How long do we celebrate stupid?

Not too long ago we wrapped up the Olympics. For a bit, televisions across America were tuned in to watch as athletes competed in their quests to bring home gold to the USA.

We saw Americans at their finest — toned, muscular and skilled, able to do things that most of us can’t (but wish we could). Men and women who had practiced, trained, worked out and pushed themselves harder and harder. But not everybody watched.

Many Americans — sadly more than those who watched the Olympics — went home, grabbed a six-pack and a bag of pork rinds, kicked their boots up on the coffee table and tuned into “Redneck Island” or some such show. I don’t have an issue with specifically that show. I don’t even wonder about those that didn’t feel like watching the Olympics (Lord knows I missed more than 90 percent of it; it just doesn’t have the magic for me that it used to). No, what prompted this column was a commercial that I had the utter and total misery to stumble across a couple weeks ago. It was for yet another “reality show.”

Oh, how I loathe those shows, but this one especially got to me because it was another redneck-themed show. This one was called “Meet Honey Boo Boo.” I’ve never watched it. I never will watch it. But through the commercials, the news and even a couple radio shows I’ve learned the basic premise.

Apparently, the show follows a young girl who participates in pageants for toddlers and little girls (another bad topic for me; I think those pageants should be outlawed and the mothers who engage in them should have their heads examined). But the main focus of the show is how “redneck” the family is. They have pigs running around in the house, a wife-beater adorned mother who is addicted to couponing and all the essential elements of any redneck show — mud-pits, copious amounts of cheap beer, tacky behavior and poor grammar. At one point, the little girl is seen wagging her head back and forth while screeching, “You better redneckagnize!” Oh, how darling. Like nails on a chalkboard.

What exactly does the term “redneck” mean anyway? Has the definition changed over the years or did I just never really understand it? As a boy, I heard it glamorized in the songs coming from my grandfather’s radio. It seemed to identify with the working-class, men who worked hard with their hands. Well, that seemed pretty cool. I liked that.

As I grew older, suddenly the term was used to describe illiterate racists running around with mullets, wife-beater T-shirts and primer-covered Dodge Darts. You saw them in the parking lots of 7-11s swilling their cheap beer out of a bag and grinning at you, showing all three of their teeth. Yuck. Maybe not so cool after all.

So here we are today. From what I see on television, a redneck is typically, if not always, some fat guy in a baseball hat, decked out heat-to-toe in camo (even though he’s not hunting) or ripped up greasy shirts and pants, spitting his chew into a clear plastic cup while he passes gas in the bleachers at his son’s T-ball game. OK, maybe this isn’t as bad as the racist trailer-trash guy, but still.

So my question is when did this become cool? At what point did we decide to glorify acting like an imbecile in public? Flip through your TV shows and you see “Redneck Island,” “My Redneck Wedding,” “Redneck Vacation” and now “Meet Honey Boo Boo.” When I made the mistake of stopping the channel surfing one day long enough to stomach about 20 minutes of one of these shows, they were documenting a group of rednecks vacationing in London. Oh, the hilarious shenanigans as a group of fat Americans waddled through town decked out in dirty T-shirts with the sleeves ripped off and naked ladies on the front, camo pants held up with camo suspenders and a trucker ball-cap looking for Budweiser. They were poking fun at the people they met in the various pubs and stores. Great. Just what we need, people like that traveling abroad to help perpetuate the stereotype of the “rude American.”

Personally, I blame Larry the Cable Guy. It seems like we can thank him for the tendency to believe that intentionally altering your grammar so as to sound like an uneducated hick is neat. I run into these people in such deep-South states as Alaska, Washington and Oregon. They have some bizarre accent that they’ve developed wherein you use nonexistent words and poor slang, combined with the image that you have a big wad of chew jammed into your lower lip (even when you don’t; I really don’t understand that one) and some sort of drawl. It’s like a vague attempt at some southern accent that they don’t seem to quite get right. Once or twice I haven’t been able to help myself and I’ve had to ask, “Where are you from?” And the answer is usually something like, “Um, Chugiak. Why?”

“No, I mean before that.”

“I’m born and raised here.”

“Oh, sorry. It’s the way you talk. I assumed you were from somewhere else.” (But nowhere in this country!)

Oh, and Larry the Cable Guy? His name is Daniel Whitney and he’s from Nebraska. And yes, he admits that he doesn’t really talk like that.

So in preparation for the bombardment that I’m sure to get for this column, allow me to say I’m generally a right-leaning, conservative-type guy. I hunt. I fish. I love shooting my guns. I like to work on cars. I like to go off-roading and racing. However, I also prefer to speak using proper grammar so as to be understood and not taken for a complete stooge. As a rule, I generally don’t go out in public unless I’m wearing clean clothes (even if it’s just jeans and a T-shirt). I don’t associate having proper manners, decorum and etiquette only with people drinking tea with one pinky sticking in the air.

I just can’t fathom this idea that it’s “cool” to sound illiterate. How long are we going to be stuck in this celebration of stupid?

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.