Joe Bageant has written an important column in today’s Guardian UK. I urge every latte’ sipping liberal who drives a Prius and looks down on rednecks who live in trailer parks to read it (a teaser appears below). And everybody else too. I’ll make a confession here, I’ve been guilty of the same kind of snobbery that Joe compains about, even though I was raised as a child in a southern version of Levittown (that wasn’t quite as prosperous as that place) and ought to know better. Now get on over there and read the rest of what Joe’s got to say.

A third of Americans live in the geographic “redneck” south and more than 50% in the cultural south — in places with white southern Scots-Irish values such as western Pennsylvania, central Missouri and southern Illinois, eastern Connecticut, northern New Hampshire, and others never seen as southern. When you look at people in what has come to be called the red-state heartland, most of their values are traditional white Scots-Irish values.

They hold the key to any national election, yet the liberal and alternative media never speak to, or for, them. Progressives dominate the internet, politically speaking, but use it to talk to one another in a closed, politically correct conversation that by definition excludes others, particularly rednecks. I had an editor once, an old-school shot-and-a-beer newsman, who told me: “Joe, don't become a stenographer for the powerful, regardless of their politics or party.” I still believe that. It's humanity and a nation we’re obligated to, not political junkyism or political correctness.