
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 9, 1990                   TAG: 9003122945
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

ETHNIC JOKES OUT, BUT HILLBILLY'S STILL SAFE TARGET

FOR SALE in many novelty, souvenir and other stores is an item called a "hillbilly computer." It consists of a thin rectangular piece of wood about 5 by 10 inches, through which five holes have been bored.

Most have instructions printed thereon reading something like this: "Instructshuns: Put your thum and fangers thru the holes, then count: Wun, two, three, fore, five. If you want to count higher then turn the dang thang over and start all over agin."

A rubber band is looped in the middle hole. This is to be placed on whichever finger for "memory."

This item can be marketed and sold as long as it is called a hillbilly computer, or redneck, clodhopper, ridge-runner, briarhopper or any other name, as long as it connotes hillbilly. Just try marketing it, plainly marked, as Afro-American, Jewish, Hispanic, gay, Yankee, New England, Catholic, Italian, California, Polish (which it originally was; remember the Polack jokes?), or anything else you can think of. Then stand back and listen to the screams of outrage: "ethnically insensitive!" (That is exactly why it was changed from "Polish computer" to "hillbilly computer.")

Hillbillies are the last thing that all can poke fun at with impunity. It is always "open season" on hillbillies. Why?

I am sick of it.\ CHARLES D. McTHENIA ABINGDON

by CNB