“Hillbillies”: PC Bigotry or Good Clean Fun?

Are crackers the last bastion of PC-acceptable bigotry? Sen. Zell Miller (D-GA) thinks so, and he’s madder than a cheese curd in a box of grits:

A southern senator Tuesday accused a major U.S. television network of peddling “bigotry for big bucks” by planning a “reality” show based on “The Beverly Hillbillies,” which portrayed a family of simple country folks suddenly transplanted to an upscale Los Angeles suburb.

….”What CBS and CEO Moonves propose to do with this cracker comedy is bigotry, pure and simple. Bigotry for big bucks,” Miller said. “They know that the only minority left in this country that you can make fun of and demean and humiliate … are hillbillies in particular and rural people in general.”

Like the premise of the long-running CBS hit comedy “The Beverly Hillbillies” about a poor mountaineer and his kin who strike it rich on oil, the idea for the new “reality” series is to transplant a real-life family from a humble home in the backwoods to a mansion in Beverly Hills, California.

Also like the original comedy, which aired from 1962 to 1971, the show would try to capitalize on the fish-out-of-water dynamics between the family members and their new upscale environs and neighbors.

Critics of the show, however, have branded it a “hick hunt” designed to hold poor, rural people up to ridicule. [CNN]

While I instinctively avoid anything PC, including making fun of hicks, I also deplore the princess-and-the-pea sensitivity we have developed over the last 40 years or so and I hate political grandstanding. From a programming standpoint, however, this can’t be anything but degrading to the rubes, who will not be entertaining in the least if they aren’t idiots – it’s a bad idea for a show, but so is Married By America and most of the other “reality” horseshit.

The original derived most of its humor from the Crampett’s cluelessness, but also emphasized their inherent nobility, goodness, and their native wisdom. With reality shows, editing is everything – in this case “balance” would be pretty boring, so I am afraid it’s going to be “well looky there, one of them terlet things!”