I had no idea the regional (if not party) alienation was so bad from the northern perspective, Liza, is it? I'm down here and FROM here, where the last 40 years have felt very different to me but most assuredly quite American, and where never is heard a discouraging word, not at funerals anyway . . .

p.s. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this startling (to me) analysis of national politics: Ford was a Michigan man, right? Can't get much further north that that and still be American. And if Ford hadn't been named as VP to follow Nixon (himself a California man) the other Agnew replacement candidates were Rockefeller and Reagan, neither from around these parts!

I saw another televised honorary thing for Gerald Ford during the Michigan bowl game, which had me thinking about presidents and college football rivalries rather than regional political animus, and feeling ill-used because my alma mater has no alumni presidents to preen about, at least that I know of.
It certainly didn't occur to me that in so doing, Michigan was dissing me and the entire south, even though their opponent that day was admittedly the University of SOUTHERN. . . California.