Last year, CBS began producing a reality show based on the popular 1960s sitcom, "The Beverly Hillbillies." The premise was simple: Take a poor, uneducated family out of the rural South, move them to a mansion in Beverly Hills and film the ensuing hilarity.
Hilarity would undoubtedly ensue because, let's face it, just hearing those silly Southerners talk is damn funny. I'll bet they'd say, "y'all" and "darlin'." Just thinking about it cracks me up.
And CBS knows that if they could find a family whose members actually call it a "cement pond," ratings would soar.
Unfortunately for the American viewing public, however, the show has encountered intense opposition since its conception.
It all started with the Center for Rural Strategies (CRS), a bunch of hicks with too much time on their hands who think that, as rednecks, they deserve the same rights as everyone else. Crazy rednecks. The group claims to have received thousands of e-mails from people in rural communities who are offended by the premise of the show.
Already, it's all too obvious that CRS is lying. Everybody knows that rural communities don't have e-mail. They communicate by carrier pigeon, pony express, and telegraph, or through the phone lines of Miss Cleo.
Do they even have televisions in the rural South? If they do, they are probably the 10-inch black-and-white jobs in gigantic wood cabinets with vacuum tubes from the 1940s. Most of what the backwoods yokels watch is a still picture of an Indian.
As these backward hill folk continue to chew their tobacco, wallop their dogs and eat opossum on a stick, it's important to remember that they have feelings. Us city folk have no right to make fun of their ways.
Fortunately for Southerners and their feelings, the Center has won the support of a number of hicks who are also in positions of power. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., have joined Zell Miller, D-Ga., in the fight against "Hillbillies."
It's a good thing these senators don't have any wars or anything to worry about, otherwise they might not be able to dedicate this kind of bipartisan support to stopping one of the greatest threats to homeland security - reality television.
This is good because reality television is exploiting an even more important minority than Southern white trash. This group doesn't have the political sway of the CRS fighting for its rights. I'm talking about low-end celebrities.
Two weeks ago, I caught an episode of "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here!" on ABC, and I was offended.
The show featured a handful of C-list celebrities who had to complete outrageous tasks in order to feed themselves. The gimmick was that the show was live and people could call in and vote for which celebrity had to complete each task.
Nobody seemed to realize how much ABC was exploiting these so-called celebrities. Not only were they forced to forfeit the luxuries of Hollywood, but they also had to give the money they won to charity.
The game was rigged from the beginning. Since quasi-celebrities like Melissa Rivers weren't able to feed themselves when they had all the benefits of civilization around, they stood no chance in the wild.
Saddest of all, the big winner was Cris Judd, who had dropped from "celebrity" to "who the hell?" status weeks earlier when Jennifer Lopez divorced him. She's still just Jenny from the block.
Like the Southerners, all these celebrities are merely sweet simpletons trying to win fame and fortune by whoring themselves out to reality television. Even though Cris Judd embodies all the negative stereotypes about dancers and choreographers, he still made a name for himself on the national television show.
But the senators won't let real life hillbillies end up like Judd. They have been actively rallying against "Hillbillies" and trash-talking its producers to the news media.
Sen. Bond proposed a show in which TV producers are forced to live in middle-class suburbia and do things like cook their own meals and work blue-collar jobs.
It's a great idea, but it would take all the good producers out of television while they filmed the show. In that time, all the second-string producers would step up to fill the void, inevitably producing even less tasteful reality television programming.
When senators force the second-string producers to be on a reality show, the third-string producers will pollute reality television even more, and reality television will be on a downward spiral. When that happens, I'm moving to the South.
Tim Agne is a journalism junior and a C-list celebrity. Reach him at tim.agne@asu.edu.
