first off... lets not be too eager to label someone a redneck and give it a negative overtone. I am proud to be a redneck, damn proud. Proud that I can make what most folks have to buy. I can build, correctly and to code what most folks have to pay someone else to build. I can fix, with my own two hands, things that most folks have to pay thousands of dollars to have fixed for them... damn proud of the dirt under my fingernails and the dents in my truck.
I am a professional for a living (Engineer), College Educated (B.S. in Physics) but once I get home, I am a redneck. I work with my hands, have cut down trees to keep my family warm, killed animals (deer, fish, etc...) to keep my family fed, tilled the land to grow my own vegetables, built more than one house, rebuild more engines than I can count and more than a couple of transmissions, restored more than two old cars, happily watch Nascar (though I don't call it "church"), eagerly await the fall every year for football season to start. I have been arrested multiple times, though never convicted of anything other than being young and having no impulse control. I own multiple guns, have more than one kid, own more than one vehicle that gets bad gas mileage (as well as one that gets good mileage)... did I mention that I live in a house in the middle of 6 acres of woods and grew up on a 14,000 acre farm? and I would gladly gut and cape anyone that was a genuine threat to my family, my loved ones or my country. yeah, I am a redneck.
I treat my wife with respect as an equal partner in this life, even during the super bowl. She has blessed me with her love, two healthy children and I am not so foolish as to believe that she couldn't do better somewhere else.
I am about 75% of the way through building my own power generation system (wind and hydro-electric, because i can) that will get my family off the grid... reduce my carbon footprint to the amount of petroleum products my vehicles consume. I recycle/compost/etc... more than 50% of my garbage. My wife and I have planted a hundred trees all over the property... and I am not talking about shrubs or decorative trees, I am talking about sprouting my own oak, alder and maple trees, green-house growing them and then planting them... I figure by the time they have grown and natural selection has taken its course, I will have replaced every tree that it took to build my house, and probably a few others.
does that mean that i should be poo-poo'd because I drive a 4wd and live in the country instead of driving a Honda (which makes a 4wd) and live in the city? or because I sometimes have dirt under my nails from working a full day after my full day at work?
Now I will admit that your co-worker is ignorant, but don't blame that on being a redneck... you can blame the MGD on being a redneck, but again, thats mostly ignorance.
In a time when minorities are finally beginning to get the rights and respect that they deserve, its unfortunate to see someone so eagerly and quickly call an ignorant white guy a "Redneck". I wont say that its even remotely close to the "N" word, that would be even more ignorant, but its the same type of mentality. Quickly throwing a label on someone that either doesn't know better, that doesn't articulate themselves well enough for you to understand what they feel/think or someone that you just cant relate to.
This Redneck will be voting, proudly and with tears in my eyes for what it means to us as a nation, for Obama.