I’ve been a critic of Pajamas TV lately, particularly for its bizarre decision to invest its money, brand and reputation in Joe (The Plumber) Wurzelbacher as both a war correspondent and congressional reporter. Here’s one excerpt of a discussion I joined on Facebook recently:

[Joe the Plumber] is not a journalist, and PJTV should be embarrassed for having put him in that role. I don’t blame Joe, who is a decent guy. I don’t even blame him for taking the job; I’d have done the same were I him.

But Joe clearly isn’t qualified to do the job. One glaring example: I watched an interview last week where he called Heritage, Cato and the like “bipartisan” think tanks. They are “nonpartisan,” and someone who doesn’t know the difference shouldn’t be in a high-profile job of congressional correspondent, even for a low-profile outfit like PJTV.

By all means give Joe a shot at being a journalist if you want. Those of us in this profession aren’t rocket scientists. I’m an enlightened redneck from West Virginia and have been doing the work for two decades. But stop using Joe as a tool to generate buzz for PJTV. It’s not fair to him, and it’s not helping PJTV’s image.

Having taken such a critical interest in PJTV myself, I figured it’s worth continuing to link to what others are saying about the venture, so here are more insights, most of them from an ongoing discussion over at AmSpecBlog:

The American Scene: “The problem PJTV faces is that it offers neither the substance of Bloggingheads, nor personalities as adept at their medium as Rush, nor the production quality of actual cable television. There’s just Joe the Plumber as Washington correspondent, offering analysis of this quality.”

J. Peter Friere: “If conservatives have any hope of regaining political dominance, it will be by converting others to our way of thinking, not by preaching to the choir.”

Dave Weigel: “It’s really unforgiveable that an organization with the start-up capital of PJTV isn’t using it to send its cameras out of the studio. Why not hound Rep. John Murtha about his lobbying scandal? Why not show the ‘monkeygate’ New York Post cartoon to actual humans and see if they find it offensive?”

Robert Stacy McCain: “The investors wanted more of a virtual-newsroom-set-with-guest-interviews format. Well, maybe you don’t like the talking-head discussion approach that seems to be the basic PJTV model, but what you like or don’t like is much less important than what the investors want.”