You Know You Are a Redneck

You know you are a redneck...If Andrea Mitchell calls you one. That is exactly what she recently called the people of southwest Virginia. Media Bistro is reporting that:

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell apologized today for calling southwest Virginia, "real redneck" country. Toward the end of her 1pm ET hour, she said, "I owe an apology to the good people of Bristol, Virginia for something stupid that I said."

The editor of the Bristol Herald Courier (in Bristol, Virginia), J. Todd Foster, wrote a column published yesterday in response to the comment.

"I'm a redneck. But then again, so is every one of you reading this column. Or so says Andrea Mitchell of NBC News," writes Foster.

Mitchell made the comment last Thursday as she referred to "interesting images," of Sen. Barack Obama appearing with Sen. Mark Warner in southwest Virginia. "This is real redneck, sort of...um, bordering on Appalachia country," she said. "This is not the northern Virginia, sort of, high tech corridor. These are not voters he would logically be gravitating to." Click here for the YouTube clip.

"The last bastion of acceptable, politically incorrect stereotyping is making fun of Southerners," writes Foster. "And we're damned tired of it."

Foster says that this is the last "acceptable" arena of stereotyping, and he is right. But not for every group out there. It seems that only the "mainstream" media and those liberals who have either written such voters off as unreachable or they actually believe they "take care" of this constituency and should have the right to call them whatever they desire. Of course comedians with no ostensible political agendas also make a living off of "rednecks."

Conservatives, on the other hand, typically can't take such pot shops without suffering from charges of elitism that could bring down political careers. The bottom line -- be it conservatives or liberals -- calling people names is bad form. It is something that we should have out grown by middle school. It is a demonstration of immaturity and a very limited vocabulary. It may be time to get more manners or simply go back to school.

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Kevin Price is Host of the Houston Business Show (M-F at 11 AM on CNN 650) and Publisher of the Houston Business Review. Hear the show live and online at HoustonBusinessShow.com. Visit the archive of past shows here.