When I worked in the folklore world for a few years back in the late 1970's, we did work with quilters, blues musicians, storytellers, writers, folk artists of every shape and stripe. If you don't mind getting a bit disillusioned about it all, you can read Center for Southern Folklore. I warned you.

We did a film with Eudora Welty, one of the most prestigious Southern women writers of all time. We did a film about blues musicians and got B. B. King (that popular whore who brags about fathering 15 kids with 15 women) to narrate it. We had a famous folklorist from Wales (John Barney) come over and spend an entire year (well, the sober part of his year) doing a history of the Delta blues. That was an album, not a film. There were several other notable projects churned out in that old four-story house in Memphis.

There was also a little knock-off piece we did about this older black fellow in Mississippi who had trained his pigs to wait at the feeding trough when he threw the slop in. They would run up to the trough in a frenzy, as only pigs can (they get hungrier than other animals, it seems), and then he would raise his hand to stop them. With their snouts suspended in mid-air over the trough, he would say grace. As soon as he was done, his hand would come down and the swine would snarff down all the food in about 2 seconds. (PETA would probably not want to know the details in that training regimen.)

We named it Praying Pigs. It was about 5 minutes long.

Guess what one film we did there which won the most awards, was the best selling film ever, and which was the most requested any time we had visitors? Yep.

That should tell you quite a bit about why America is watching Shaniqua on Jerry Springer right now yelling about that damn Tyrone who spent the rent check on that fat skank, LaRhonda.

I'm guessing; I've never seen Springer. But I'm right, aren't I?