COUNTRY BOY

Gotta watch out for them Country Boys.

Most Americans - especially the ones of the Northeastern variety - hold Country Boys in thinly veiled contempt. Rubes, they think. Redneck geeks.

It’s a dangerous and stupid attitude.

Lenny Bruce used to do a bit in which he would say, “If Einstein had been a Southerner, we wouldn’t have had an atomic bomb.”

He’d step into the persona of a fictional Southrin Einstein to drive the point home: “Folks, Ah wanna tell y’all ’bout new-cleer fishin’...”

“Shaddup, ya schmuck! Ya don’t know nuthin’!”

Bruce’s routine was his way of explaining why (then) President Lyndon Johnson got so little respect from the Eastern intellectual establishment. But Johnson wasn’t any kind of a dummy, and he would work that Country Boy routine.

In like wise, a friend of ours - an attorney who frequently defended clients in the Medical Profession who were on the receiving end of malpractice lawsuits - described a Country Boy plaintiff’s lawyer.

Seems there was a botched plastic surgery case, and our friend was working the defense. The plaintiff’s attorney was one of those Country Boy fellers. Every movement, every stitch of clothing (I picture him in a straw boater and a seersucker suit) told you that he was a real salt-of-the-earth Man of th’ Peepul.

And this fine Country Boy, he hitched his thumbs under his galluses just so, and, puffing out his chest, strode forth before the Jury Box to address the Defendant. Quoth he:

“Now, Doctah So-and-So, suppose you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury just exactly what it was that you did to mah client that made her titties all catty-wampus?”

Country Boy, my ass. This old boy could’ve eaten half of Harvard Yard for lunch.

You underestimate the Country Boy at your peril, O Northern Ones.