Anger at a McCain-Palin rally, for the press:
"Are you going to check my license, too?" he asked me. "Are you going to check my immigration status? I'm ready, I have everything here. Whatever you want, I have it. I have my green card, I have my passport - "
I was a little surprised. Did Munoz really bring his papers with him to a McCain rally? I asked.
"Yeah, I have my papers right here," he said. "I'm an American citizen. Right here, right here." With that, he produced a U.S. passport, turned it to the page with his picture on it, and thrust it about an inch from my nose. "Right here," he said. "In your face."
Munoz said he owned a small construction business. "I have a license, if you guys want to check," he said.
Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. "I support McCain, but I've come to face you guys because I'm disgusted with you guys," he said. "Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A."
The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn't want to report on Obama's relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber? "How come that's not in the news all the time?" Munoz said. "How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I'm talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN."
A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. "Tell me," she said to Corn, "why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber's tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can't tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!"
"I am Joe the Plumber!" Munoz chimed in. "You're attacking me."
Corn then decided to tell the woman she was better than Joe the Plumber because she pays her taxes. Brilliant move, Dave. Read the whole thing. Many Americans simply don't believe what Obama is serving on taxes.
