Brownshirt, Blackshirt, Blimp-neck, Dittohead, Wingnut, Cracker –the term you’re looking for is REDNECK. Musically, Randy Newman gave it humanity, and Jerry Jeff Walker gave it love, and the Grateful Dead tweaked his lyric to capture what I think is the essence of the good ol’ boy: his thinking man self image.
M is for the mud flaps you got me for my pickup truck
O is for the oil I put on my hair
T is for T-bird
H is for hen
E is for Einstein’s theory of relativity, and
R is for YOU REDNECK MOTHER!
And for good measure, Newman’s Rednecks:
Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show
With some smart ass New York Jew
And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox
And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too.
Well he may be a fool but he’s our fool.
If they think they’re better than him they’re wrong.
So I went to the park and I took some paper along
And that’s where I made this song.We talk real funny down here.
We drink too much and we laugh too loud.
We’re too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we’re keepin’ the niggers down.We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol’ boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU.
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too.
Hustlin’ ’round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin’ drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they’re keepin’ the niggers down.We’re rednecks, rednecks
And we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks
And we’re keeping the niggers down.Now your northern nigger’s a Negro.
You see he’s got his dignity.
Down here we’re too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free.Yes he’s free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City.
And he’s free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco.
And he’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston.
They’re gatherin’ ’em up from miles around,
Keepin’ the niggers down.