TV personality Mike Rowe has expressed his thoughts on social media about the ongoing Confederate flag controversy which became a national issue after the horrific Charleston shooting .
Mike Rowe has more than once used his Facebook platform to respond to fans’ questions about current issues from a non-ideological, non-partisan perspective. In this instance, a fan asked him about his feelings about the confederate flag.
The former Dirty Jobs host on Discovery, Mike Rowe is currently starring in a similar reality show on CNN called Somebody’s Gotta Do It . You may have also recently seen him on TV as a pitchman for Ford trucks.
Despite the blue-collar emphasis of his TV work, Rowe used to sing with the Baltimore Opera as well as appear as an on-air host for QVC .
In a prior Facebook exchange , Mike Rowe rejected a poster’s premise that he is engaging in so-called right-wing propaganda by “harping on” the importance of a work ethic and falsely claiming that many jobless individuals actually don’t want to work.
Rowe has long campaigned for job seekers to enter the skilled trades rather than going into student-loan hock for a four-year university degree that provides no hands-on training for actual good-paying work. He started the mikeroweWorks Foundation that, among other things, awards scholarships to men and women who seek training at trade schools across the country. Rowe is on record as saying that “Many of the best opportunities that exist today require a skill, not a diploma.”
With that in mind, he previously declared on Facebook that it’s fundamentally unnecessary for a viable candidate for elective office, such as GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, to possess a college degree.
Although Donald Trump is the controversy du jour , Mike Rowe responded earlier this week to user Jason about his feelings concerning the Confederate flag by noting that both the Confederate battle flag and the Nazi swastika make him angry to the extent that both symbols make him want to locate a time-travel device and then beat the KKK Grand Wizard and Hitler to death with a golf club.
He continued that his feelings about the Confederate flag are mostly unimportant. As the Blaze observed , however, “his ‘thoughts’ on the matter are far more complicated and nuanced.”
“I think we need to be very careful about congratulating ourselves too enthusiastically for removing a piece of cloth from the public square — even if it’s removal is long overdue. I also think we need to stop calling people racist, just because they see the flag as something other than a symbol of hate. This is what happens when we put a premium on our feelings. We assume everyone who disagrees with us is not merely wrong, but dangerous. I know many good Southerners who abhor racism, but view this flag as an important connection to their ancestors — the vast majority of whom never owned slaves. This doesn’t mean the flag should be allowed to fly on public property — not for a minute. But it’s a mistake in my view, to equate the removal of a symbol, with the removal of the evil it’s come to symbolize. And that’s exactly what a lot of people are doing. We’re conflating cause and effect…”
The TV host underscored that removing an offensive symbol will do little to solve any underlying societal problems. “By all means — lets take the flag down. It’s long past time. But let’s not fool ourselves. Racism and terrorism and all the other hate-filled ‘-isms’ that plague the species will never be eliminated by banning flags, burning books, limiting speech, or outlawing white sheets and pointy little hats.”
Do you agree or disagree with the Mike Rowe Facebook essay about the Confederate flag?
[Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images Entertainment]
