BREITBART: Plumber Joe vs. Brawler Josh

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By Andrew Breitbart

It was all an effort to kill the messenger.

Instead of defending Mr. Obama's answer or backtracking from it, his well-paid team and countless netroot surrogates sought to ensure that this working-class Joe is rendered ineffective as a proxy for the McCain campaign, even if it means destroying his reputation.

In the case of neutralizing "W.," Republican operatives should go out and destroy the reputations of some of the film's key participants.

Attacking Mr. Stone would be a mistake. That would be so 1996. The 62-year-old Mr. Stone is already known as a Castro-loving conspiracy theorist who cultivates a reputation as a renowned deviant, even by Hollywood standards. So nothing reported about him could sully his name or "W." In fact, he wants to be attacked, the better to play the martyr.

Instead, Mr. Brolin, who defiles Mr. Bush every which way, should be the prime target for the Republican "truth squad."

After all, if Joe the Plumber's liens, licenses and (supposed) relatives make him such a despicable person that he poisons any questioning about Mr. Obama's "spread-the-wealth" socialism, then any doubts people may have about the Iraq war, attorney firings, government eavesdropping or any other issue is similarly poisoned if the messenger is as awful a human being as Joe the Plumber.

At the time of casting "W.," Mr. Stone readily admitted he did not want Barbra Streisand's son-in-law to play the leading role. "I needed a star," Mr. Stone said, "and Josh Brolin was not a star."

What he got instead was something darker.

According to reports, Mr. Brolin was arrested in 2004 after his wife, actress Diane Lane, called Los Angeles police at 3 a.m. to report that her husband hit her. While Miss Lane never pressed charges - according to experts, such refusal is typical in domestic-violence cases - voters (and moviegoers) should be given the police report so that they can make up their minds on what kind of man Mr. Brolin is.

There's more.

While filming "W." in Shreveport, La., Mr. Brolin was also arrested for public intoxication after police were called at 2 a.m. to stop a bar brawl at the Stray Cat. The actor compounded matters by resisting arrest, prompting a charge for that, too.

This pattern of violence should cause pacifists and feminists alike to protest Mr. Brolin until he comes clean. All decent husbands and brothers should join their wives and sisters in boycotting all his movies. And Miss Streisand, a purported advocate of women's rights, should be held accountable for not speaking out against her son-in-law.

Sauce ... now you can meet the gander. And if all this strikes you as meaningless ad-hominem against Mr. Brolin that has nothing to do with either "W." as a work of art or the issues it brings up ... then, goose.

Hereafter, Mr. Brolin should be known as "Josh the Brawler," yet another footnote in an Obama campaign that promised hope, but mostly delivered hate.

• Andrew Breitbart is the founder of the news Web site breitbart.com and is co-author of "Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon — the Case Against Celebrity."