Mike Rowe comment on Darlington Raceway

Political "Discovery"?

A large number of area TV viewers watched the February 12 episode of "Dirty Jobs," the hit series airing on Discovery Channel. One of the segments featured Darlington County's own Campbell Coxe and his rice farming operation at Plumfield Plantation.

During the opening of the segment, host Mike Rowe said that the crew had originally traveled to the Pee Dee to engage in some cotton harvesting, but by the time they arrived, in December 2007, the fields were lamentably bare.

What Rowe failed to mention, however, was the show's intention to do a story at Darlington Raceway, featuring the ongoing track repaving project.

The omission might have gone undetected and Darlington residents may have never known the Raceway had been considered and dismissed by Discovery Channel if not for the fact that Rowe was the subject of an exhaustive "Fast Company" magazine interview while he was in town. One could surmise that Darlington Raceway may have fallen victim to Rowe's personal value system.

The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Today, on a loop through South Carolina, the last shoot of 2007 is a repaving of the NASCAR track at the nearby Darlington Speedway. It has an obvious synergistic appeal: NASCAR has a lot of fans, many of them holding down dirty jobs of their own. But Rowe is uncomfortable.

"Forget the fact that we're at war in an oil field, and these cars are burning fuel," Rowe muses when we talk about it. "This is a slickly packaged, multimillion-dollar corporate enterprise with millionaires driving 200 miles an hour on a curved track that regular people can't drive on."

He searches for his next thought. "Is that really the mission of the show?"

Still, saying no is hard. This segment was something that the suits on both sides were eager to make happen. But "for the show to work," ['Dirty Jobs' field producer Dave] Barsky explains later, "we need unique characters who are engaging in a process that we can follow."

If they're using a method or technology they've cobbled together themselves, so much the better.

"It's Discovery Channel. Our viewers have to learn something at the end of it." Barsky eventually decides that the repaving doesn't fit the bill. Rowe is relieved. "I was looking for an elegant way to kill it," he confesses.

(Read the entire interview at the following link: http://biz.yahoo.com/fastco/080121/fc1199710831614.html?.v=1)