Elitists are so determined to perpetuate their redneck myths that they spread lies on the Internet to deceive gullible people. If you’ve heard the yarn about the illiterate sorority girl from Alabama who believes President Obama was born in Kenya, you’ll know what I mean when you hear the real story.

The girl in the photo is Kim Stafford, and she’s not from Alabama. She grew up in Massachusetts and attends an liberal arts university in the western part of her home state. The school doesn’t even have a Greek system, and she’s a registered Democrat who plans to vote for Obama next week.

But the reason Stafford has become the subject of Internet ridicule is because people who don’t know any actual rednecks are so willing to believe the worst about those rubes from places like Alabama or West Virginia or even Pennsylvania.

I suspect that somewhere along the Internet chain, a liberal with a chip on his shoulder about the tea party movement decided to add fiction to Stafford’s satire. He or she added phony details about the photo to get other redneck haters riled, and voila, an Internet legend was born.

Stafford has tried to rebut the lies on her own blog, one with a vulgar phrase that captures the essence of redneck bigotry, but the Internet meme persists. People will believe what they want to believe about rednecks.

As for me, I’d rather be an enlightened rube than an uniformed dupe who clings to fables.