“Never shut up”: Mike Rowe takes on his critics in viral Facebook post

October 28, 2013

Writer

Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs received a good deal of criticism over the weekend following his appearance on last Wednesday’s Glenn Beck Program. Never one to stand by quietly, Mike responded to one of his most ardent critics, Shannon K. Walsh, with a candid and thoughtful Facebook post defending his decision to appear on the show.

Image: Facebook.com/TheRealMikeRowe

Mike responded to Shannon with the following:

Well, hi there, Shannon – and a pleasant good morning to you too!

If you want a detailed answer to your question, please take a moment to read my earlier reply to Bob Reidel, another crestfallen soul who couldn’t reconcile my association with a TV host that he personally despised. As you read it (out loud, if possible, and in a public place), kindly replace the words “Bob Reidel” with “Shannon K. Walsh,” and “Bill Maher” with “Glenn Beck.” But prepare yourself – you might be forced to conclude that my true objective here has little to do with winning or losing your approval.As for your personal characterization of Glenn Beck, I can only assume you have information not available to me. In my time with him, I saw nothing “horrible, psychotic, hateful, or nasty.” I smelled no burning sulphur, no smoldering brimstone, and saw no sign of cloven hooves.To the contrary, I found a very passionate guy who employs about 300 people, works his butt off, and puts his money where his mouth is. Do we agree on everything? Of course not. Am I “disappointed” by that fact? Not at all. The real question, Shannon, is … why are you?

To be clear, I’m not here to tell you what to think or whom to hate. Like everyone else, you’re free to pick your devils, choose your angels, and attach the horns and halos accordingly.

But the guts of your question – even without all the name-calling and acrimony – reveal the essence of what’s broken in our country. You want to know “how I can associate” with someone you don’t like? The short answer is, how can I not? How are we ever going to accomplish anything in this incredibly divisive time if we associate only with people that we don’t disagree with?

Mike

On radio this morning, Mike called in to speak further on the topic. He explained that even though he made his appearance on Glenn’s show last Wednesday, he was unaware of the fervent social media response to the interview because he has been on the road for the last several weeks promoting the mikeroweWORKS Foundation.

“Well, so I've been on the road for a couple of weeks promoting this scholarship program, as you know, stopped by your studio in Texas,” Mike said. “So I wrote a little post about my adventure in Dallas, and I thank you for your generosity and I basically go to bed for a couple of days because I've just been up forever, and Sunday morning I wake up and there's just, I mean, thousands of comments, many very kind, but I don't know if you knew this, Glenn, but there are people out there who, they just don't like you a lot.”

“You apparently are some kind of a lightning rod,” Mike said laughing. “I can't put my finger on it but you apparently have annoyed literally dozens of people.”

There were dozens of comments on Mike’s Facebook page that both praised and chastised his decision to sit down for an interview with Glenn, but, as Mike described, one remark in particular “just chapped my butt.”

After firing off his candid response, Mike awoke the next morning to find he had 35,000 new ‘likes’ on Facebook and thousands of comments supporting what he had written.

“Your fans were just very, very cool. Many of them went to my website and purchased that poster we talked about for ‘Work smart and hard,’” Mike said. “And long story short, you know, it was a little ugly and a little mean, but in the end we wound up having the conversation all over again that I wanted to have with you and did have in Dallas. So if there's a moral to the story, I suppose it's just never shut up.”

“Amen,” Glenn said.

Just as they did during his appearance last week, Glenn and Mike discussed the importance of work ethic and education alternatives that Mike’s foundation and scholarship program seeks to promote.

“You were on the set and we had you on because I wanted to make sure that people knew that you're not against universities,” Glenn said. “You are for work. You are for training people to do work… they can find themselves passionate about.”

“If you step back and you look at the scholarship money that's typically available today, it's almost always attached to four different things,” Mike explained. “There's the academic scholarship, which everybody understands… There's the athletic scholarship, which everybody understands – if you can hit a three-point jump shot, we've got all money in the world for you. There are the talent-based scholarships… If you can sing or paint or do something interesting, you know, schools will pay for you to come there. And, of course, there are need-based scholarships, which are important for many. And that's all fine, but in all of that, who's rewarding work ethic?”

“So the idea was for work ethic scholarships, the idea was to look for those jobs not that are waiting to be created but that currently exist right now – the 3 million or so jobs that are in the skills gap – and say, look, what if we specifically launch a program that tries to encourage the behavior we want to have,” he continued. “What if we offer to train kids for these specific types of jobs and specifically look for those kids who are willing to demonstrate a work ethic that we want to encourage. So mikewoweWORKS scholarships became work ethic scholarships. We started looking for a series of trade schools that did excellent work. We found a few.”

Ultimately, the message of the mikeroweWORKS Foundation is simple: Hard work, skilled labor, alternative education, invention, and entrepreneurship. “These things need a PR campaign,” Mike said. “It's that simple. Every other cause in the world has a PR campaign. So that's our focus.”

“I appreciate your honesty. I appreciate your appearance on the program. I appreciate you not necessarily standing up for my point of view but standing up for common sense and writing what I think was something that is well worth reading,” Glenn said. “And if you would like to donate, if you would like to stand with him, here's a guy who is actually trying to do good. He actually has a solution, and I think we should stand with him at mikeroweWORKS.com.”

Glenn had another message for the audience: “Friend him. Go right now. Show him what this audience can do. Go friend him on Facebook.”

RADIO

Will Trump swap Americans for Russian spies for ‘questioning’ by Putin? Bill Browder doubts it

'On the Basis of Sex': Notorious RBG trailer will make your head explode

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

On the Basis of Sex. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you probably didn't expect those five words to come out of me this morning. No, that's not my version of a clickbait headline to get you to pay attention — although that probably just happened — but this is the title to the new movie based on the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Progressives and liberals have been hovering over YouTube like a pack of rabid wolves, anxiously awaiting the first trailer to drop. And — three days — they got their wish. Something in the last few seconds caught my ear. Watch:

Now my first thought after hearing that went something like this: The word "freedom" is literally the fifth frigging word in the first sentence of the First Amendment. It shows up for the second time just two sentences later. How do you screw that up? I always assumed that liberal Hollywood movie makers had never really read the Constitution, but this is just sad.

But my second thought was that maybe they don't consider the Bill of Rights actually part of the Constitution. However, according to the National Constitution Center, the Bill of Rights officially became part of the Constitution — not a separate document — when it was ratified in 1791. This is rather easy to fact check, so there's really no excuse here.

But then I had another thought. Either liberal Hollywood forgot that the Constitution changed in 1791, or they actually prefer the vaguer pre-1791 version of the Constitution where God-given rights can be excluded if the state so pleases. Think about it. The Bill of Rights is the single greatest roadblock to the radical Left's "progress." Do you hate the fact that private gun ownership encourages self reliance and personal freedom? Do you also hate the fact that dissenting views, opinions and speech can't be silenced and crushed? Then the Bill of Rights is a clear and present danger to your agenda. It's enemy number one.

The new Left that is radically moving toward the extreme absolutely abhors the year 1791.

You see, the new Left that is radically moving further toward the extreme absolutely abhors the year 1791. They wish it never happened. The Bill of Rights is a constant reminder that some FREEDOMS can't be given by the government, they're granted by GOD. And that thought — you being aware of that — scares the hell out of them.

Now, it's possible I thought too much into this. It's also possible the screen writer made a simple mistake and thought Ruth Bader Ginsburg was actually born before 1791, figuring it would be a nice tip of the hat to her longevity. I can actually see how you could make that mistake. But it's also possible that this is a sign of the times we live in.

The Bill of Rights is under attack, maybe more now than ever. It's never been more important to let the Constitution of 1791 be our guide, true north and lighthouse.

UPDATE: Here's how the discussion went on radio. Watch the video below.

How did this slip by?

The Left has been foaming at the mouth waiting for this movie to drop and when the trailer finally hit the interwebs, it ended with an embarrassing factual error about the Constitution.

What will happen when the Titan kneels?

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

You can tell that the NFL season is approaching because you can hear the whining from highly-paid athletes as they prepare their kneepads for some kneeling.

In May, the NFL instated a policy that penalizes players who take a knee during the national anthem.

"A club will be fined by the League if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem," the statement said. "The Commissioner will impose appropriate discipline on league personnel who do not stand and show respect for the flag and the Anthem."

Tennessee Titan's defensive end Jurrell Casey has decided that he will continue his whining and kneeling.

"I'm going to take my fine," Casey said in an interview. "It is what it is, I ain't going to let them stop me from doing what I want to do. If they want to have these battles between players and organizations, this is the way it's going to be."

Maybe Casey can find work elsewhere. I hear that Universities love to hire self-righteous ranting lunatics.

He added that "At the end of the day, we got to do a job, but I will continue to use my platform to keep on speaking up."

Yes, he does have a job to do. And that job is playing football. His bosses have made it clear that political activism is not part of the job. Who knows, maybe Casey can find work elsewhere. I hear that Universities love to hire self-righteous ranting lunatics. There's also Starbucks. They need a self-righteous CEO.

BUCKLE UP: Glenn Beck explains 7 scandals that make up the Russia connection

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

All anyone can talk about right now is Russia and collusion, and for good reason. Special Counsel Robert Mueller just indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for cyber attacks and the hacking of cyber-systems in energy, nuclear, water, and manufacturing sectors which you can read about here.

The Trump-Russia scandal, in a word, is maniacal. There are many moving parts that are very hard to solve — or simply don't want to be solved. All of these are "mysteries wrapped in an enigma," asserted Glenn on Wednesday's episode of "The Glenn Beck Radio Program."

From the curious case of Imran Awan to the hacking of DNC servers to "Russian" meddling in elections via social media, all of these deserve scrutiny.

On today's episode, Glenn examined seven scandals that make up the Russia connection:

Russian operatives who used social media to divide Americans during the 2016 election.
The meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
The Fusion GPS Dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Voter fraud in Illinois.
Hillary Clinton's emails.
Imran Awan. Awan was an IT staffer for Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives who was part of a federal investigation and was arrested on bank fraud charges.
Lastly, the 2016 DNC email leaks.

For the entire explanation, tune into the podcast below:

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

There are three tribes when it comes to Trump and Russia: Which tribe do you belong to?

When it comes to Donald Trump, Glenn Beck argues that there are three tribes that categorize the way people examine him regarding his foreign and domestic policy.

Tribe one is the #Resistance. They are the ones who believe that everything President Trump does is bad. They're also the ones who call for impeachment and who label President Trump a "treasonous traitor" even before a summit with a foreign leader takes place.

Those, according to Glenn's analysis, include groups like Think Progress, who published an article suggesting that women's rights would be rolled back if the President's SCOTUS nominee is confirmed by the Senate. This tribe also includes progressive talking heads and far Left publications and politicians like The New York Times and Hillary Clinton.

Tribe two are those who defend the President and his actions at all costs. He can do no wrong. These are the people who deny the President's mistakes. They believe the President is a master chess player and everyone else is a pawn in Trump's game.

Both who operate in tribes one and two maintain a "win at all costs" mentality. They don't care what happens as long as their side wins. Glenn calls this a "cult of personality madness."

Tribe three are those who are "free thinkers." These people question the President with boldness and aim for intellectual honesty when evaluating the President's policies and behavior.

Glenn believes tribe one and tribe two are smaller than tribe three.

So, what do all these tribes have to do with Trump and the Russians? Find out in the clip below.

Where do you fall when it comes to Trump and Russia?

When it comes to Donald Trump, Glenn argues that there are three tribes that categorize the way people examine him regarding his foreign and domestic policy.