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attract young people to skilled trades.
After his presentation, DC VELOCITY
Group Editorial Director Mitch Mac
Donald sat down with Rowe to talk
about his advocacy for blue-collar vocations. Here are some highlights from that
conversation.
QYou have entertained a lot of peo- ple, but there are some important
underlying messages in the work you are
doing. One of them relates to the issue of
how our society, government, and media
have somehow diminished the value of
blue-collar labor. Why has that happened,
and is there anything we can do about it?
AI think it has happened for the same reason that our thinking on just about
every major topic constantly teeters back
and forth. It is very, very hard to find
equilibrium in anything, it seems, so we
are constantly going to be re-evaluating
the definition of meaningful work, a good
job, a good education.
For instance, it used to be enough to
say a good education is really important,
but now we have to say, what is a good
education? The answer (today) is, a good
education is higher education. Well, if
(what you have) is not a higher education,
then what is it? Is that a bad education?
Well, no, we wouldn’t say that, but we
might say it is an alternative education.
So suddenly you’ve got a four-year degree
representing all that is good in education,
and everything else getting filed under
this umbrella of “alternative,” which is
just another way of saying “subordinate.”
QYes, or you say, “Well, you’re just not college material,” which is what Dean
Wormer said to Mr. Blutarsky in the
movie “Animal House.”
AAnd the crazy thing is that back then, when “Animal House” was taking
place—in the ’50s and ’60s, and in real
life, into the ’70s—college needed a PR
campaign! There weren’t a lot of peo-
ple aspiring to go to school, and people
viewed college as something for snobby,
elitist types. So colleges needed to do
something to become way more egalitar-
ian, and they did, but in the process of
promoting college, we wound up dimin-
ishing a lot of other trades that today are
on the ropes. Now, work is por-
trayed in many cases as the enemy.
Work is the reason you’re not as
happy as you could be. You want to
be happy and work less. That is what
the 40-hour workweek is all about.
With the reality TV shows, that
has changed a bit. It used to be all
about “American Idol”; now you
have “Dirty Jobs” and “Deadliest
Catch.” You have some other shows
that actually show work more or less
like it is, and that is great. But there
are always two different sides strug-
gling to cut through and be heard.
At the moment, it seems to me that
