Huh. My poor, white, Appalachian relatives are split 50/50 between being bigoted shit-heads and some of the most open minded, kind, generous people you'd ever meet. The later are somehow capable of telling hilarious jokes and stories without punching down.

Turns out "being an asshole" isn't a culture.

Did they ever make good jokes?

For the record, I used to live among the hillbillies. Surrounded by the yokelest of the rubes. A lot of their "comedy" and "jokes" and "pranks" seemed to be comprised of (actually) hurting people and animals. The rest of it was about verbally abusing others they considered "less than". Most of their jokes were filled with ethnic slurs and mostly about some ethnic group.

To be honest, other hillbillies thought all this was high comedy; a real knee slapper. Psychopathy was often rewarded by others with psychopathy. But anyone with brain cells and some normally-firing synapses connecting those brain cells found their behavior utterly exhausting and tiresome.

Again, I lived it. I'm trying to think of one funny person that stayed in the area. The ones that aspired to something else and were actually funny - all moved the fuck away, if they could.

These people think jokes aren't jokes. They seem to think it needs to be some political statement.