Jonah’s correspondent hits the nail on the head with his nail gun. Isn’t the point that framing with nail guns is tonally incompatible with the horny-handed bucolic environmentally sensitive mood that the Habitat for Humanity TV featurettes are all about?

It’s the same in all those movies where a gal from the city goes to the country and finds a sensitive guy who works with his hands – Diane Keaton with Sam Shepard, Sandra Bullock with Harry Connick Jr. They wear plaid and drive pick-ups, but none of these Hollywood carpenters ever uses a nail gun, even though I’ll bet the crews building their pads at Malibu do.

Likewise, Al Gore when he was pretending to be a farmer boy back in the 2000 campaign: “I’ll tell you something else my father taught me,” he said. “He taught me how to clean out hog waste with a shovel and a hose. He taught me how to clear land with a double-bladed axe. He taught me how to plough a steep hillside with a team of mules.” A double-bladed axe is swell for clearing the Palm Court of the Fairfax Hotel, but with anything bigger you want something that’ll do the job properly.