Maybe Mike Rowe can help a Left Coast comedian grasp reality.
In a lengthy social media post published Sunday, the champion of skilled blue-collar labor and former host of the shows “Dirty Jobs” and “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” host and champion of skilled labor, hit back at late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for Kimmel’s snide putdown of President Donald Trump’s new secretary of Homeland Security.
And he did it the way only Mike Rowe can.
With the measured logic of a master craftsman, Rowe summed up Kimmel’s by-now infamous, snearing condescension toward Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s background as a plumber, delivered as part of his monologue March 24.
To the laughter of the kind of people who would actually attend an episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (lives that empty are more to be pitied than scorned), Kimmel had mocked Mullin as a former mixed-martial arts fighter who was also a plumber.
“That’s right, we have a plumber protecting us from terrorism now,” Kimmel said.
In short, to Kimmel and his audience, a man who worked with his hands and built up a successful business is an object of ridicule, not admiration.
Rowe, however, had a different take entirely.
Mullin, Rowe wrote, “was a private citizen who mastered an essential skill and then turned that skill into a multi-million-dollar company that employed a lot of people and served a lot of customers. That gave him the freedom to do other things with his life, including a career in public service which got him into Congress, where he’s spent the last eleven years doing whatever Congressmen do. Now, he has a very consequential position in the Cabinet of the current administration.
“Is that not the embodiment of the American Dream? I get that Jimmy Kimmel might have a problem with Mullin’s politics, but what possible objection could he have about the trajectory of his career, or his desire to do more than one thing with his life?
“The only sensible thing to do in the wake of a moment this tone deaf, is remind America that the skills gap is wide, and getting wider.”
And how would Kimmel’s resume compare Mullin’s business and political accomplishments?
Kimmel is a college dropout who’s spent an entire adult life in show business, including the past 23 years as host of his eponymous (and insulting, and grating) show on ABC.
There’s no denying he’s been a success in his efforts — he’s achieved wealth and influence wholly out of proportion to any contribution he’s made to the country or the world.
For a supposed “comedian” he’s not even funny, for crying out loud. Even the benighted souls who attend his show aren’t laughing at his jokes so much as they are virtue-signalling their support for his politics.
He’s an “entertainer” whose form of entertainment for years has consisted of convincing liberals, progressives and leftists that they’re just as smart as they think they are — and that their fellow Americans are stupid.
When he was hit with backlash about belittling Mullin’s background, Kimmel tried to explain that he wasn’t putting plumbers down and complained that critics were trying to “twist” his words.
“I wouldn’t put a plumber in charge of Homeland Security for the same reason I wouldn’t call a five-star general to pull a rat out of my toilet, OK?” Kimmel told his audience on Thursday. “We all have our areas of expertise.”
Again, the condescension is almost unbearable — and this was Kimmel talking about himself — in his own defense.
For the record, Mullin built a small, family-owned plumbing business into an empire in Oklahoma that is diversified into construction and real estate as well, according to Inc. magazine.
He’s an accomplished businessman was well as a successful politician who happens to have roots in one of the most demanding and necessary professions there is. The kind of people who think plumbers aren’t important has never thought about the water they drink, the showers they take or the toilets they flush. (They probably think electricity comes from an outlet in a wall, too.)
Chances are Kimmel or his writers know the truth about Mullin’s work, and the chances are they disregarded it because it didn’t fit their narrative.
The fact that Kimmel is dishonest is not even in dispute. When he was called on the carpet about his comments blaming the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on “the MAGA gang,” (a falsity he almost certainly knew was false at the time), he proceeded to lie on national television about what he’d actually said.
And he presumes to lecture the country about the failings of a man who was just confirmed to head one of the most important posts in the president’s Cabinet?
Not on Mike Rowe’s watch.
“I get that Jimmy Kimmel might have a problem with Mullin’s politics, but what possible objection could he have about the trajectory of his career, or his desire to do more than one thing with his life?” Rowe wrote.
The answer to that is simple. Jimmy Kimmel, like far too much of the hopelessly leftist entertainment establishment, is too afflicted with hatred of President Donald Trump to see reality as it’s lived in the United States.
Fortunately, the country has Mike Rowe to set the record straight when it needs to be.
It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.
