Years ago (long before the internet), while doing some research in a law library, I came across an encyclopedia of legal terms, which included the phrase, "Ozark hillbilly."

As I recall, a woman who was getting a divorce from her husband, complained that he had referred to her family as a bunch of Ozark hillbillies.

So, the judge, in an absolutely great written statement, responded by explaining how the term should actually be viewed as a compliment, and he went on from there to explain at great length the history of immigrants who settled in that region of the country.

I'd say "hicky" isn't even a word, let alone one tp be fired over. Reminds me of the poor schlub that got sacked for saying "niggardly".

Hick, hickey, hobo, hillbilly, squaw, Negro, whore, retard, gypsy, queer, bastard, bitch, and we become niggardly in the ways to express ourselves in the name of PC.

"Larry Legend” The Hick from French Lick.

Are you guys really that dense?

Nobody was fired from their job for political correctness. An ad agency was fired because the way they said they were looking for actors to play hicks from West Virginia in an ad for a candidate from West Virginia.

Not only did they not use actual West Virginians but they used actors from Philly and shot it out-of-state. And they were fired from the account because they did a crappy job of what they were hired to do, which is to burnish the candidate's image. You know, by referring to the people he's trying to get to vote for him as "hicks".

For people who are always ragging on about how you can't fire teachers and state employees who aren't doing their jobs, it seems the height of hypocrisy to be defending a clear-cut case of someone who so completely screwed the pooch. They've actually hurt the guy's rep and his chances of getting re-elected.

And Jack, I think being derided as something like a "hick from the sticks" might predate even your teen-age romances.

That should be "elected" not "re-elected".

hick / hik/
• n. inf., chiefly derog. a person who lives in the country, regarded as being unintelligent or provincial: wondering what a hick from the sticks was doing there | [as adj.] a hick town.

Oh, and I meant "dense" in a way that -- given the right explanation -- could "actually be viewed as a compliment".

Alright you guys I resemble those remarks, remember your history and be nice to us.

We all have relations from the Appalachia clans. Remember the music and the loyality, remember (Next of Kin)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_swayze

And for the record we would like to be addressed as (Sons of the Soil)

If you want to insult the hayseeds really well, the term double buckle woodchuck comes to mind.

Them hayseeds some of you so love to denigrate are capable of surviving just about anything, like cockroaches. They survived many centuries of outright slavery and serfdom, then a few hundred years of indentured servitude, then were ground to bits in the industrial revolution, labor conflicts and/or brutally hard subsistence farming, then they survived the Great Depression, and then they won WW2. They will wear you out.

I would also mention that it is most prudent to continue to make fun of them behind their backs, rather than right to their faces, if you must.

First time I ever heard both Johnny Cash AND Johnny Paycheck, was in my Grandma's trailer in North Phoenix. "Okies from Muscogee" is how she always described our family.

Easy there, Cabbie. I grew up in hayseed land. It's why I know a ton of the insults. And Ed Koch's remarks about that part of NY state cost him an election even though that area is primarily repugnicant as was Koch.