Tom Brokaw was one of the better television anchors during the heyday of broadcast news. He was definitely no Dan Rather. I loved his book “The Greatest Generation,” too. I even attended his talk about it at the National Press Club and had him sign a copy.

But this Brokaw quote from Inauguration Day, highlighted by Jennerationx, is disappointing and exposes Brokaw as just another elitist in the Washington press corps:

Eh, having been in the South in the sixties and Los Angeles and Watts and northern urban areas, umm, uh, when we were evolving as a country. I’m thinking of all the bigots and the rednecks and all the people that I met along the way, and I’m saying to them, “Take this.”

I’ll say it again: “Redneck” is not synonymous with “bigot” or “racist,” and everyone, especially journalists like Brokaw and Stanley Crouch of the New York Daily News who should know better, need to stop using it as a slur.

Jennerationx does a great job of taking Brokaw to task. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

The American redneck runs this country. We drive semis, we work in the fields, we fix cars, we work in grocery stores, department stores, pharmacies, car washes, mills, factories, mines, we work on the docks, the ships, the junkyards, we work as beauticians, as police as firefighters as nurses and construction workers.

We build your homes, we clean your houses, we do your dry-cleaning, we wait on your dinner table, we cook your food, we mix your drink, we clean your hotel room. We fix your cable connection, your electricity, yes, that is us up on the poles, or digging down to reach the lines. Anything you can’t figure out, Tom, we got you covered.

Life, Liberty And The Pursuit … also had a few hard but on-the-mark words for Brokaw, too:

[Bigots] are people who are completely intolerant of opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from his or her own. The bigot can be found hiding under a white robe, as well as working in a nicely tailored suit or Chanel jacket. …

[B]igots come in all shapes and sizes, races and religions. An equal opportunity offender, if you will. Bigots are hateful little people who will have to answer to someone bigger than you.

Unfortunately, it looks like we rednecks are going to have to endure this nonsense for the next four to eight years now that we have our first black president.