Yesterday, the Tanning Bed Media discovered unpaid tax liens against Joe Wurzelbacher.  Two days ago, we would have said, “Who?”  He’s better known this week as Joe the Plumber after his impromptu dialogue with Barack Obama produced a blatantly redistributionist answer from the Democratic presidential candidate.

In their haste to pillory Joe for the audacity of asking a tough question of Obama, the Tanning Bed Media missed a couple of other interesting tax liens.  Patterico does the work of the TBM:

Oh — I almost forgot to mention: Martin Nesbitt, the treasurer of Obama’s campaign, has tax liens. So do his companies.

You’d think that matters more than the tax liens of Joe the Plumber, wouldn’t you? But good luck finding a Big Media story about Nesbitt’s liens.

If tax liens are such an indicator of character and trustworthiness, wouldn’t it have more significance for the treasurer of a presidential campaign than for a man who just asked a question of the candidate?  If the national media has such an interest in investigating a plumber who made a couple of national appearances, why wouldn’t they have at least the same interest in the people running a major party presidential campaign?  Of course not.  The same people who instruct us that Barack Obama’s 20-year membership in Jeremiah Wright’s church while Wright called 9/11 “chickens coming home to roost” now interrogate Joe the Plumber on national TV about his brief flirtation with the Natural Law Party.

Because, you know, associations matter when choosing a plumber, but apparently not when choosing a President.