In my unending quest to Get Something for Nothing (what can I say, I've been in higher education for too long), I went back to the Counting House tonight for another free show and wandered into "Cowboys and Indians (Dot, not Feather)". All I can say is that I know that guy. Not the comedian, but the guy he was impersonating.
The premise of the show is that the comedian is a Texan recruiting folks for the Border Patrol, rather like Jeff Foxworthy, but with the IQ of your average redneck. He played on every bad American stereotype - the confusion of the Indians ("feather and dot", as he put it), the intolerance, the gun lust, the ignorance of world history and politics (his favorite ally is the country of NATO, for instance) - all with a deep Texas drawl.
I was a bit skeptical when I realized what this show was about, but I stuck around because it's important to be able to laugh at oneself, and because the show was free. It hurt because it's true. Seriously, I've met people like this stereotype. There was a guy in my sister's Sunday School class who believed that black people had a special weakness around their knees, and that they should be kicked there in a fight. Seriously. My postal clerk didn't know where Scotland was when I tried to express mail my forms last summer. I'm not saying I agree with his entire routine - for one, I do believe in border controls - but there was enough in his show to remind me of why the rest of the world seems to hate my country. Look, folks, just as all British aren't royalty/supervillains/Spice Girls, we're not all ignorant rednecks.
And another thing: there are just as many rednecks in New England as in the South. They just talk funny. Really, y'all, that's it.
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