Buddy Ebsen Dead

Somebody's cleaning up on the celebrity death pools.

I looked at one of the online sites when Buddy Hackett died. None of the top 40 had Mr. Hackett on their lists. Buddy Ebsen was on a number of them. If it means anything, Ronald Reagan wasn't on too many of the winners' lists (10 names) and it wasn't their top spot (that name gives the most points).

Some other names from this weekend are singer Barry White and the actor N!xau from The Gods Must Be Crazy. I don't think that anyone had those names...

..They were honest, hardworking, had common sense... In spite of show being posed as a farce, the Hillbillies did have an underlying dignity about them.

Not only that, but Ebsen's character was always the calm in the center of the storm. Jed was the only one, hillbilly or city slicker, with a lick of common sense.

When I was a kid, my family was acting as tour guides to our relatives from Erie, PA, when we happened upon the Beverly Hillbillies filming a scene of them driving in their truck in Beverly Hills. We followed them to their destination, where they got out of the truck and limos were waiting. My cousin commented on Max Baer "He's even bigger than Uncle Jack" (my father- a huge man). Baer had no use for the fans and flew into his limo. The rest of the crew paid attention to the fans for a while. Irene Ryan was so sweet to the fans, she even gave special attention to my cousin Mark, a skinny little kid, telling him "You're going to be as big as Jethro!"

RIP Jed.

I stand accused of being thin skinned by Joe Hadenuf, and of being a sourpuss by jodenkoekje.

I plead guilty on both counts.

But again I ask, why is it permissable to portray rural Southerners as bumpkins, and yet impermissable to poke fun at the intellectual capacity, vocabulary, or social skills of other ethnic groups? And don't tell me Sanford & Son was a sort of black Beverly Hillbillies. For that to have been a parallel situation, Redd Foxx's diction would have consisted solely of ebonics ("I be tired", "I be hungry") and liberally sprinkled with "mofo" or worse; sight gags would involve fried chicken, watermelons, enormous boomboxes, and much shuckin' and jivin'; and the sound track, rather than banjo picking, would have been whatever precurser of rap which existed at the time. Do you think such a format would draw criticism?

Better yet, do a Beverly Hillbillies in reverse. A family from Beverly Hills, members of an ethnic group so protected by political correctness that it cannot even be mentioned, falls upon hard times and has to move to the East Tennessee mountains. Instead of "hooo whee!" it would be "oy vey!" about every fourth line. They would all complain that people in Tennessee "don't know from good brisket"; they would "schlep" from one place to another, and of course they would constantly remind each other never to pay retail, even at the gas station. And instead of battered straw hats, they would all wear yarmalukes 24/7. Of course, this scenario, too, will never see the light of day, not least because it would insult the ethnicity of many writers and producers.

Nope, there's only one ethnic group for which this kind of crude ridicule is still permitted. As a thin skinned, sourpuss Anglo-Saxon, I wouldn't seek to ban the airing of reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies, or, worse yet, The Dukes of Hazzard. But let's just say "we are not amused."

>>A family from Beverly Hills, members of an ethnic group so protected by political correctness that it cannot even be mentioned, falls upon hard times and has to move to the East Tennessee mountains. Instead of "hooo whee!" it would be "oy vey!" about every fourth line.<<

I like that concept! It would be a hoot!

The Beverly Hillbillies didn't just lampoon hill folk, they lampooned everybody. The Clampetts were caricatures of hillbillies, but the Beverly Hills they moved to was portayed as some kind of insane asylum.

Did you know that the Beverly Hillbillies' greatest fans were black people? Most people with rural roots overlooked the ridiculous nature of the show and recognized beloved archetypes in the characters. Jeff Foxworthy made a career out of the same phenomenon.

BTW, most people would put Granny up there with Deputy Fife as the two greatest sit-com characters in television.

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