USA TODAY ," published with permission from Polity. They’re hillbillies. They’re religious wackos. They’re conservative wingnuts. The harsh stereotypes of the people of Appalachia are deeply entrenched in the American consciousness. During the 2016 presidential campaign, those ugly caricatures flooded the airwaves, newspapers, websites, and social media accounts of powerful news outlets responsible for accurately depicting the people of a sprawling region that ranges from portions of southwest New York state southward through Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, and into parts of Georgia and Alabama. “Welcome to Trump County, USA,” Vanity Fair blared in a headline on a story reported from Monongalia County, West Virginia. The writer led the story with a lurid anecdote: “It is a little after midnight on a Friday in late January. I am in a strip club in Morgantown, West Virginia, drinking (expletive) American beer that tastes like ice and newspaper. A man is passing me a semi-automatic handgun and telling me to pull the trigger,” the story begins.