Woodworking, local government budget cuts and all you can eat breakfasts: Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson is a man of simple pleasures. Or so you thought.
Nick Offerman, the man behind Swanson’s moustache says there’s more to the character than quotes about manliness. (For the record, our favourite is: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Don’t teach a man how to fish and you feed yourself. He’s a grown man. Fishing’s not that hard.”)
Speaking to AV club, Offerman said: “Ron Swanson, because of his simple rules for living, became a lot of peoples’ icon for their own aspirations of simple living. And so anybody from meat eaters to scotch drinkers to gun wielders to libertarians all hold Ron up as their champion, but he was much more complex than that.
“He was a very outspoken feminist. He was a man of few words and people mistook that for a man of few colours.”
The 46-year-old actor also said he was drawn to how Pawnee’s worst governmental employee championed of women’s rights.
“The thing that I appreciated the most about Ron and the way he was written by our brilliant writers—it wasn’t my idea—was that they made him a great supporter and celebrator of women,” Offerman continued.
“Traditionally, that character is more like Al Bundy or Archie Bunker, where they’re much more apt to be misogynists or, at best, dismissive of women. Ron was completely fair.
“Whoever had the skills or the passion or the decency, whether it was a man or a woman, he drew no line. He didn’t care about sex or race. All he cared about was sincerity and hard work and character.”
So there you have it. Ron wasn’t just a single-minded, bacon-driven, bullion-hiding man of men, but the embodiment of acceptance. Unless you’re a vegetarian. Never be a vegetarian if Ron Swanson's around.
