LOL
Posted on 12/31/2013 6:45:28 AM PST by KeyLargo
December 31, 2013 4:00 AM Good Ol’ Boy, Inc. Reality shows about gold miners, ax men, and ice-road truckers are a far cry from the Kardashians. By Victor Davis Hanson
The hysteria over Duck Dynasty reminds us that cable TV is currently inundated with working-class, white-guy reality shows. Top-drawing, relatively low-cost realities showcase gold miners, oil drillers, hunters, locomotive drivers, off-the-grid backwoods eccentrics, fishermen, crabmen, truck drivers, ax men, moonshiners, or the new generation of Beverly Hillbillies. The list of the particular subspecies of the muscular classes is endless.
These shows share a few common themes. They do not take place in an office, where most Americans work. They are not Kardashian psychodramas about plastic surgery gone bad, or a Gucci purse that underwhelmed the latte bunch in Brentwood. The men appear a bit beefier, perhaps stronger, but not necessarily more fit than your average American suburbanite. A big gut can add gravitas to the moonshiner’s biceps in a way impossible to achieve at the gym.
These men don’t quite shave each day, and close-up shots suggest that none use tooth whiteners. There are no Tony Robbinses on the chain-saw crew. Their speech usually is Southern-inflected, or at least rural-sounding. They are almost exclusively white, but do not seem to especially worry that they are. Whatever their actual income, the players clearly think of themselves as solidly middle to lower middle class. They work with the sorts of machines, many of them dangerous — huge trucks on ice, four-foot-long chain saws, earth-moving equipment, industrial arc welders — that most Americans do not even know how to start up.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
-guess the low spot of all was when Dakota Fred dug himself so deep in the melting gravel bank that he couldn't even swing the backhoe---
Mr. Mercat watches some of them because he loves nothing better than taking a chain saw and cutting up stuff. He also likes plumbing work but I don’t think that there’s a reality show about plumbers. Maybe there should be. I don’t like the bleeping. He has not watch DD. I don’t know why.
LOL
All episodes of AMERICAN PLUMBER here:
Uploaded on May 2, 2007
Eddie Cirigliano is a hot-blooded Italian-American plumber with a short fuse, a huge smile, and a heart of gold. As a plumber-he’s old school. He actually comes when you call, and he knows what he’s doing- he’s been at it since he was 14. His customers love him- usually.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKOSbkERGSc
“But there is yet a third and perhaps more likely hypothesis (none of these are mutually exclusive), well beside the notions that viewers are either amused by the slapstick or satisfied they at least have not yet sunk so low. The national hysteria over Duck Dynasty’s successful war against GLAAD and the profit-minded A&E execs might suggest that the white working classes also are therapeutic for millions of Americans. Suburbanites and urban dwellers usually don’t know much about nature; their jobs are not predicated on muscular strength. A fir, a pine, a spruce — they are all just trees. Who cares where north is, or whether the wind blows westward? Today’s youth don’t know the difference between a rip and a cross-cut saw.
Yet Americanus suburbanus also has a vague sense that for all the talk about the Dow Jones, Apple, Twitter, and Facebook economy, someone somewhere else still must be doing something that accounts for lumber at Lowe’s, gas at the corner Stop-N-Go, granite counters in the kitchen, and arugula at Whole Foods.”
Hanson need not look outside of the offices of NR to find Americanus Pussus.
The attraction to these shows is the glimpse into the lives of REAL MEN.
No metro-sexuals on these shows.
They are SELF-SUFFICIENT.
They do real work.
And you don’t find some government agency trying to make work conditions easier for women!!!!!!
LOL Thanks. I’ll share that with Mr. M
September 13, 2012
defining ideas
Profile in Classics: Victor Davis Hanson
by Emily Esfahani Smith
We in the West forget the wisdom of the ancient past at our own peril.
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/127936
Same here. I especially enjoy "Ice Road Truckers" and its spinoff, the show where they drive the world's most dangerous roads.
I will say, though, that I can't stand "Call of the Wildman." I think I lose I.Q. points just by watching the commercials for that show.
Like I-40 thru downtown Knoxville, TN?
I like Alex Deborgorski the best of the Ice Road Truckers.
” The first inside look at industry legend and fan favorite Alex Debogorski, a devout Christian, father of 11 children, and the worlds best known truck driver.”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Road-Tales-Legendary-Trucker/dp/1118148282
LOL, never driven it, but I take your word for it.
Maybe the show should check it out.
Yep, he comes across as a good guy. That belly laugh of his is something else.
Reality show about plumbers.
What would they call it “Plumbers Crack Me Up”?
They are scripted because if they showed what actually goes on in these types of jobs the viewers would probably nasty their drawers and the government types would be on their way to the job to shut down the work because pretty every job of this sort can not be done by the rule book. I is impossible to not break regulations dreamed up by people with no experience in the real world. Paper pushers, bean counters, and other assorted useless folk whose goal in life is to put out of business anyone who would attempt to pull himself up by his bootstraps and make a financial success of his life.
I hear all the time the lament, bring back American jobs, like we, inherited them and therefore own them, got news for ya, we didn’t and we don’t. They were ours as long as we earned them by the sweat of our brow, and we could do them cheaper and with higher quality. We are no longer a nation of builders or creators, but a nation of whiners.
Rough men and women built this country and until we become like them we will be losers on the financial battleground.
Where come from anybody with more then 4 teeth is considered a showoff and is trying to be ‘above his raisin’, but when the shtf you would be wise to have him at your side.
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