Mike Rowe Responds to Critics of His Walmart Ad

He's right to do so, and this is pretty satisfying.

Worth a read.

The backstory is this: Mike Rowe (former host of "Dirty Jobs," and someone who's pro-work and pro-blue collar jobs, a notion disfavored by the tout petite bourgeousie that makes up the left's lesser chattering classes) has done an advertisement which promotes Walmart, but promotes Walmart because they have agreed to do something he believes in, and has argued for: Walmart agreed to purchase $250 billion (with a B) of American manufactured goods over the next ten years.

Note here that Rowe's goal is similar to that of many people, including those on the left, who want some kind of industrial policy (that is, government subsidization) to re-grow American domestic manufacturing. Rather than resort to government, he used (or was recruited by) a private corporation to accomplish the same goal.

Rowe, by the way, has some kind of foundation which he says pursues this basic goal.

So what's the problem? $250 billion is an enormous sum of money. Walmart would like some credit for this. Mike Rowe would like to give Walmart some credit for this, because Mike Rowe believes in buying American, and America working.

Well, the problem is this: Tribalism. The Tribe of the Left has decided that Walmart is evil, and they please their fellow tribesmen by saying Walmart is evil, and so even when Walmart pledges a $250 billion purchase of American domestic manufacturing, the dumb members of the tribe still want it explained to them how that is just awful, and the minor Priests of the tribe therefore undertake to do just that.

Basically they do that by writing snarky and uninformed blog posts about Rowe. Rowe refutes them.

Apparently a writer for CBS couldn't refrain from the Huff-Po level tribalistic attack. The writer noted that Mike Rowe had responded to a critics, “Who gives a crap about your feelings toward Walmart?”

Unfortunately, Rowe writes, “Aimee leaves out the most important part, which for the record was this: ‘For that matter, who gives a crap about MY feelings? Isn’t the business of making things in America an initiative we can all get behind?’”

But the CBS writer didn't include the full quote, preferring instead to truncate it so that it "proved" the claim made by an agitator with a group called "Jobs with Justice." Here's how that article reported it.

The ad might not have sparked such a fierce debate if another spokesman had been tapped. But Rowe, thanks to his seven-year run on "Dirty Jobs," is viewed by many as the voice of the underdog, the overworked and the underpaid. In short, the champion of the types of people working in Walmart jobs. Rowe then threw a bucket of fuel on the fire by writing on his Facebook page in response to one consumer, "Who gives a crap about your feelings toward Walmart?"

"He dismissed people's concerns," said Jobs with Justice spokeswoman Ori Korin. "As someone who has been on the side working people before, we would have hoped he would have thought twice about working for a company that is notorious for not treating its workers well."

The "mainstream media" likes to claim it's a reliable news source. They further contrast themselves with mere blogs, which lard posts with opinion and misrepresented facts mustered to establish a political point rather than something resembling the straight truth.

Oh?

Is that what us bloggers do now, eh?

Here, Cavuto shows an excerpt from the ad, and discusses it with Mike Rowe.

Mike Rowe's sin seems to be that he does more than talk -- he gets results -- and thus embarrasses the left as impotent whiners who have nothing to contribute but carping.

Corrected: I initially misunderstood and wrote that Walmart planned to "invest" in American manufacturing. They're actually pledging to buy $250 billion in American-manufactured products.

posted by Ace at 01:26 PM

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