Zell Miller posted this. And now you see why I react when I see folks using the word hillbilly. To me a hillbily is the most honest and forthright person on the planet. A man of honor.
BT
Hillbilly!
Stereotyping, That Is
Mr. Moonves, call off your hillbilly hunt.

BY ZELL MILLER
Thursday, February 27, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
CBS Television is planning "a hillbilly reality show." I'd like to say a few words about that as a senator who happens to be a hillbilly. I can call myself that, but don't you call me that. For "hillbilly" is a term of derision that was first coined in April 1900 when the New York Journal had an article on "Hill Billies" with this description: "A free and untrammeled white citizen who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it and fires off his revolver as his fancy strikes him."

The description has not improved very much since then. White minstrel shows depicting these ignorant creatures played to laughing audiences in New York and Chicago in the 1920s and '30s. After a man named Al Capp saw one, he dreamed up the comic strip Lil' Abner who lived in Dogpatch with a mama who smoked a pipe and a girlfriend named Daisy Mae who ran around barefooted and half naked. A short time later Snuffy Smith, a wife abuser with his ever present jug of moonshine, also appeared in the comic strips, and then came Ma and Pa Kettle in the movies and "The Beverly Hillbillies" on television. Even the great poet and author James Dickey has contributed to this false image of mountain people by portraying them as depraved cretins in "Deliverance."

My neighbors and I have lived with this ridicule and overdrawn stereotype all our lives, as did our parents and their parents before them. My ancestors were among the very first mountain settlers, descendants of the Scotch-Irish who were driven out of Northern Ireland by the Stuart Kings. They landed in Maryland and Virginia and migrated westward as far as the hostile Indians and French would allow and then moved southward into the rugged mountains and beautiful valleys we now know as Appalachia. They were accompanied and followed by Huguenots, Quakers, Polatine Germans and other Protestant sects.
These mountain people were the first Americans to fall back on their own resources as they settled in isolation from the rest of the nation. Their language, customs, character, possessions, knowledge and tools were isolated with them and suspended in time, a microcosm of early American thought, culture and mores. These mountaineers possessed the qualities that formed the fundamental elements of pioneer American character--love of liberty, courage, the capacity to withstand and overcome hardship, unstinted hospitality, intense family loyalty, innate humor and trust in God. They developed as rugged individualists who were honest and shrewd, knew no grades of society and had dignity.

When the Civil War came along, this area of the South opposed secession. For there were no vast plantations in the mountains and very few slave owners among those poor people. Some even fought on the Union side. Later, when the wars of the 20th century came along, the mountains of the South sent a disproportionate share of volunteers to fight in distant lands far from their peaceful valleys. I'm proud that these are my people.

Why am I going into this? Now, in the enlightened 21st century, there are plans for a new hillbilly minstrel show. CBS calls it a "reality show," and it will be a moneymaker. CBS's CEO, Les Moonves, is pushing this program-to-be. I don't know this man, but it seems that he cares little for human dignity and believes that television has no social responsibility.
I suppose we should not really be surprised, for there have always been some Homo sapiens who had to have someone to look down on--some group to feel superior to. They can be found all through the Bible. Shakespeare wrote about them, as did Dickens, Steinbeck and Faulkner. Songwriter Merle Haggard wrote that memorable line "another class of people put us somewhere just below, one more reason for my mama's Hungry Eyes."

CBS and its CEO will say this cracker comedy is just harmless humor. But they know better and feel safe. They know the only minority left in this country that you can demean and hardly anyone will speak up are hillbillies in particular and poor rural people in general. Can you imagine this kind of program being suggested about an African-American or Latino family? Years ago, "Amos and Andy" was removed from TV--as it should have been--because it was in poor taste and made fun of a minority.

Many years ago, the rabbis were asked why God in the beginning created just one man and one woman. Surely, God could have created multitudes. The rabbis answered that only one man and one woman were created to help us remember that we all came from the same mother and father. So no one should ever say "I'm better than you" or feel "I'm less than you." Mr. Moonves: Call off your hillbilly hunt. Make your big bucks some other way. Appeal to the best in America. For no one should ever use the airwaves of this nation to say to one group of people made in God's image, "We're better than you."

Sen. Miller is a Democratic senator from Georgia. This is adapted from his remarks Tuesday on the Senate floor