That character is annoying. One of the many reasons why the show should have been canceled a while ago.
But how current a problem is this kind of prejudice? There's always a city vs. country split and there always will be one, but does the country even think about "hillbillies" as much as it did thirty or forty years ago?
When I was in boot camp in Parris Island, SC, I remember a young man, a fellow platoon mate, from West Virginia named Hatfield asking me where I was from. I told him New Hampshire. He said “Is that up near Massachusetts?” I told him it was. He said “Well, at least they won’t call you a hillbilly”. I laughed my head off. I figured I was just as much of a hillbilly as he was and didn’t much care if I got called one.
Nope. Now the smug big city liberals think everyone from flyover country is a hillbilly and look down their noses at us from 30,000 feet in passing...which is fine, it is more pleasant here that way.
When I first moved up north, I had to leaarn to speak with a 'radio' accent. Not only could I not be understood, but the disdain for someone speaking with a Southern accent was immediate and detrimental, and largely a result of television stereotypes.
After I learned to speak like Johnny Carson (Goodbye, drawl!), I did okay.
It was pretty tough on a science Grad Student on a NSF full ride, though, to be thought an ignoramus because Boss Hogg and Jed Clampett were the only exposure anyone had had here to someone who 'spoke Southern'.