I have a letter published in Camille Paglia's Salon column this week. (She's devoting every third column to reader mail.) It's probably suscription-only but here's the link. I was responding to an erroneous statement by another reader of hers, who claimed that George W. Bush (the Pres) had only lived in Texas beginning in high school (and a Houston suburban school at that) and therefore wasn't a true Texan. I thought it was widely known that Bush had grown up in Midland (my home town, too, till age 16). Midland is more cosmopolitan than surrounding towns such as Kermit or Notrees because of oil money but it's always been an arch-conservative bastion. Bush didn't just go native, he was born native.
Update, 2012: A commenter corrected both Paglia and me that Bush wasn't born in Midland. But he did grow up there, which was the point. Here's a comment I posted to that thread several years late:
Very late correction to my letter posted above: George W. Bush was born in New Haven CT but raised in Midland TX and later Houston (I said he was born in Midland - whoops). Since the substance of my letter was about his upbringing and not his first two years as a baby in Connecticut, am not sure why commenter E. Seco is so irate about the goof. (A friend googled "camille paglia" "tom moody" and Seco's gripe came up -- not my letter or this column.)