Red State Mommies RULE!

Ah, Monday. It can only mean one thing. Ok, two things. It means the boyfriend goes to work in money-makin' Manhattan, and I have the whole palatial estate to myself (to "work" from home). It also means that I get to watch "Trading Spouses" on Fox, one of my many beloved reality TV selections. "Trading Spouses," like its companion show on ABC, the better-titled "Wife Swap," offers two families the chance to "trade mommies" for two weeks, in exchange for $50,000. This week, the controlling and bitchy neatnik Mia from MN went down to gun-thumping Chattanooga to live with the Howard family, while their very own heart-of-golder, Angie, flew north to attempt to bring some fun and warmth to the uptight Hammond clan. Angie's intro gushed "We may not have much money, but have each other," and a little deja-VIEW crackled in my brain. "Hey, I think I've seen this one before." I thought. Oh, no; that was the down-home cajun Mom who swapped with weird Cali vegan meglomaniac who made everybody watch animal rights films while she cried. No, no, it was that plastic surgery trophy mom who tried to give the kids make overs. Wait, I *had* seen it before, a million times. Tonight's episode, like many, many, many of them are, was about watching the richer family revealed to be a bunch of shallow, cold, pretentious automatons, while the poorer, but funner, family may be quirky, and may have hundreds of taxidermied crocs around the compound, but, dammit, they love one another. Inevitably, the poor family is southern/red state and the rich family is more urban, from California, or Maryland, or Minneapolis. It sort of makes me wish my southern upbringing had included some buttoned-down, carosel-eschewing, army-insulting, chitlin-rejecting mom from the north. Then, when we were finally reunited, my whole family could have danced around the moonlight, catching fireflies, strumming guitars and generally revelling in the simple pleasures of God, family and country.