Of Rednecks and Such

In my youthful ignorance I thought the term "redneck" came from farming.  Farmers, working outdoors in the sun all day long, had necks that seemed to be permanently sunburned.

I was wrong.  I know--me!

The term "redneck" comes from long ago West Virginia coal mine wars between unions and owners.  The owners hired thugs from outside to come in and beat the striking miners into submission.  With so many folks involved and neither side wearing uniforms, how to tell who was fer ya and who agin?  So the combatants in one group began wearing red bandanas around their necks.  Anyone not wearing one was then fair game for a pickaxe handle upside his head.

The definition of "redneck" no longer applies to sides in labor disputes, nor is it limited to folks from West Virginia.  It's not even limited to the South.  "Redneck" is more descriptive of an attitude, rather than of a regional demographic.  Rednecks are literally everywhere, from Barrow to Key West, from Hawaii to Maine.  And though they walk among us, they are rather easy to spot.

Rednecks are generally loud in expression, vulgar in behavior, and inappropriate in dress.  Their "I don't give a damn" attitude is an effort, however subconscious, to mask their ignorance, certainly of manners and taste.  Regardless of destination or event, they wear their baseball caps backwards, their footwear with no socks, and their 29" pants buckled under their 56" waists which, with their too-small, often profanity-laced t-shirts riding up their backs, expose about three inches of butt-crack.

The favorite sports of rednecks most often involve the WWE, MMA, mud (wrestling or just driving trucks through it), animals (alligators, possum, snapping turtles, fish, snakes), wet t-shirt contests, beer-chugging, and essentially anything that will create a sloshing, spilling, smelly, barf-inducing mess.

Oh, I almsot forgot NASCAR.  "Those cars blowed up real good, huh, Sis?  Haw!  And you wanted to take the young'uns to Didney World!"

Jeff Houck, writing for the "Tampa Tribune, explored how fascination with rednecks has translated over the years to the small screen, beginning "when homespun Andy Griffith brought 'The Andy Griffith Show' to life...featuring hinmself as the common-sense sheriff of Mayberry, N.C.  America fell so in love with his aw-shucks manner, it spawned an entire genre of television highlighting the best and worst of what Hollywood perceived to be Southern life."

He believes its success led to "Beverly Hillbillies", "Gomer Pyle", and "The Dukes of Hazzard."

Having reached the bottom of the garbage bucket with "Hee Haw", we lifted it up and started to probe the grub-swarmed dregs underneath for even worse examples of human degradation and cultural decadence.  We found it, and its name is Honey Boo Boo.

Honey Boo Boo's "show" is a spin-off of "Toddlers & Tiaras", a TV series showcasing mothers living vicariously through their offspring by dressing them up as miniature beauty queens and entering them in pageants.  Honey Boo Boo's signature talent is compressing and manipulating the rolls of fat on her Pillsbury dough boy-gut, turning her abyss of a navel into a pie-hole from which she may emit verbiage she deems pithy.

No less a celebrity icon than Rosie O'Donnell has compared Honey Boo Boo to Shirley Temple.  "She has a presence and an intellect that goes way beyond her years," said Rosie.  You've got something there, Jabba.  She's seven years old and already evinces an IQ comparable to yours.

We've come a long way since those early days of TV.  We used to laugh with rednecks; now we just laugh at them.