Bumpkins, rednecks, good ol' boys, Bubbas.
In case you've been asleep at the wheel of your pickup truck, the public image of the white Southern male remains in stereotype purgatory even as Bill Clinton - a WSM from Arkansas - takes over as the nation's 42nd president.And some believe Bubba-bashing will become more rather than less common as Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, a WSM from Tennessee, begin to throw their weight around in the nation's capital.
"You make jokes about any group and you'll be lacerated by the politically correct," says Carl Grafton, a political science professor at Auburn University in Montgomery, Ala. Only one group remains open to public insults. "Southern males are it."
Grafton and other academics are keeping an informal watch on how Clinton fares with the news media and with television comedians. Their treatment may determine how WSMs are viewed in coming years, says a colleague of Grafton, political scientist Anne Permaloff.
So far, Permaloff says, indications aren't good, with swipes based on Southern stereotypes already becoming common during Clinton's "honeymoon" period.
On NBC's "Saturday Night Live" last week, for instance, a skit depicted the Clintons as a cross between 1930s Okies and the Beverly Hillbillies - ignoring the fact that he is a Rhodes scholar and she a prominent attorney. News reports remark on how he sometimes slips into a Southern accent and on his fondness for greasy foods.
We can expect more jokes about Elvis, beer bellies and bird dogs.
The message? For all his accomplishments, William Jefferson Clinton is really Billy Jeff.
"They're basically saying you can't quit being a Bubba," Permaloff says.
In the final days of the presidential race, President Bush linked Clinton to negative Southern stereotypes, calling Arkansas the "lowest of the low."
Such remarks won votes for Bush, says Robert J. Norrell, director of the Center for Southern History and Culture at the University of Alabama and a history professor there.
"Bush bashed him for being from the South," Norrell says.
Few of the frequent comparisons of Clinton to Jimmy Carter are meant as compliments.
Carter didn't do much to improve the tarnished image of the WSM. His problems began at home, with an eccentric family right out of Flannery O'Connor: an ancient but fiesty mother, an evangelist sister and an unabashed redneck brother who lent his name to "Billy" beer.
Worse, Carter was perceived by many as a failure in the Oval Office. Inflation soared. Iranian fanatics seized hostages. Carter aides were called crooks. The whole country sank into so-called "malaise."
The stock of WSMs plunged with it.
The same thing could happen if Clinton fails: guilt by association.
"If Clinton doesn't succeed, I think a good bit of the blame will be placed on the Southern male," Grafton says. "It will be a reprise of the Carter years."