Jesse James and That Dude from American Chopper Would Like to Have a Word with Slate

Yet another puzzling entry in the Perpetual Counter Intuitive – Off that is Slate:

Ah, the men's magazine reader. He's standing in line at Barnes & Noble with Men's Journal, Maxim, Esquire, and GQ stacked against his chest. Tonight, he's learning how to order a single-malt scotch in a way that sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Maybe reading up on chiseling those abs or seeing who's a hot pick to draft for his fantasy football league, capping it all by studying a graph detailing erogenous zones so he can "Pleasure Her Until She Can Stand It No More." Look out, ladies: It's that hail fellow who is oft-awkwardly met—the carbon-copy representative of American machismo in an age of nonstop chest-thumping and self-infatuation.

Really? That’s American Machismo? Isn’t that metrosexual?
Mr. Fleming goes on to state his thesis:

But you're also likely to stumble upon Top Gear, which the network airs constantly, both in new episodes and repeats. In principle, it's a car show, hosted by three middle-aged guys—Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond—who review the latest automobiles, test them out, and give you loads of details about vehicles you will never be able to afford. But Top Gear also offers a whole new slant on machismo, at least as we know it in the States.

So what does this more authentic British machismo entail?

Clarkson, May, and Hammond act as emcees, with a car or two on the soundstage. Most of the action takes place in various film clips—which document the trio's races and assorted madcap schemes. A race between a $1.4 million Bugatti Veyron,* for example, over a mile of track, and a Royal Air Force jet going a mile into the air and then exploding downward to overtake its four-wheel challenger. Or a soccer match with a giant balloon ball getting bashed about by cheap city cars to test their handling abilities.

Okay. Cars and racing and bashing things. Got it. But what else?

These pyrotechnics provide the show's obvious hook, but the real appeal is seeing how these guys tear into each other. Good naturedly. With, dare I say it, love. Ruthless love, but love, still. It's not scripted. Way too much overlapping dialogue for that, and I can't really imagine that this trio would sit down, Mercury Theatre-style, for endless rehearsals. It's all ad-libbed and occasionally surreal.

Unscripted, good-natured, ruthless mockery. How nouveau!
So you can see how different British machismo is from American machismo. Because in America, we would play football with our cars, not soccer.
But what REALLY is the difference, Mr. Fleming…come on, out with it!

The thing about British machismo, as you see it in Top Gear, is how understated it is. And, in being understated, it becomes like that person who doesn't talk with their hands all flailing about, but rather the one who knows exactly what five words to put into a given conversation and, boom, just nails them, so that everyone else stops what they're doing and starts to think. Or laugh. Loudly.

Oh, so real machismo = pithy + hands at sides. I’m so glad I read this article.
Oh, and by the way, the British have NEVER been accused of being understated before, so a big Plus One to you, Mr. Fleming.

You would think in an article about a TV show featuring British men and cars, the author would have picked as a point of comparison, I don’t know, a TV show about American men and cars, maybe—rather than someone he made up while waiting in line at the bookstore.

P.S. I watched Top Gear once and it seemed liked dumb fun.