"House Hunters" = The Real America

We are addicted to HGTV’s show House Hunters. We started watching HGTV after we bought the house, and House Hunters quickly became our favorite show. If you don’t know it, it’s a reality show where people are shown three different houses and they have to buy one by the end of the episode.

You learn about their lives, why they are moving, what they are looking for in a new home and what their budget is. It is a lot of fun, and extremely addictive. We have 15 episodes in our DVR right now, and we tape four a day (we get a lot of repeats).

The best part, of course, is when the buyers must make their selection. We find ourselves yelling at the TV, “number one, number one…are they nuts???” And, “well, number two did have the hardwood floors she wanted, but not the finished basement he was hoping for. They should go with number three.” Inevitably, people make their choices based on budget, but sometimes there are surprises and decisions are made based on location, yard size, dog-friendly condos, etc. These are the most satisfying episodes.

One of the things we love about the show is its diversity of buyers and locations: House Hunters features married couples, gay couples, single-moms, single-dads, young people, old people, white people, black people, Asian people, Latinos…pretty much everyone. Budgets range from $100,000 to $2,000,000. And the locations are from all corners of the US: from New York to Portland, from the deep south to the Rockies, from a hippie community in Sante Fe to the oil-rich suburbs of Dallas.

Recently we noticed something: all of the buyers on the show want the same thing (in addition to more closet space): they want to raise their kids, wake up next to someone they love, carve out a little piece of the world for themselves and maybe leave a little something behind for those who come next.

From the gay couple in Boston buying their first home together with their two dogs and two cats to the military family in North Carolina looking for that perfect three-bedroom house in anticipation of new addition to their family, everyone is pretty much the same. And they all say the same things.

Which got me thinking. This country is much more alike than the politicians and media would have us believe. I know it’s a popular thing to say right now, but this really is a Purple nation. I think our elected representatives and media organizations have done us all a great disservice over the past 16 years. By trying to retrofit us all into a “red” or a “blue” state of mind they have distracted us from what we should really be focusing on.

While we have spent the last 16 years debating frivolous ideas from the fringes of both political parties, we have not been able to focus on what really matters: our families, our neighbors and our communities.

House Hunters gets to the core of what really matters in life. It epitomizes our collective hopes, dreams and fears. And it is one of the best examples of what it means to be from the United States of America.

--Posted by Evan