Depending on who you talk to, Bill Engvall has made a lucrative career of either delivering a much needed dose of traditional values to comedy, or shamelessly sucking up to society's lowest common denominator. Even more than Jeff Foxworthy, Engvall has positioned himself as the anti-Seinfeld; just a regular good ol' boy trying to make it through this crazy ol' world with pickup truck and cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon intact. He, however, is no throwback to #Hee Haw and #The Dukes of Hazzard. He represents a new breed of middle American populist: the financially stable, goateed Republican businessman who dresses casually in well pressed, late-'80s fashions and whose truck may just be a Toyota. In other words, Engvall is the perfect comedy equivalent of the Nashville new country "hat acts," with whom he shares a record label. These artists use the most basic sound byte-style trappings of a disappearing rural America, buff them to a sickening sheen, and serve them up to a public that, while still conservative, desperately wants to distance itself from the hick image of old. In this, he succeeds. On Now That's Awesome!, he performs before a large and enthusiastic crowd who is just waiting to cheer his every affirmation of their lifestyle. To Engvall's credit, he avoids using profanity to get easy laughs; instead he relies on a Budweiser commercial vision of sexual politics, one minute telling his audience how he'd love to find a naked Shania Twain waiting in his room, and the next admitting that men are dumb. ~ Pemberton Roach, Rovi

1		Now That's Awesome
2		When Did Shrapnel Become a Fashion Accessory?

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