Matthew Norman: Joe as a war correspondent is plumbing the depths of journalism

For one who came so tantalisingly close to depriving Barack Obama of the presidency it may seem a paltry consolation prize, but to those who enjoy observing paradigm shifts in the nature of journalism it is a godsend. In an enchantingly post-modern twist on Scoop, Joe the Plumber has been sent to Israel as a war correspondent by a conservative US web site, and if anyone can make out a faint sluicing noise in the far distance it’s surely the sound of the floodgates beginning to open.

You will recall the Ohioan, whose name is Samuel and who isn’t technically a plumber, from his election trail encounter with Obama, his reluctance to pay extra tax on an income more than six times higher than his own instantly making him John McCain’s personal hero and very best friend in the world.

Had the electorate shared this feeling, Joe would be attending tomorrow week’s inauguration as an honoured guest, and quite possibly the incoming Treasury Secretary to boot. Instead, pjtv.com – an outlet devoted to exposing anti-conservative media bias, and so rigorously balanced that it features Mark Steyn on its home page – has sent him off to report on the horrors in Gaza.

Little is known of Joe’s attitude to the politics of that region, other than that he once brought Fox News anchor Shepherd Smith to the brink of tears by insisting that a vote for Obama would be a vote for the destruction of Israel, so we look forward to his forthcoming reportage with impatience.

Yet it is in the longer-term implications that the real excitement lies. For far too long, the deployment of minor celebrities as makeshift hacks has been restricted to the columns of national newspapers, and this democratisation of as facile discipline as war reporting is as overdue as it’s welcome. Which of our media outlets will be first to seize the baton remains to be seen, but it is worth noting that the Telegraph Group steadfastly fails to deny the rumour that it is in advanced negotiations with Big Brother 1 winner Craig Phillips, a builder from Liverpool, about heading its bureau in Teheran should the Mullahs decline to abandon their nuclear programme.

Denied a pizza the action

Our condolences to Luke Johnson on being blackballed by the Garrick. It makes not one whit of sense. As the business titan who shrunk Pizza Express pizzas and restricted the number of halved black olives to five per pizza, and someone who has more recently presided over this golden age for Channel 4, it’s hard to

imagine anyone less deserving of this public humiliation. It is hardly, after all, as if Luke is the sort of chap whose incessant prattling would irk fellow members. Indeed, his best- known media appearance was the legendary Today interview, during the Shilpa Shetty racism row that was but one highlight of his C4 tenure, in which he doughtily refused to say anything at all.

At this early stage there is no firm intelligence as to which Garrick member was responsible. These things are intensely private and it’s not our business to speculate about Simon Heffer’s jealously guarded status as the club’s most revered redhead.

History of clubbing

Incidentally, this is not the first clubland fiasco to afflict the Johnson family. Fans of Luke’s father Paul will remember the tale about the time he

took unwonted umbrage at something said to him at dinner. “Right, that’s it,” thundered Ronald Reagan’s favourite historian, on rising to feet, “I’m off to my club.” “But Paul,” chipped in the old fella’s saintly wife Marigold, “you don’t belong to a club.” Who knew the power of genetics extended as far as Pall Mall and |St James’s?

Keep your ice on the news

The award for Splash of the Week involved, thankfully enough, no splash at all. The Daily Mirror takes the prize for underscoring its reputation for news judgment with a front page report, headlined “Dunces On Ice”, in which the safe progress on foot over a frozen pond of a couple and their toddler was treated as a borderline suicide attempt. Curiously, The Sun chose to confine its account to a picture caption on page five. Will they never learn?

Gaunt’s bull by the horns

Elsewhere in The Sun, my favourite columnist begins the year with a well observed item about darts. Jon Gaunt draws attention to the chasm in quality between the coverage of the rival world championships on Sky (the proper PDC event, as dominated by Phil “the Power” Taylor) and the BBC (the joke BDO version which conclu-ded yesterday).

I won’t dwell on the genius of Sky’s lead commentator Sid Waddell again, unless and until he gets my suggested nickname for the delectable Russian female star Anastasia Dobromoslyva (Aphrodarty) officially accepted.

Nor will I risk intruding into private grief by lingering over his BBC equivalent Tony “And Bully’s Special Priiiiize!” Green, a man with no apparent first tongue at all

and the shakiest grasp of pidgin English. Whether Gaunty overstates it to cite this as reason to abandon the licence fee I’m not sure, but it is an undeniably disgraceful exhibition of complacency that year after year the BBC tolerates such wilful incompetence.

Murdoch ambition shock

A rare rebuke for the great Jon Stewart, finally, who interviewed Rupert Murdoch’s biographer Michael Wolff on his Daily Show last week. Advancing the engaging theory that the old boy is a tool of the powerful rather than their puppetmaster (spend a few months over here, mate), Mr Stewart said that in reading the book he was struck by the fact that, rather than being driven by a coherent ideology, Rupert’s most consistent and dominant trait would appear to be personal ambition. Ya think?