Mike Rowe’s
career has been in the crapper for more than a decade, and he likes it that
way. The TV host made his name trying his hand at the grimiest jobs our society
has to offer, first on Discovery’s “Dirty Jobs,” and now on CNN’s “Somebody’s Gotta Do It.” It
turns out finding dignity in the overlooked and unpleasant jobs that make our
society run was a crowd-pleaser, partly because the people who did them made it
that way.
“Everyone I met
seemed to be having a better time than I thought they would. I thought, ‘What
does this group of people know that the rest of us don’t?’”
Rowe’s advice,
gleaned from years in the dirt, is not to get opportunity and passion
backwards. Rowe explained
in an interview with yours truly, that the people he encountered saw
opportunity, got good at their work, and found passion and purpose in it, not
the other way around: “I can’t even tell you how many
multimillionaires I met who were covered in other people’s crap.”
Rowe has since
started a foundation, mikeroweWORKS, that speaks to the “country’s dysfunctional
relationship with work, highlight[s] the widening skills gap, and challeng[es]
the persistent belief that a four-year degree is automatically the best path
for the most people.” In his commencement speech, Rowe offers some
other useful thoughts.
On the Problem
with Politicians
“If I were
really trying to say something smart and maybe comforting about all of the
dysfunction, look, these people are trying to get elected. They have to be
platitudinous. They have to talk in bromides when it comes to the definition of
a good job or the definition of a good school.”
“But work and
education are maybe the most individualistic things that a person has to figure
out for themselves.”
“The main problem presupposes that college in general is
going to make the most sense to the most peoples’ brains. I’d like to grab them
all by the lapels and give them a shake. It doesn’t matter if (college) is free
or not.”
“The first thing
that an honest politician would say is, ‘Look, I have no idea what’s best for
you and your kids, but if we’re guilty of elevating one form of enlightenment
at the expense of all the others, we’re gonna create a list of problems’…that’s
what we’re experiencing now. It’s amazing to me the implicit value judgments
that go into all the platitudes.”
On Being Approached
to Be a Candidate:
Rowe said he
gets a call from someone every now and then, Republican or Democrat, saying,
“You’re our kind of guy.”
“It kills me
because they have no idea who I am or what I think. It’s really shockingly
universal— (the idea of) meaningful work.”
Last month, he
said he got a call from someone in the business of analyzing possible
candidates, telling him they’d done a study of his Facebook presence and a
bunch of social media and found a preponderance of “Mike Rowe for President”
sentiment out there.
His response?
“I threw up in
my mouth a little. Look, I don’t need to focus group this. I just threw up in
my mouth.”
“Obviously it’s
a sign of the times. People are grasping at straws. But I guess if the host of
‘The Apprentice’ can stand there and say ‘You’re fired’ — which, let’s face it,
we all fantasize about doing (in some way) — the ‘Dirty Jobs’ guy could
probably pull off something or other in a couple of states. It’s scary. I can’t
even keep my dog under control. What would I do with a budget?”
On How to Cast a
Vote
“Don’t vote for the person who tells you you deserve
something. Just don’t do it if it’s something other than life, liberty, or the
pursuit of possible happiness. If everyone is telling you you deserve
something, vote for the one who is promising you the least. Be suspicious of
the man or woman who tell you deserve everything. Because you don’t.”
On How to Change
America’s Relationship with Work
“I
don’t think the real solution is going to be governmental,” he said, referencing
the Keep America Beautiful nonprofit organization’s efforts, which culminated
in its most famous ad, 1971’s “Crying Indian.”
“It actually
changed America’s relationship with litter,” Rowe said. It was a conglomeration
of corporations, some government partners, and concerned citizens. “Something
in some corollary has to happen with parents, guidance counselors, teachers and
kids.”
On Whether the
Country Will Ever Get the Nick Offerman-Mike Rowe Collaboration It Deserves
“Did you ever
see that YouTube thing where he sat in front of the fire with a glass of scotch
for an hour?” Rowe asked. Offerman, who plays the stoic, bacon-loving
ultimate American Ron Swanson on “Parks and Recreation,” recorded
a 45-minute YouTube commercial for Lagavulin distillery in December of 2015.
In it, he sat silently by a roaring fire for 45 minutes occasionally sipping
his drink. The insouciant performance has almost 3 million views. Rowe is
one of them.
“I watched the
whole thing. I turned it on and at some point I said, ‘The sonofabitch isn’t
gonna get up.’ So, I went and got some scotch and I sat down and stared at Ron
sitting by a fire drinking scotch and I drank scotch by a fire and stared right
back at him.”
“I’ve never told
anyone that before,” he said, wondering aloud if it sounded creepy. “But it’s
true. If there’s any justice in the cosmos, our paths will cross.”
Indeed. In a
year where everything in the news feels like some kind of bizarre performance
art, Mike Rowe and Ron Swanson drinking scotch by a fire is the kind of
performance art this country desperately needs.
Until then, you
can tune into Rowe’s new podcast, “The
Way I Heard It,” which is a “series of short mysteries for the curious mind
with a short attention span.” Or, in Rowe’s words, his attempt to make “history
suck a little bit less.”
