Dunno, the joke sounds pretty old and tired to me. I feel certain the executives would have their own ideas about what "mountain values" are and want to show only those which underline their view of what's "funny" (read: stereotypical.) Maybe it's just me, but I don't see an opportunity here to subvert the dominant paradigm the rest of America has about us. Mainstream tv has such a narrow view of what's funny, and it's all about beating horses that have mostly been dead for decades. Rightly or wrongly, the belief seems to prevail that it's the lowest common denominator that counts with the advertisers, witness the programming that we have.

In a related incident, Plez and I were eating sushi at Cafe 1-Eleven not too long ago, and a taping was going on for some "hillbilly" "reality" show, featuring a toothless family in overalls, doing take after take of "spontaneous" reactions like,"Goddamn! Yew mean it ain't been cooked ATALL?" and other brilliant, witty, fresh from the farm observations. Once and for all, let me put the lie to this hype that these shows are not scripted or rehearsed. We saw it. At least until we turned our backs around to the cameras, so they couldn't have our gorgeous mugs for free background scenery.