In search of Bubba

So I heard somebody on TV the other day talking about the “Bubba” vote, and I listened with disinterest, until my wife pointed out that they were talking about me.

Now hang on a minute. I’m not a Bubba. Am I?

I went and looked it up. Apparently, the Bubba vote refers to white (check), working-class (check), mostly rural (not so much) voters. But those are really code words. I think what they mean by the Bubba vote is the redneck vote.

They mean the kind of guy who walks out of a Larry the Cable Guy concert and says, “I wish I was as smart as him.” They mean the kind of guy who takes his wife to Wal-Mart for a chili dog for their anniversary dinner. They mean a guy who wears sleeveless shirts to church.

That’s a Bubba. And I’m not one of those.

I’m not saying I’m not related to some. And I might do a Bubba-like thing here and there. I know all the words to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” I’ve been known to bark at a football game. I consider Chili’s a fancy restaurant. I have a tan-line that stops just above my elbow. I’ve eaten potted meat for dinner.

Jethro Bodine? He was a Bubba. So were Junior Samples and Gomer Pyle and pretty much everybody on the Dukes of Hazzard except for Daisy (she was a hubba-hubba, not a Bubba). But I’m not a Bubba. I’m pretty sure about this.

I did get called a dumb hillbilly once, in Boston, when I was negotiating with some fellows on the street for some Red Sox tickets. The guy didn’t want to tell me exactly where in the stadium the tickets were located, so I told him what he could do with them, and what I said wasn’t nice, so he called me a dumb hillbilly, and I called him a stupid Yankee, but cooler heads prevailed and order was restored. I wound up getting in the game for free anyway, so who’s the dumb hillbilly, huh?

Don’t answer that.

Frankly, the whole “Bubba vote” thing is offensive. I don’t think we’d stand for using a stereotypical name to group other categories of voters, like women, or black people, or Hispanics, or strippers (you never hear about the “Diamond vote”).

Whatever. Call me what you will. I’m secure in my non-Bubbaness. As Popeye once said, “I yam what I yam.” Or maybe that was Jethro.