Related only to the title:
I saw V for Vendetta last night and thought it was really, really good.

My non-LARPing friends also liked it.

I just sent Glenn one of them ee-lectricul telergraph thingies that said his cracker ass silence on Coulter has been deafening, even coming from all the way out in the sticks where he hides his peckerwood cyberweb still under a tarp.

Speaking of Glenn, via Unfogged, I found this lovely piece of work. Found just in time for the war’s third birthday!

B-b-but Glenn, you are a cracker.

Cracker-ass cracker…

This is why libertarians like me will never be democrats, because they’re mean and icky and I love big brother.

UP

I think Glenn’s outrage is deserved, but misplaced. He is not a cracker. I realize that word has basically been corrupted to “generic white dude”, but it originally denoted a very specific kind of pure Southern jackassery. To wit, Georgians are your main supplier of crackers, with help from Alabama, North Florida and the Mississippi Delta.

The Perfesser is in Tennessee, correct? Therefore, it is incorrect to call him a “cracker”. He is a hillbilly, or, perhaps, a “clay-eater”. Of course, one could argue for “redneck” or “hick” or “white trash”, but of the three, only “redneck” does not suggest some sort of economic status which, frankly, a university law professor (even at UT) is far too well off to qualify. Of course, “redneck” has also been denigrated by popular usage into “generic white guy asshole”, when it’s actually more of a state of mind. Achieving a lower consciousness, if you will. Most folks act like rednecks once in their lives (hey, we’ve all been shit-hammered), but it’s very hard to pull off that, shall we say, Joe Bob de vie 24/7. I grew up with some old boys that certainly pulled it off, but I can’t see The Perfesser going duck hunting, dipping Copenhagen, drinking copious amounts of Bud Light and blasting “If That Ain’t Country (I’ll Kiss Your Ass)” with Shug and Chops and Thorn.

I never really heard any epitets for white people from the city as a lad. However, there was a general contempt for all things urban, laced with a solid belief that anyone who’s got little enough sense to live in a city needed to be taken down a peg or two. My dad grew up in Jackson and Meridian, which are sorta like cities, and he’d call The Perfesser a “smart-ass rich boy educated beyond his intelligence”.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am from rural Mississippi, the foothills of the Appalachian. Therefore, the proper insult for me is “stump-jumper”. Personally, I think it’s got “cracker” beat all to hell, though I do possess a certain fondness for “honky”. There’s just a euphonious ring to it. Say it with me: “honky”.

OH god, is it a tie, because I was all set to give my love to G for Glendetta but a Glenn diagram, oh man. I love making extended nerd boy metaphors about how is something or other were diagrammed in a Venn diagram, the set that comprised cobag X would entirely be withing chumpwad Y.

“Joe Bob de vie”… classic.

Matt T. wins the rural folkways prize … only one slight criticism – you’re supposed to say “my daddy grew up in Jackson and Meridian”, Matt T.

Anyway, where do “peckerwoods” fit in? “Hayseeds”? How ’bout them generic old “farmers” (a personal fave)? Maybe for Instafuckwit, “mountain trash in a starched collar” fits the bill, with the Tennessee thing he has going.

Where did Glenn learn his history?

I’m trying to think of a time when a Barbaric force was so aggressive even when unprovoked that civilised men were forced to commit genocide.

I’m not coming up with anything.

(Not to mention that the terms “barbarian” and “civilised” are applied retroactively to the losing and winning sides, and have little or nothing to do with anything else.)

Demogenes,
I would think “hayseed” denotes some sort of farming background, though I’ve never heard anyone refer to anyone as a “hayseed” outside of fiction. There’s something gentle about “hayseed”, like “bumpkin” or “yokel”. Doesn’t have quite the snarl as “redneck”. And I don’t know enough about the Perfesser’s background to be comfortable labeling him as “mountain trash”. I know some mountain boys, and he ain’t it.

I don’t know about peckerwoods. I never heard anyone call anyone else a “peckerwood”, but I must assume it’s like “hick”, fairly generic insult for a rural-type person. Heard a lot folks call each other peckerheads, though, and I went to high school with a kid nicknamed Peter Head. Swear to Elvis, everyone – teachers, coaches, preachers – called him that.

It’s a distressing personal quirk that I occasionally edit myself for folks who don’t have enough culture to understand that it’s perfectly reasonable for a 30-year-old lost country boy to refer to his father as “Daddy”. Hopefully, I won’t have to explain who “Momaw” is.

The worst thing is a redneck in an urban context: the citygoat. At least out in the boonies they’re thin on the ground and can’t do too much damage.

I think hayseed, bumpkin, yodel, etc., were more midwestern things than southern. Although rednecks have spread coast to coast at this point.

yodels? yokels

I’m fond of the term “rube” and use it as often as possible.

I was born in FL, and I understood ‘cracker’ to be a generic slightly insulting term for those who came from the state, ie “buckeyes” from OH. My mom still calls my brother and me crackers sometimes, when she is slightly pissed off but also a little amused. I also grew up in Gatlinburg, TN, not far from UT, and my dad graduated from UT. Far and away, people from that area are not the brightest, but few are intentionally so . . . that takes talent of some sort.

Time zones are weird. I looked at the time stamp on the last comment and thought for a minute that I was posting from the future. It is still solidly 3/18 where I live.

Personally, I prefer the terms “sheepfucker” and “goatfucker,” but newspapers won’t print ’em.

I was going to suggest “stumpjumper” but it’s too obscure. Being from Ohio I though “Briar” but that’s Ky not TN.

He got upset because somebody called him a cracker?

What a wad! This is that conservative political correctness that nobody ever points out. It’s OK for them to be offended. They go on and on about the African Americans getting offended by “certain words,” but they have no shame when it comes to feigning offense if it suits them.

Nobody expects conservatives to be consistent. Or honest. Or fair. Or decent. Or honorable.

Really now. Getting offended at being called a cracker. What a butt-wipe.

He’s on the chumptrain the chumpville, that’s for sure.