Five or 10 minutes outside any U.S. or Canadian city — that’s all the farther you need to travel to find the rednecks who are “the backbone of society,” according to comedian Jeff Foxworthy, who was born in Georgia and knows a thing or two about rednecks.

Here’s what Foxworthy told the Calgary Herald in Canada:

“I’d go to New York and they’d say ‘Aww, Foxworthy, you’re nothing but a redneck from Georgia with the boots and the jeans, the pickup trucks. … You’re just not cutting edge.’

“But when you get five or 10 minutes outside of any city in the U. S. or Canada, people are the same. They’re not hip. They’re not on the cutting edge. They get up and they go to work or school or church. They’re kind of the backbone of society. And with me, instead of somebody laughing at them, I was laughing with them.”

That’s the difference between real folks like Foxworthy who appreciate the everyman and judgmental people like, say, reality television flop Stephen Fowler and Manic Mother.