Hockey and the Great Socioeconomic Divide

I never really believed in a culture divide in the United States. Red states versus blue states never really made much sense to me because at the end of the day every state was still an American state. But as of last year, I have noticed a divide which has led me to believe that there was a culture war and it's already been won.
The culmination of this revelation came when I had a conversation with an associate of mine today. When I mentioned that I went to a hockey game over the weekend, she stared at me with a look of disgust and said "Really? Hockey? That's such a hick sport."
Hockey, for those of you who don't know, is considered to be the third most popular sport in the United States, under football and baseball and slightly edging out basketball. It has a long and storied history, much like every other major sport, and has produced some of the finest athletes in the world. To hear the sport dismissed as a game that only hilljacks played was astounding. This wasn't NASCAR, for God's sake, this was a legitimate sport!
And that's when I realized what's happened to America. A schism has occured in America, based off of socioeconomics and geography. It seems that if a person speaks with an accent of Southern or Western origin, they are dismissed as less intelligent. Television programming and movies are increasingly showing small town America as a quaint backwards style of living instead of the standard. The blue collar lifestyle has become synonymous with Larry the Cable Guy and "trailer trash".
However, not only is blue collar living being snubbed, it seems as if the middle class is starting to get the same treatment. Some of the things I've seen and heard has astounded me. Hockey is apperantly a hick sport. Commercials depict pickup truck drivers as people who either like driving cars through exploding buildings or cheated their way through high school. Alaska is no longer really part of America but Hawaii still is. And don't even get me started on the idea that playing in the Midwest somehow affects your marketability as an athlete in the age of globalization.
So what is there to do? Do those of us whose interests are being written off as stupid or hickish just ignore the abuse? Do we scuttle to public pressure and start pretending to care whether there should be a playoff system in college football? Or do we just say to hell with the snobs that have siezed control of our culture and hope that global warming covers the world with a sheet of ice so that the only sport that can be played is hockey?