By law, this is the only thing American schoolchildren are required to know about him. I'm a historian, so you can trust me on this. Plus, I love a good fat guy story.

Same goes for the writers. I love their interactions on the commentaries and on Twitter. It seems like the best workplace ever indeed.

He really sealed the deal for his whole destiny.

You mean, he /was/ behind it all. "He's dead, Jim."

I love Elie Saab like nobody's business, but just once, I would like to see him take a risk and stop putting out what are effectively the same gowns season after season. His idea of mixing it up seems to be trading in a periwinkle for a lavender.

Elie Saab always looks terrible straight off the rack on more full-figured women, but he tailors really well. I think it was Emily Blunt who wore an off-the-rack gown of his not too long ago where she looked like sausage, and it's not even as if she's the curviest person around, so I have no clue why she didn't get…

Yes, I also remember the Internet from not long ago.

Or any Hampshire College student.

Oh god, you're asking me to mentally dig back to probably 2005 or so. :/ It was a history journal, the author was from Sewanee, some connection to Vanderbilt has also stuck in my mind (co-author?), he used a lot of Census data and there were maps showing breakdowns, I remember clear descriptions of the fully…

This is what I keep thinking. Wouldn't it be better to say "I just wanted some Heisman sympathy votes," which people would actually understand and potentially forgive a dumb young kid for, than to say, "I'm a heartless bastard and an ignorant one at that"?

Oh, interesting. I thought they were the same thing.

Sigh.

I cannot begin to tell you how much time I have spent trying to track that article down again. I read it probably five years ago and wish so badly that I could remember the author's name. Plugging "North," "south," and "manners" into JSTOR doesn't really get you far.

Different people, different experiences, I guess. I am aware of the diversity of the South, but in my travels there (and in looking at Census data), it seems like the white and black populations rarely live together in the same neighborhoods? I get the impression there are more concrete enclaves for each. Again,…

I read these comments specifically to see if someone mentioned LJ! I hadn't posted in forever until going back to it in December, and now my Friends page (do the kids still call them f-lists?) is getting really active again. It's like there's this sudden burst of journaling nostalgia going on, and I love it.

Will her campaign also be sponsored by Nacho Cheese Doritos?

My experience is that racism in the South is more overt, whereas in the North, people find ways to "hide" it through more subtle expression. It's equally problematic in both places...it's just a matter of how it's demonstrated.

Oh man, this always ends up being me when I travel down South. I'm always the weirdo New Englander in jeans and t-shirts, and the fact that I don't own makeup and never style my hair makes it worse.

I read this really fantastic article years ago which I can NEVER find now, but it was by a professor from Sewanee and it explained how Northern and Southern concepts of polite vs. rude evolved.

See also: Cotillions. What's up with those things? NYC is an aberration in this respect, and most of the International Debutante Ball girls are from Southern or foreign families anyway. I've been fascinated by cotillion culture ever since I walked into a ball by accident while staying at a hotel in Mississippi and…