In September, I had a post on Big Hollywood that looked at the Discovery Channel’s top–rated “Sons of Guns” television program. The show, which airs at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday nights, features the owner of Red Jacket Firearms, Will Hayden. “Guns” is a non-stop pro-America, pro-gun, pro-U.S. military extravaganza.

Regardless of the weapon they’re building on a particular episode, Hayden is always the same: he’s in charge, he’s in love with his family and his country, and he’s bound and determined to pay homage to the “our boys” fighting overseas.

His love for the military was front and center when he and I spoke recently:

AWR: As I’ve watched “Sons of Guns,” the episode that really sticks with me is the one where you hosted the World War II veterans. What was it like to be around them and to spend time with them on that particular show?

Will: Have you ever read a book that gives an account of an incredible action or deed, be it in battle or civilian life, and it just really moves you, and you catch yourself trying to imagine the kind of men who were capable of such things?

AWR: Yes

Will: Okay. Well, when those veterans visited I knew I was sitting there having coffee with the men who are capable of such things. I was with the men we often read about: I was with heroes.

It’s humbling. You are looking those men in the eyes and talking to them, and they are the men who have done the deeds of which poems are made. It’s an incredible thing.

AWR: Will, when I’ve talked to veterans like that, and thanked them for the things they did, to a man they’ve all responded by saying, “I didn’t do anything special, I just did my duty.” Did you have a similar experience with the gentlemen who visited your show?

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Today’s wave of reality docu-series seems to be finding plenty of compelling stories in occupations that you’ll probably never see in a TV drama. Most of these careers don’t require an expensive college education, but they may ask you to risk a lot more than a few brain cells at a kegger.

If you’re wondering what to do for a living, or know someone who is, they might find inspiration in some of the shows below, which represent just a slice of the ways Americans pay the bills.

“Gold Rush” – Season two of this Discovery Channel show premieres Oct. 28 (it was called “Gold Rush: Alaska” in season one), again following the Oregon father-and-son team of Jack and Todd Hoffman as they take a second swing at gold mining in Alaska. They reassemble in season two, adding to their team of down-on-their-luck and/or adventurous miners for a return to remote Porcupine Creek. Once there, they’ll see if they can realize their American dream of pulling wealth out of the ground with muscle, determination and a lot of heavy equipment. I’ve seen a couple of episodes, and it’s not an easy ride for the Hoffmans, but to strike big, one has to take big risks, and they do.

“American Guns” – The Wyatts of Colorado are the focus of this Discovery series which premiered Oct. 10. Rich Wyatt and wife Rene own Gunsmoke, a family-run firearms facility just outside of Denver, where they buy, sell and trade all manner of guns. And if they don’t carry just what you want, their gunsmiths can make it for you. They also test-fire everything that goes out their doors. (more…)

When The Learning Channel (TLC) carried “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” the premiere drew record ratings. Salt-of-the-earth citizens in flyover country loved it, as they always love pro-American programming, and they turned off ABC, CBS, and NBC to turn on TLC and watch Palin talk about the greatness of America as seen from a mountain-top or a fishery or a hunting camp in Alaska.

In a similar vein, those folks in flyover country now have another good reason to turn off ABC, CBS, and NBC – that reason is “Sons of Guns,” a ratings hit on the Discovery Channel. And to watch this show is to watch pride in America unfolding in episode after episode.

The show follows the business of Red Jacket Firearms in Baton Rouge, LA. Owned by Will Hayden, Red Jacket repairs, as well as sells, firearms (and firearm accessories). They also build guns when Will sees a need for a weapon that no one else has made (like an AK-47 sniper rifle). And it’s hard to find an episode where some positive mention isn’t made of our troops overseas: or as Will call them, “our boys that are serving overseas.”

For example, in the episode where Will decided to get his crew working on the world’s first AK-47 sniper rifle, he justified all the headaches of creating such a weapon by reminding himself that the gun would help our troops: “It’s definitely not the money that we’re throwing our hat in the ring for. These will be going out to small units of our boys that are serving overseas. (And) that changes the game enough for me to want to do it.”

For any of you not familiar with AK-47’s or sniper rifles, the AK-47 is famous for its flawless semi-auto action, but it is infamous for its lack of accuracy. On the other hand, a sniper rifle is famous for its accuracy but infamous for the difficulty of getting off a timely second shot in certain situations. Will knew that combining the best of both guns would create a new weapon that might very well change everything  for “our boys that are serving overseas.”

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Media mogul Oprah Winfrey announced that once again, she is “happy to be of service to Obama in 2012,” which proves that some people just don’t learn, and Oprah is one of those people. It also means that, regardless of the extent of the damage Obama has inflicted on employment, the economy, and the future success of the American people, the same voters affected by the President’s disastrous first term may very likely vote for him again.

All around, Obama’s negative influence is so severe that even gazillionaire Oprah Winfrey has not been immune to the “Obama Effect,” where people who were working in 2008 are either no longer employed or are concerned about what effect his continued presidency may have on job security.

Since Obama won the Democrat presidential nomination in June 2008, the employment rate has soared from 5.8% to as high as 9.8%. The President’s policies are so toxic to the workforce that a 31-year-old Ohio breakfast restaurant he touted as an “indirect beneficiary of the government’s Chrysler bailout” closed after he made a passing mention of the establishment’s success in a speech.  One word from Obama and Chet’s omelet machine began collecting dust. (more…)

Farewell Phil Harris.

Tonight the Discovery Channel will air a two-hour special dedicated to the life and times of Cornelia Marie Captain Phil Harris who died of a stroke earlier this year.

Harris was hard living and hard charging. He was overweight, he chain smoked by his own admission he did “every drug you could imagine.” He died at age 53 after suffering a massive stroke while off-loading his boat at St. Paul Harbor in the Bering Sea. They tried to save him with surgery, but it was not to be.

Earlier this season Captain Phil predicted his fate, “I’m not gonna be here for very much longer, that’s a fact, I’m not.”

Other than gender and age, I have little in common with Phil Harris. I grew up in the comfortable suburbs of Los Angeles where my biggest concern was whether the Dodgers would win the Pennant, not how to crush through an ice sheet 4 feet thick to drop pots into the frozen deep of the North Pacific in the hopes that a few opilio crab would wander into the trap. Oh, and if they didn’t then you may not eat for the next few months until the king crab season. (more…)

Ah, August.

Hot.  Muggy.  Sluggish. School approaches; summer vacations are over or nearly so. The new television season is weeks away. And even in a good movie year  – which 2009 has decidedly not been – all the best blockbusters have come and gone by now.

What to do?  You could watch that stupid cat video on YouTube for the 1,000th time, or…you could watch a surfer get a major bite down from a giant man-eating fish.  Sweet!

Yes friends, The Discovery Channel has the answer for our late-summer, entertainment withdrawal doldrums. For twenty-two years now, Discovery has devoted an entire week of August or July programming to real life sea monsters: They called it Shark Week, and lo, it was good.

Shark Week is always fun, but this year’s installment has been especially tasty. ”Blood In The Water” kicked it off, a terrific two-hour documentary about the real-life happenings that inspired Peter Benchley’s Jaws – the 1916 New Jersey shark massacre. (more…)

Every day it seems as though more and more Americans have been programmed to automatically resent the success of others. Much of this has to do with how effective Democrats and their allies in the media, academia and Hollywood have been at demonizing the wealthy, especially those in corporate America. Whether it’s Wal-Mart, pharmaceutical companies, oil, timber or high finance, these industries who have done so much to improve our way of life have, at various times, been singled out for the worst kind of character assassination.

And it’s worked, but when a corrupted pop culture is your only reference point, how could it not?

This is what makes the Discovery Channel’s new show “Pitchmen,” so special and worth a look. Not only is it entertaining and well produced, but it’s also the rare celebration of the American entrepreneurial spirit combined with the added bonus of doing one of my favorite things: “Pitchmen” takes you into a universe you know nothing about - direct response marketing – and shows you how the gears turn.

‘Hi! Billy Mays here…” (more…)

While the Left may choose to lump those who take issue with Hollywood’s insidious political messages into one conveniently broad, loud, and demanding category, anyone who reads Big Hollywood should realize instantly that such thinking is simplistic and even foolish. (Yes, Hollywood, we are legion, but we are not collectively twisted up by the same demon — no wonder you’re confused).

As Roald Dahl famously put it, “We have so much to do, and so little time. Strike that, reverse it.” Indeed, the genuine problems with programming are probably simpler to address than we make them out to be, and we do in fact have time to think about, discuss, and execute a more perfect product. (more…)