Bill O'Reilly Hates Appalachia

I go to a catholic school in Columbus Ohio. Every year a selected few get to go to Appalachia. If you go there, they will teach you alot. When they recive free canned goods many of them are back at the food pantry the next day giving back the same cans they were given the day before ( and no they are not cans of green beans). These people do have problems just as any area does, but they also have just as much loving people also.

I would like to say that I was born and raised in the appalachian mountains in Harlan, Kentucky. This is a beautiful place to live and raise your children. I very much resent Bill calling us ignorant. We have as much sense as people from anywhere else. They make these documentary's about every 10 years and find the worst places they can to film. Yes there is poverty here but there is everywhere. As Bill says if everyone would grow up and leave there would soon be no mountains. This is home and we are very happy here. There is only a minority of people who live like the film depicts and most of those choose to live that way. We have turned out movie stars, singers, educators, goverment figures and everything else just like other states do. I really admired Bill until this but I will not watch him anymore. I feel as tho he was putting people down that he knows nothing about. I invite anyone to come to the Appalachian Mountians and see the beauty and feel the love and hospitatily the people in these mountains will show you.

Wait.. so Bill was okay hating everybody else but when he hates on Appalachia than he's not admired anymore..good grief.

So Bill O'Reilly is an idiot. What else is new?

I think this cycle of poverty stems from the fact that the jobs in this region have been systematically cut since the beginning of the 20th century..

(Sarcasm)
but maybe bill is correct: these people are poor becasue they simply are too lazy and messed up to earn money.

I mean its their fault they don't have jobs in the first place right?
(/Sarcasm)

Well I think that they should come and make an ACTUAL DOCUMENTARY ON APPALACHIA instead of the worst things about it. These mountains really are a beautiful place with a lot of caring people with truly beautiful souls. Sure some people choose to live in poverty and off wellfare but then there are some of us who choose to try and do better than what is around. If you would have watched "Children of the Mountains" you would have seen that. The football player who lived in his truck is proof that not everyone wants to live the way alot of people in that documentary lived. Those people on that documentary werent looking for a hand out either, she came looking for them.
I just think its sad that because somethings are so bad that everyone else in Appalachia get stereotyped about it, and yes I know Bill hates everyone but when he picks on the mountain people hes pickin on the wrong crowd. Unlike most of the world the people of the mountains at least care about one another and dont want to hear their neighbors and friends and family talked about and threw to the side like GARBAGE. We actually care about people.... Its called SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY and if the rest of the world had even one ounce of it maybe it wouldnt be so bad.

Ha!!! You think Bill Oreilly hates Mt. Folk you ought to hear what he thinks of folk in Vermont. He hates everybody

Hillbilly stereotypes: picking up pine knots and going to war
By Betty Cloer Wallace

Bill O’Reilly’s recent contemptible rant against Appalachian Americans is only the latest example of the widespread and multigenerational problem of Appalachian hillbilly stereotypes. Quite simply, O’Reilly reminded the world once again that people of the Appalachian Mountains are still the only cultural group in America that many people have the audacity to ridicule publicly as being of low intelligence, and worse. 



Can you imagine if O'Reilly had made the same despicable statements about ________ in _________, or ________ in ________, or _______ in ________. (Fill in the blanks with any racial or ethnic or cultural slurs you can imagine, the more insensitive the better.)

While some racial and ethnic and cultural groups recently tried to get a newspaper cartoonist fired, and rightfully so, for depicting the shooting of a "stimulus plan gorilla,” O'Reilly was shooting down the future of an entire culture by perpetuating a century-old stereotype in the most egregious and offensive manner—and we ought to be outraged. We ought to care, and care deeply, because the issue is infinitely larger and more far-reaching than simply our own personal irritation with O’Reilly.

Actually, O'Reilly is small potatoes when one considers what we as a culture are up against. This negative stereotyping of our culture is becoming more focused and pronounced than ever before, simply because it has become politically incorrect to target other groups.

Other minorities may be insidiously stereotyped and discriminated against for assorted other reasons, but they are not blatantly and openly ridiculed as ignorant. And now, O'Reilly has added "immoral" and "drug-addicted" to our litany of Appalachian stereotypes, as well as our being unworthy to live in our own mountain homeland. Our children should move to Miami, he says. Oh, my.

O'Reilly is hate-filled, but he is not a fool. He has built an empire by spouting the poisonous hatred that millions of people want to hear. They do listen to him and are influenced by him. While he himself is not fully the issue, he is a flash point for bigotry and intolerance, and that is why he is dangerous.



Yes, O’Reilly is a catalyst, but he is not the source of our problem. We are. We are to blame for not doing everything we can to root out such ignorant O’Reilly-type bigotry, to expose it for what it is, and then to replace it by honoring who we really are—by honoring our centuries-old heritage of persistence, perseverance, courage, loyalty, and love of freedom nourished for generations by our Scottish, English, Irish, German, Welsh, and Cherokee ancestors.

Why can we not pick up our pine knots and go to war against this blatant, insidious destruction of our culture?

For the past 125 years, especially during wars and periods of economic depression, people have come into our mountains to exploit us as easy targets as they irreversibly destroy our forests, scalp our mountaintops, pollute our rivers, turn our community schools into mega-institutions, raise our taxes, rape our land with roads and airports and cookie-cutter shopping malls, and ultimately pollute our DNA. 



Children in the future may be asking, "Who exactly were the hillbillies? Where did they live? Where did they come from? Where did they go?" And their mothers will respond, “You must not say that ‘H’ word. It is politically incorrect.”

Let us now pick up our pine knots and go to war—to save ourselves.

___________________

Betty Cloer Wallace resides in Western North Carolina and is a direct descendant of Roderick Shelton, first English settler in Madison County, NC. She teaches writing and literature at a local community college.

bettycloerwallace@runbox.com

2/27/09

I remember distinctly about 1950 when I heard my family discussing the book and film, TOBACCO ROAD, with abject sadness that our culture was so misrepresented by the national media. That was my first inkling that the rest of the country did not see us as we saw ourselves.

The news and entertainment media have never represented us in a positive light, and they have, in fact, erroneously defined us negatively for a century, which has always been the justification, of course, for destroying our environment and our real culture; and they continue to do so--and millions of people worldwide believe them!

That is why we should go to war with the national media, in whatever way we can, to replace those insidious stereotypes with representations of who we really are--by honoring our centuries-old heritage of persistence, perseverance, courage, loyalty, language, and love of freedom nourished for generations by our Scottish, English, Irish, German, Welsh, and Cherokee ancestors.

Betty Cloer Wallace
bettycloerwallace@runbox.com