For every racing-themed T-shirt or bumper sticker I spot, I see a hundred Nazi-inspired West Coast Choppers logos and many more from Orange County Choppers. I’ve finally realized who that sideways-hat guy was on those Coors billboards, too—Jesse James. Not the original Jesse James, who was a real outlaw, but a new Jesse James, who’s a pretend one. Choppers are everywhere.

Or not. Although I’ve spent the last two years living in SoCal and Texas—two hotbeds of chopper culture, such as it is—I see very few of them on the road. Where I see them is on reality TV. The Teutuls and their ilk have become cable TV bulwarks—er, sorry, make that “stalwarts.” When their dysfunctional family schtick became Discovery’s most-watched show, it spawned a host of wannabees like “Texas Hardtails.” Biker build-offs now compete with poker as cheap fodder for the 500-channel universe.

This is hardly new, of course. My friend Patrick Bodden was ranting about the Teutuls years ago. “How is it,” he asked me, “that those Neanderthals get an hour a week, but there’s no interest in a show about Kenny Roberts building a MotoGP bike?”

“Patrick,” I chided “if you’re arguing that American television is some kind of meritocracy where quality should prevail, we don’t have enough common ground to even hold a discussion.”

It’s taken me years to get around to writing about this phenomenon because I have trouble deciding where I sit vis-à-vis the Teutuls’ kind of publicity—besides on the fence. I think it was Al Capone (another genuine outlaw) who said, “I don’t care what they say about me, as long as they spell my name right.” That pretty much sums up the pro-Teutul stance among real motorcyclists. But there are many (i.e., Bodden) who’d prefer to see no motorcycles at all on television, rather than see these ones.

Admittedly, we (sport-oriented motorcyclists) have little in common with the chopper guys—although I do confess a morbid fascination about what they must be like to ride (the bikes, not the guys, though I guess Sandra Bullock could tell me). Bodden’s other criticism of the current generation of chopper builders—besides that they’re crude, arrogant boors—is that they’re just assemblers of components, and/or figurehead-marketer-CEOs who “manage” a staff right out of Central Casting. At least in the olden days (say, the ‘60s) chopper builders were actually fabricators.

Ironically, the first choppers were “bob jobs” that were all about making lardy 1950s Harleys and Indians look—and handle—more like post-war flat trackers, and more like the sportier British bikes that returning GIs had been so impressed with “over there.” Those were the days when the Hell’s Angels actually had an AMA sanction and promoted events. Seriously.

Whether they gradually became less and less rideable through a process of devolution or unintelligent design is a moot point; the fact is that the divergence of choppers from the sporting motorcycles that inspired them coincided with the divergence of plain riding from racing in American motorcycling. Sure the AMA nominally represents all motorcyclists, and sure there are events (I’m thinking Daytona) that draw both the chopper/cruiser crowd and the racing community—but even at those events, the two groups rarely actually mix.

When I was living in France, I frequently read about the French equivalent of the AMA, which is the FFMC. The French being, well, French, their organization’s name literally translates as “French Federation of Angry Bikers.” They are much more politically active than the AMA, and it seemed like every week there was a story in the paper about thousands of bikers gathered to protest something or other. The thing is, those gatherings brought together all kinds of riders. One that I saw protested the use of slippery paint on the roads. Among the protesters were trials riders, motocrossers, and track-only riders for whom road paint was not an issue. It reminded me that the Three Musketeers, of “One for all, and all for one” fame, were Francais.

Not us. Although it’s true that road racers are pretty avid cross-trainers and we’ll ride flat track, motocross, or even trials to work out, mostly, we’re very cliquey. Sport-bike riders scorn cruisers, modern-bike riders stare blankly at vintage bikes, and many Ducati riders are too self-involved to even talk to each other. If each sub-niche of American motorcycling thinks of itself as “motorcycling” and acts as if other bikers don’t exist, we can’t criticize non-riders for watching those chopper shows and thinking, “that’s motorcycling.” So I face a few more years of this kind of party conversation:

“Hi, I’m Mark.”

“I’m Fred. So, what do you do?”

“I write about motorcycles.”

“No kidding. Do you know the Teutuls?”

Argh.

Be that as it may, the big-picture criticism of this small-screen scourge has nothing to do with motorcycles. The real problem is that millions of Americans watch “American Chopper” and actually think, “This is real.” A few months back, Hollywood screenwriters were up in arms because the writers who work on such “reality” shows are paid far less than those who write for shows like “Lost” or even “Joey.”

What emerged as they threatened to strike was that among WGA members alone, there are at least 1,200 writers working on American reality shows. Clearly such a number is not needed to pen hosts’ introductions and voice-over narration.

The Writer’s Guild of America hates reality TV as much as I do, but they can only blame themselves: the 2001 strike by the WGA (which briefly stalled virtually all dramatic television production) sparked a sharp increase in reality shows because “documentaries” fell outside the union’s agreement with production companies and studios. But once producers and studios started airing more reality shows, they realized that even glitzy ones like “Survivor” or “American Idol” cost less per episode than a bare-bones sitcom. Once that reality set in, it was less about our appetite for such content and more about media moguls and bean counters shoving more and more of it down our throats. The good news is that there has been an audience gag reflex. Last year audience numbers started to fall, and this year, for the first time since 2001, the number of reality shows has dropped. Still, it’ll be a while before Discovery tells the Teutuls, “You’re fired!”