We all know that there are Mason Dixon lines everywhere, and that there are rednecks everywhere. Anyone who has been to Louisiana or thereabouts knows that it’s lousy with rednecks and that they do all kinds of things: shootin’ things, hunting, fishing, four-wheeling, making moonshine, but also wearing Tommy Hilfiger and Abercrombie and playing golf. Is it really a surprise to see pictures of these Dick Dynasty dudes looking like douchebags 15 years ago? The parodic, beard-touting Central Casting hillbillies from Louisiana, are just that, a parody. I’m sure much of the redneck population in the South consists of Nike shoes wearing, fad-sporting, frosted tips wearing d-bags driving big lifted diesel trucks, littering, and spouting racist shit every now and then.
Because they’re wearing linen, or sweater vests, doesn’t mean they’re good guys (example: Rick Santorum). But while their cultural and political beliefs may be consistent with being “rednecks”, that alone was not enough to get them a reality teevee show. They had to be repackaged as real salt of the earth, down home “true” Amurikkkans, unsullied by East Coast relativism and West Coast hedonism, who could never be mistaken for effete, blue state, haute-bourgeois intelligentsia. A bunch of clean cut yuppie d-bags spouting faux Christian homilies and homophobia is the Faux Newscasters gig.
Big money making idea for me: take a well-educated, rich black family, put them in costumes and pretend they’re “from the hood.”