Middle Class White Man vs. Wild
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35224
by Mac Johnson
01/18/2010
"I'm sitting, alone, at my kitchen table, eating cold leftovers for
dinner. Bear Grylls is floating, accompanied only by a full camera
crew and a giant digital blur to cover his blaring white bare butt,
on a rickety raft in the midst of the ocean -- giving himself a
"survival-enhancing" sewage enema to the accompaniment of much grunting."
"This is crazy," I thought. "Why aren't I on a raft?"
On any given night, all across America, this scene is repeated in
thousands of homes. The age of digital television has given
Americans the power to watch anything they want and what middle class
white guys want is… angry crab fishermen, belligerent lobstermen,
unruly swamp loggers, ice road truckers, survivor men, monster
garages, demolition crews, rough necks, and assorted other dirty jobs. Huh.
At some point, even someone as self-centered and clueless as me has
to see a larger societal trend at work here. While a substantial
segment of the population may still be watching the same old tired
crap …and also shows about midgets -- angry midgets (curmidgets),
married midgets, pregnant midgets, and now felonious midgets with pit
bulls (criminidgets)… another segment seems to have decided what they
want to watch are all the crappy jobs and hardships our parents and
grandparents worked so hard to "save" us from.
Clearly, a cubicle and a 401k is leaving unsatisfied some basic
aspect of the American male soul. Men are yearning for a chance to
express the basic inborn characteristics of maleness i.e. to act like
freakin' a man, damn it. Working in corporate America (if indeed,
the corporate world can be described as "America") involves a whole
lot of not being male.
As a matter of fact, being male is pretty much a dismissible offence
in most workplaces, with a whole corporate police force dedicated to
investigating tempers, urges, unauthorized actions, conflicts,
insensitivities and attitudes. The ideal worker is neutered, quiet,
subservient and unobjectionable. That's the whole point gelding
draft animals, isn't it?
The ideal worker does not get his own show on The Discovery
Channel. If he's a midget, he might get a show on TLC, but even that
is doubtful. Really, he would need to be a midget with a severe
medical defect -- "I am my own midget twin" could work, or perhaps "I
didn't know I was pregnant... and a midget". Anyway, where was I?
Right, manly men are such an anomaly in today's neutered society that
they have to be put on TV so that we can remember what they look
like. This is especially true in the white middle class, which being
the main victims of the evil generation of anti-men that arose in the
1960's has had all relevant male role models banned by political
correctness. Soldiers are baby killers. Cowboys are gun
nuts. Rednecks are racists. Frontiersmen are mean to Indians. And
the Founding Fathers are racist, sexist, homophobic wealthy religious
fanatic gun nuts who were mean to Indians. Manual labor is now
considered a sign of failure in life (a punishment for "lack of
education,") and is best left to illegal aliens so that white folks
can all go to college and experience limited aspects of testosterone
for one last time before being neutered for the workplace.
So what we are left with are only a few socially acceptable male
icons accessible to middle class white people. These include,
ironically, antisocial and formerly outlaw bikers -- a group that
would likely kick the crap out of the Hollywood rejects that lionized
them in "Easy Rider," "Rebel without a Cause" and other such Biker
Chic films. Despite the foamy-mouthed hatred a real biker would have
for his boosters, "biker" has become a rare and hot commodity - an
approved white male manly stereotype. The result is that a few
million fat balding fifty-year-old dentists and office workers have a
shiny, rarely-used $30,000 Harley in their garage and a leatherman
dress-up outfit to wear on select weekend days with sunny warm weather.
Another approved white male role model is the professional athlete --
and it's easy to see why! Professional sports really matter. Every
week, we all face the horrible prospect that the group of felons paid
to wear the name of our city (that week) might get beaten in a
children's game by a group of felons paid to wear the name of a
different city (that week). Gasp! Yankees suck!
A third option is to engage in blatant ethnic transvestism -- many a
white kid has become so desperate for a model of manhood that he's
bought some overpriced baggy pants and feigned being a gangster
rapper. Saddest of all, though, may be the self-loathing white kid
sporting dreadlocks. Friends don't let friends go natty. Love the
skin you're in.
Obviously though, these slim pickings don't seem to be doing it for a
lot of people, because unapproved role models are creeping back into
the public eye -- thus the recent fascination with the white working
class. Between The Discovery Channel, The Military Channel, The
History Channel, and a variety of other outlets, a curious character
is slowly regaining respect in the national psyche.
He's a fighter, a soldier, an adventure seeker. He eats little
animals, lives off the land, finds his own way. He fishes, traps,
repairs vehicles, builds skyscrapers, shovels manure. He's juvenile,
active, and possessed of all the introspection of a golden
retriever. He cusses. He strains. He endures pain and enrages
coworkers merely for fun. He yells when he's mad and drinks at the
end of the day. He is, apparently, a distant cultural memory that
many aspire subconsciously to return to.
He is, basically, a redneck -- the one figure most maligned and hated
by the elites that have controlled our media, our universities, and
our politics for decades now.
Deep down inside, people see in him a true and a free man -- a slave
to neither materialism nor human resources, and a rare thing nowadays.
Where is all this going? One possibility is a general uprising --
sort of like the end of "Fight Club". The other is a show about
midget rednecks -- catching crabs. In a survival situation. With Mike Rowe.
--
Mr. Johnson is a writer and medical researcher in Cambridge, Mass.
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