Joe Bageant is a redneck, and proud to say so.

"In their political correctness, media types cannot bring themselves to utter the word 'redneck.' So I'll say it for them: redneck-redneck-redneck-redneck," Bageant - a liberal blogger originally from the backwoods of Virginia - writes to open an essay, "Why Rednecks May Rule the World," posted on the BBC's web site.

Bageant, who dissected his fellow rednecks in the best-seller Deer Hunting With Jesus, gives the world a brief glimpse of "The Republic of Redneckia," and admits readily, "by any tasteful standard, we ain't a pretty people."

"Most of all we are defiant and suspicious of authority, and people who are 'uppity' (sophisticated) and 'slick' (people who use words with more than three syllables). Two should be enough for anybody.

And that is one of the reasons that, mystifying as it is to the outside world, John McCain's choice of the moose-shooting Alaskan woman with the pregnant unmarried teen daughter appeals to many redneck and working class Americans."

If you recognize yourself or your neighbors in Bageant's article, then - to borrow Jeff Foxworth's tag line - you might be a redneck.

(A disclaimer: I go back a ways with Joe. We toiled together for a time, nearly 20 years ago, at a small paper in Moscow, Idaho.)

Labels: politics