Some folks have been busy lately, ginning up fodder for Jeff Foxworthy. Here's the first entry in today's Redneck Culture files:

A woman in [Dunbar, W.Va.] was charged with battery on a police officer after the officer said she wiped her nose on the back of his shirt. Cpl. S.E. Elliott said he had arrested the 36-year-old woman last week after seeing her slap a man, bite him on the elbow and spit in his face. Elliott said the woman wiped her nose on him as he led her into the police station for booking on a charge of domestic battery.

In the words of insightful cultural critic Larry the Cable Guy, that there's funny, I don't care who you are. Alas, sometimes redneck culture is more tragic than comic, especially when it involves a Hooters restaurant and the well-known redneck propensity for senseless violence:

A customer who was upset over his tab fired several shots into a Hooters restaurant, leaving a manager and another patron in critical condition Saturday, police said. … Managers asked the man to leave after he refused to pay his bill, according to Miller. The man went outside and started firing shots from a .40-caliber handgun at the building, Miller said.

And from my native Georgia comes news of another redneck tragedy:

A sport utility vehicle speeding down a muddy road slammed into trees and exploded, killing four people, including two children, and injuring two others, authorities said. Investigators believe alcohol, recent rain and reckless driving may have been factors in Friday night's crash of the Ford Bronco, which burned completely, state Trooper J.T. McMillan said. "They were out there, playing around, mud-bogging on the dirt road," McMillan said. "They got stuck in the dirt and were pulled out by a dump truck. They sped off down the road and the driver struck two trees." The SUV was traveling around 70 mph at impact, and the occupants weren't wearing seat belts, he said. (Emphasis added)

For the benefit of city slickers out there, it may be necessary to explain that "mud-bogging" is a non-competitive recreational activity in which drivers seek to demonstrate their all-terrain prowess by driving through some muddy place, usually a flooded dirt road. Getting stuck in the mud is all part of the fun, so that years later, you and your buddies can swap stories about your outlandish feats: "You remember that time down on Creek Bottom Road, when Vern got his Silverado stuck so deep that the mud was coming in his windows?" Four-wheel-drive SUVs are preferred by mud-boggers, although not exactly necessary. When I was a teenager, I occasionally went mud-bogging in my 1973 VW Beetle. But 70 mph on a rain-slicked dirt road? That's not recreation, that's suicide. -- Robert Stacy McCain, assistant national editor, The Washington Times

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