Brace yourself. A tidal wave of redneck jokes is on the horizon.
How could it be otherwise, given last week’s report that a NASCAR team has offered Barak Obama a sponsorship deal?
Forget the fact that NASCAR sanctions races all around the country, from Miami and Las Vegas to New Hampshire and Michigan.
It also sanctions races at tracks all over the South – and that, coupled with the sport’s historic ties to Appalachian moonshiners and mountain men, has led to an entrenched stereotype in which NASCAR fans are dumb, white and Southern.
Their wives and girlfriends have big hair, often overly bleached or dyed a peculiar shade of red.
Their children say “I seen” and “I taken” and call their grandparents Paw-Paw and Maw-Maw.
Their cars are festooned with Confederate flags and bumper stickers that feature such witticisms as “They’ll take away my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers” and “We don’t care how you did it up North.”
And their dogs – oh, their dogs. They’re either mangy old curs with open sores and perpetually bared teeth, or pit bulls that alternate between sleeping with and mauling the children.
The truth, of course, is that NASCAR is a multibillion-dollar industry. Its popularity demonstrably transcends race, gender, geography and IQ.
But Obama is black; and, in the stereotype, the fans – all of them – are rednecks.
Obama finished at Harvard. NASCAR fans finished the eighth grade.
It’s a joke writer’s dream.
The only thing that’ll keep Jeff Foxworthy from putting together a whole show on it would be if the negotiations were to fall through.
Which they might. Sports Illustrated broke the story last week, saying the Obama campaign was discussing the idea with NASCAR’s BAM Racing team.
But an Obama spokeswoman would tell The Associated Press only that “There are no such agreements in place at this time.”
Therefore, until the deal solidifies or collapses, it’s open season on Southerners. Think “Dukes of Hazzard” and “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
Think Daisy Duke in her low-cut tops and high-cut shorts.
Think Granny in her rocking chair atop the family jalopy.
“The Dukes of Hazzard” was an idiotic show that played to every conceivable Southern stereotype, from the requisite bumbling sheriff in a white linen suit to the fast-driving Duke boys.
I rather liked “The Beverly Hillbillies,” on the other hand, because even as a kid I somehow understood that the writers and actors weren’t just poking fun at Southerners.
They also were poking fun at the people who accepted the stereotypes.
Jokes about Southerners were safe then, and they’re safe now.
God help you these days if you make a joke in public about blacks, blue-collar whites, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics or assorted other racial, ethnic or religious groups. But you can still laugh at Southerners.
Heck, we laugh at ourselves, telling “Bubba” jokes and pretending to be “just country folks.”
We embrace Foxworthy’s shtick and sometimes put a little extra syrup in our drawl, just for effect.
The thing is, though, we know we’re kidding when we yuk it up about Southern stereotypes.
It’s those other jokesters we’re not always so sure about.
Frances Coleman is editorial page editor of The Press-Register of Mobile, Ala. E-mail: fcoleman@press-register.com.
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