I’m not usually a huge reader of Motorcyclist, but MotorMilt decided to subscribe to it awhile back and lately I’ve begun flipping through the pages once I’ve read through Cycle World and Sportbike a couple of times. While perusing this month’s issue two interesting bits caught my eye. First Mark Gardiner of One Man’s Island fame has been named the new Senior Editor. In this month’s megaphone editorial one the last page he introduces himself to the Motorcyclist readership and proclaims that he will;
This is my promise: I will never dumb a story down. I write from direct experience; I will give you my opinion, but I will never tell you want to think. I will admit my mistakes. This is certain: I love motorcycles as much as you do.
As some of you may or may not remember I was not a huge fan of certain aspects of One Man’s Island. (Here’s a link to my review of it). But I certainly did appreciate and applaud Mark on his personal quest to try and compete in the race and now in his newest endeavor as Senior Editor of Motorcyclist. God knows what they pay people like him to write for the mag, but I can’t image a better gig. I’m not even sure how you can call it work… So congrats to Mark!
The other item that caught my eye was Patrick Bodden’s editorial column “Déjà View” - Apparently Bodden wrote a scathing column in May about his feelings toward how motorcycling is portrayed on television by the likes of Jesse James and the Teutul family. I haven’t seen the original column and Motorcyclist’s website offers no way to view it, but given his rebuttal to all the email he seemingly has received, I imagine that it wasn’t the most favorable review of the afore mentioned shows. In this month’s article he goes on to say that he basically feels that shows like these give all motorcyclists a bad name because they make members of the American public typecast anyone who rides a bike into the off-center reality of these chopper shows. He later adds that what he’s seeking isn’t to condemn these shows, but rather some sort of editorial constraint on the part of the producers of the series.
Now I’m not sure you can universally cry foul at shows like ‘Motorcycle Mania’, ‘Biker Build Off’ and ‘American Chopper’ for “debasing motorcycling” on the television landscape. Evil Kinevil and his kid have been doing that for quite a long time all by themselves every time one of them jumped over half of the Vegas Strip. I’m also not sure that you can knock these shows for somehow persuading the American public that everyone who rides acts as out of control as this particular group of characters. If one had to pick a worse blow to the motorcycling community image it’s probably Brando in ‘The Wild One’. I would tend to think that most American’s would at least intrinsically understand that these shows are staged reality shows and not the real thing. I highly doubt that Paul Sr. spends everyday yelling at Paul Jr. when the cameras aren’t rolling. They’re to busy counting all the cash coming in for their weekly half hour commercial.
What Bodden missed in my estimation is not the public perception of riders, but rather how they view riding because of shows like these. Not once have I seen anyone say, ‘hey wait a sec, you just can’t jump on a bike without any idea of what you’re doing’ or better yet any verbalize that instead of that tank top and shorts, something exists called protective gear. Every time I see Paul Sr. riding through up state New York in a tank top I just shake my head. You want to talk about images people are picking up here? That’s it.
Last night I actually caught an episode where Paul Jr. was test riding a bike in the dark. Senior comes on camera and says, ‘oh it’s dangerous at night up here because of all the deer’. Did anyone take any steps to avoid this danger? Nope.
In my mind every person in each one of these shows is guilty of two things. First they act like there’s no skill involved in riding and secondly they don’t even pretend to care about safety. That’s a crime because some portion of the public is watching these shows and thinking to themselves about their lost youth and subsequently heading out the door to their local dealership in order to catch up. And I guarantee you not one person they run into stops to point out the fact that they don’t have a clue what they’re doing.
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