Michelle Malkin asks a good question in her latest column: “If a community organizer can be president and a ‘Saturday Night Live’ comedian can be a U.S. senator, why can’t a plumber be a reporter?” But by asking it, she undermines her own argument that Joe (The Plumber) Wurzelbacher deserves a prime assignment as a foreign war correspondent.

We conservatives spent months mocking the idea that community organizer Barack Obama is qualified to be president and that comedian Al Franken is worthy of the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota. By the same measure, Joe the plumber isn’t the least bit qualified to be a reporter in Gaza.

Michelle is right to expose the snobbery of “elite” journalists like CNN’s Kyra Phillips for mercilessly ridiculing the idea that Joe the plumber can be a reporter. As much as I’d like to think otherwise, anyone can be a good reporter if he can do basic research and ask intelligent questions — and we know Joe can. Journalism is not, as they say, rocket science.

But we’re not talking about covering a city council meeting or even a presidential inauguration. Gaza is a deadly war zone in a foreign country. Although I suspect Joe the plumber will get plenty of coaching from professionals, Pajamas TV is foolhardy to give an assignment like this to someone who is a novice in both journalism and foreign affairs. He is as qualified to do the job as Barack Obama or Al Franken.

That’s not to say Joe will fall on his face in the Middle East. He may handle the assignment with aplomb. I hope he does because I’m a fan of his. But let’s be honest: PJTV made the celebrity assignment for one reason — to generate buzz and drive traffic to its site.

I hate it when my old media brethren play to the lowest common denominator like that — can you say “tabloid journalism” — and I hate even more seeing new media innovators like PJTV follow their lousy lead. As I said yesterday, everything new media is old again.

UPDATE: This is about what I expected of Joe The Rookie Journalist in a war zone, and the analysis of PJTV’s shark-jumping decision is right on the mark (hat tip to Instapundit):

By making a 15-minute-of-fame political media celebrity its point man in Israel, PJTV took a risk and they’ve now been bitten by it.

Joe is now the face of PJTV. His saying that reporters should not be with frontline soldiers undercuts any effort by PJTV to put reporters on the front lines of a war.