Good Ol’ Boy, Inc.

[Geee]

National Review:

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.