Mike Rowe is the brilliant average Joe of whom my quote on my personal profile is from, and he has soooo much of my respect. I saw this and had a good laugh, went to repost it as a funny, and then realized that many may simply turn their nose up to him as well for the presumptive association to PragerU.
Since we’re making assumptions, I’ll suppose he has probably done more to help people rise up in communities than she ever has. Not knowing her, she may have fed sick babies in Nicaragua or something, but I dont, and that’s how assumptions work. Does political affiliation hold so much weight when comparing reasons to respect someone that it can completely flip the table in terms of respectability?
Mike Rowe disagrees with the radical, now widely accepted, approach to education being that every person’s destiny needs to involve getting a college degree. By fulfilling their expected “higher” education, people assume they’ve become something “better” than those who do not attend university because they “completed” their education (as though those who do not attend university left, incomplete, to join the workforce). For some people, going into a trade would be a disaster or they were meant to be a doctor, and they need to go to university. There is no one size fits all approach to life.
Upon seeing this decline in apprenticeships in skilled trades, he knew there was a problem that needed to be remedied. Being the man that his is, he took action. Rowe created a foundation, mikeroweWORKS.org, to help kids begin their path towards high demand careers, by giving them scholarships for trade schools. Mike Rowe Works, since its founding in 2008, MikeRoweWORKS.org has given over $5 MILLION in scholarships to over ONE THOUSAND recipients in over 18 different skilled trades in 48 states.
As you can see in the screenshots above, he is a man of actions. He has spoken in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Communications on creating manufacturing jobs and bringing that industry back to America in 2011.
He wrote to President Obama about uniting and creating millions of hard labor jobs, but never received a reply. He reached out to candidate Mitt Romney to help in the same manner in 2012, and Romney said of him at the event, “He’s non partisan, he’s not here to endorse me, he’s not here to add support to one campaign or another. He’s here to talk about his ideas about how to help America create more jobs.”
That is the way I’ve always viewed Mike Rowe. Centrist, pragmatic, intelligent, and humble, not trying to achieve a sneaky hidden agenda; just a man who thinks he sees what can help, trying to help.
Mike Rowe is absolutely hilarious, clever, wicked smart, and has an impeccable track record of giving people who deserve it the upmost respect. I feel like this mask he created and is selling for the foundation expresses that “deserved respect”. Mike Rowe is the epitome of a true American who not only achieved the American Dream, but is helping others with what he has achieve theirs too.
In 2003 he began the show Dirty Jobs, on The Discovery Channel, performing the duties of jobs that have less than ideal working conditions, so the everyday American could learn to respect the backbreaking and disgusting work that people take for granted. He went on to go to every state and perform over 300 of the world’s dirtiest jobs, only 12 of which were his idea, submissions from the audience took over after that.
He did this for nearly a decade, taking submissions from his viewers as his way of picking the next Dirty Job. Personally, I loved watching Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe with my family at home in high school, and then later with my (now ex)husband and baby. When I was pregnant, I recall especially struggling with my nausea when it was on, but I couldn’t stop watching it! It was always fun to watch and laugh together, some jobs making you squirm just watching him doing it! Some like the pigeons coop, spider milking, concrete truck cleaning, sewer working, mattress disassembling, and more are forever imprinted in my brain.
Apparently, a new season titled Dirty Jobs: Rowe’d Trip (clever- I love the name) started airing on July 7, 2020. I’ll have to give it a look-see. I was so bummed when his show was over, back in the day. It was always so refreshing to be entertained by such a decent, respectful, down to earth American man and learn about jobs we try not to (or simply don’t) think about.
Mike Rowe has my respect, and God bless him for the greatness he does for the working American people. I don’t think an affiliation with a political party negates the amazing actions he has taken over the past 15+ years to try and help boost the economy through expanding careers in skilled trades.
FUN FACT: He was an Opera singer before he became the “Dirtiest Man Alive”.