated into the headlines.  That is, if your name isn’t Michelle Malkin.