Look how funny!
The one group of Americans our media is still very comfortable making fun of is poor, white, uneducated Southerners. Bonus laughs if you make them Bible thumpers!
Making fun of blacks is certainly not acceptable anymore. Big-chested blonde bimbos are no longer funny. Mexican sidekicks have run their course. It’s still okay to laugh at gays—but nowhere near as okay as it is to laugh at hayseed ignoramuses.
And now we have Bruno, an outrageously gay man making fun of hayseed ignoramuses! Can you spell surefire media frenzy?! Not if you’re from the South!
Isn’t it great that so many other people are uneducated, spiritually immature, racist homophobes?
Without them, who would the rest of us left at?
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
A friend of my fathers runs a non profit radio station about 60 miles outside of Denver, Co. In order to get an FCC license as a non-profit entity, he had to let anyone who lived in that county have a radio show.
A regular sunday contributor has a two hour program where his materials consist of
This month's issue of Guns and Ammo
The bible
A bottle of wild turkey
A couple of Beach Boys Albums.
Unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of hearing the program.
@C. Beyer…
I show open disdain for smokers. I figure if there is someone that lives in western society and is under 50 years old and consciously decided to start smoking; they have well demonstrated that they are not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Our state is now 'smoke-free' (which I enjoy immensely), but now we have to run a gauntlet of addicts when entering our restaurants and have butts strewn all over the sidewalk and gutter.
That is somewhat balanced by the immense respect I have for those that have successfully kicked their addiction…an addiction show to be at least as strong as cocaine or heroin.
just following comments
We probably all wander from the the most tolerant of roads on occasion. When it comes to the stereotypical 'poor, ignorant, southern, bible-thumper'; I find sadness that there is an environment and mode of thought that would leave people poor and ignorant.
We can't refute the demonstrable fact that overlaying maps of median income, educational level, academic performance, and level of religiosity….that they are effectively one-and-the-same. This map is generally described as the bible belt.
I suggest that we address the 'ignorance' portion of the equation and get the bible belt up to [at least] national standards in the sciences and math. The 'poor' part of the equation then can take care of itself.
And if they smoke cigarettes, too…..
I find the whole mess to be utterly distasteful. Not to mention that any mocking done out of genuine dislike instead of loving chiding is just… well, it does nothing but exaggerate differences in the worst of ways.
For an example, look at Prairie Home Companion's chiding of conservative small town life and compare it to, well, Bruno. One makes people say, "well we are a little silly sometimes aren't we?" The other makes them say things that it would be unseemly to write.
*sigh* there is a place for humor, as you well know. There is no place in my heart for humor that comes from hatred or anger.
Donald Miller makes a keen reference in one of his books to the "Lifeboat" theory. Regardless of our racial, economical, ideological, or political stratum, we all make judgments about whether someone else sitting on either side of us is as deserving of the same level of rights, freedoms, respect, dignity, etc. that we enjoy. Left solely to our own call, we put ourselves numero uno in the lifeboat. Yet left to a democratic vote from the rest of the group, we could easily find ourselves treading water as the rest of the group waves a convincingly sad farewell.
Every time I put on a set of those ugly discolored hillbilly Halloween teeth, I invariably say something like, "Howdy, there friend…welcome to WalMart!" I broadcast that I think the "real" me is a tad better than the character I portray. The embarrassing truth often comes to light, that the green gap-tooth fellow with the fifth-grade education, and attire from the NASCAR Collection at WalMart, has twice the humility and integrity that I have. So YES, thank God for the poor, stupid, Bible thumpers, because more than likely, they will help me to see what an intolerable bastard I am.
I'm surprised you put down the snakes long enough to type this blog post.
I'm kidding. It's just a joke.
Actually I think it's always been considered okay to laugh at stupid people (or people you can smugly feel confident are more stupid than you think you are) especially if they don't share your worldview. But to be clear here, just because many ignoramuses are Christian doesn't mean many Christians are ignoramuses.
You don't see a lot of humor directed at Christian theologians although did you hear the one about Teilhard de Chardin? Yeah me neither.