Popular Culture Review Vol. 25, No. 2, Summer 2014 | Page 16

12 ‘em, the price they pay to do it and the longin’ we have for them to return home to the ones that they love. It’s about kids and how there ain’t nothin’ like ‘em. I get tired of bearin’ about how bad kids are today, because there are a lot of great kids out there that just need somebody to love ‘em and believe in ‘em. Country folks love their kids and they will jack you up if you try to mess with ‘em! People in country music don’t forget the people that allow them to do what they do for a livin’. They sign autographs and they take pictures with the fans because they know without ‘em most of us entertainers would be getting’ a lot dirtier in the course of our workday. We are thankful that people want to hear the songs and the jokes that we write. Country music doesn’t have to be politically correct. We sing about God because we believe in Him. We are not trying to offend anybody, but the evidence that we have seen of Him in our small little lives trumps your opinion about whether or not He exists. [...] Country music is about new love and it’s about old love. It’s about getting’ drunk and getting’ sober. It’s about leavin’ and it’s about cornin’ home. It’s real music sung by real people for real people, the people that make up the backbone of this country. You can call us rednecks if you want. We’re not offended, ‘cause we know what we’re all about. We get up and go to work, we get up and go to church, and we get up and go to war when necessary. All we ask for is a few songs to carry us along the way, and that’s why I love this show, because it ain’t some self-important Hollywood hype with the winners determined by somebody else. On this show, you decide who goes home with a trophy and you get to dance and sing along with the people that bring you the songs of your life. (CMT) In a moment that has been lauded as a highly authentic expression of the comedian’s convictions, we see Foxworthy lapse into an unabashed and unironic celebration of country music and an appreciation of its fans, its “rednecks,” not as marginal figures but as the “backbone of this country,” as a patriotic us contrasted with a liberal, modem, urban them who lack the virtues he has just espoused. On the surface the monologue is an appreciation of good “country folks” and their ability to focus on “the things that matter.” A