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‘White Lotus’ Takes On Touchy Subjects. The Southern Accent Is One of Them.

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‘White Lotus’ Takes On Touchy Subjects. The Southern Accent Is One of Them.

The third season of “The White Lotus” began with gunfire bursting through a lush resort in Thailand. But viewers with affection for a certain region of the United States perked up a little later in the episode, as a privileged, preppy family from North Carolina arrived by boat.

“We flew over the North Pole!”

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Right then, Victoria sent an unmistakable signal: “The White Lotus” was taking on the Southern accent.

Or at least that’s what many viewers assumed, judging by the intense response — including many, many memes on social media — that has only grown with each episode. The commentary has focused on whether the accents concocted by Ms. Posey and the actor playing her husband, Jason Isaacs, credibly passed as those of well-to-do (and entirely self-absorbed) tourists from Durham, N.C. — or whether this was yet another atrocious attempt by Hollywood to replicate a Southern dialect.

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A torturous track record of accents in movies and television has fostered a reflexive skepticism. Some viewers from the South have said that, at least initially, “The White Lotus” had just that effect on them. But it largely didn’t last, especially when it came to Ms. Posey’s performance. Viewers delighted over her pronunciations — “tsunami,”

“What was that?” her character asks. “That was a convention for con men and tax cheats.”

Was her accent a knowing and loving tribute to colorful Southern women? Perhaps. Campy? Undoubtedly. The performance was nevertheless hailed as a work of modern art. “Hang her accent in the Louvre!” one person suggested on social media. Another said Ms. Posey’s ties to Laurel, Miss., came shining through.

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“If you were to put a bunch of lorazepam in the food at the country club in Laurel at lunch, that’s exactly what everybody would sound like an hour later,” said Landon Bryant, a resident of Laurel who has sought to demystify the South on Instagram and in a book, “Bless Your Heart: A Field Guide to All Things Southern,” released this week.

Accuracy and authenticity are very much judged by the ear of the beholder and are difficult, if not impossible, to rate by an objective standard. Even so, plenty of Southerners have been eager to give it a shot.

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Lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug, seems to be having a moment, thanks to Ms. Ratliff’s frequent mentions, where her accent dances along the open vowels.

I don’t even have my Lorazepam
Don’t worry I took a Lorazepam
You should’ve taken my Lorazepam

“Everybody has a right to be an expert about how they speak,” said Elisa Carlson, a dialect coach in Atlanta. “Your speech is personal. It’s intellectual. It’s social.”

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The discussion around “The White Lotus” has brought out how accents are quite malleable, reflecting how new generations and new residents can bend dialects in unexpected ways. It has also been a reminder of how hard it can be to hear how you sound — or how others think you sound — played back at you. Southerners are painfully aware that the way they speak often conjures negative connotations in pop culture, like ignorance or prejudice.

“It’s not about the Southern dialect, per se — it’s what the Southern dialect represents for Southerners,” said Walt Wolfram, a linguistics professor at North Carolina State University.

Of course, Southerners do not have a monopoly on feeling sensitive and even defensive about how their accents are portrayed (People from Bah-ston, for instance, have been known to have similar reactions).

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But portrayals of Southerners have a particularly long and gnarled track record. Many from the region can instantly name a performance they remember as especially egregious.

In promotional interviews, actors on “The White Lotus” said that Mike White, the writer and director of the series, had encouraged them to draw inspiration from “Southern Charm,” a long-running Bravo reality series based in Charleston, S.C. Mr. Isaacs has said he had studied Thomas Ravenel, who appeared on the show for five seasons, as the actor shaped his character, Timothy Ratliff, a scion of a prominent political family who unravels while vacationing with his wife and children.

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Timothy dips into his wife’s lorazepam supply, unable to face the potential fallout from financial misdeeds that his family apparently knows nothing about.

“I am a pillar of the community,” he tells two strangers, wallowing in self-pity. “My grandfather was the governor of North Carolina. My father was a very, very, very successful businessman.”

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Mr. Ravenel said in an interview that he was unaware of this when he started watching the third season.

“This sounds very familiar,” he said, recalling watching Mr. Isaacs’s performance. “But once everyone started making a big to-do about it, then I said, ‘That’s not me.’”

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Jason Isaacs as Timothy Ratliffe

Oh just just a few months in prison?

Thomas Ravenel

As a part of the plea agreement, I had to resign from office.

He said he thought Ms. Posey’s muse was much clearer: “More so she sounds like Pat than he sounds like me.”

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Pat is Patricia Altschul, a socialite who is the soul, if not the star, of “Southern Charm.”

She was not entirely thrilled by the comparison to Ms. Posey’s Victoria.

“I was flattered at first,” said Ms. Altschul, who credits her own lilt to an upbringing in Virginia. “But now, you know, she’s on pills and he’s a sketchy businessman with a gun. So, I’m not quite sure to what extent we should be flattered.”

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Parker Posey as Victoria Ratliffe

You’re all gorgeous and you come from money.

Patricia Altschul

well educated, charming, attractive

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Ms. Posey has talked about why the accents of Southern women are irresistible to her as an actress. An “emphasis on feeling,” she has said. A musicality. An ability to make the mundane sound dramatic.

“It has this power,” she said in a recent television interview, “and you can’t knock it down.”

In truth, there is no single Southern accent, but rather a regionwide buffet of twangs and drawls. In an interview, Mr. Isaacs said he went for a precise accent from Durham — “It’s not just North Carolina,” he told Esquire — which stumped quite a few people in the city who weren’t aware there even was a Durham accent. (Dr. Wolfram, the linguistics professor at N.C. State, said there was not.)

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Some in Durham pointed out they are as likely to hear Spanglish or Hindi as a classic Southern drawl.

“Hell, half your neighbors are from Ohio or New York or New Jersey,” said Garrett Dixon, a native North Carolinian who lives in Durham and works in sales.

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Yet some argue that “The White Lotus” has not simply repurposed a tired, clichéd perception of Southerners. Instead, they say, it has captured what in many ways feels like a real Southern family in 2025, one confronted by the tensions between past and present that grip the region as a whole.

The fact that the Ratliffs’ three children don’t seem to have accents rings true, for example, as in-migration and the connectedness brought by technology have diminished accents across the South and in other parts of the country, too.

Ms. Altschul thinks the show has exquisitely nailed Southerners of a “certain elevation” — “the way they look, the way they talk, what they talk about,” she said.

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The swagger, the shorts, the sunglasses with the Croakies worn by the oldest son, Saxon, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger: That all checks out. Then, there’s the conniption that Victoria has over her daughter, Piper, announcing her plan to move to Thailand to study Buddhism, during which she refers to Thailand as Taiwan and fears her daughter is joining a cult.

“Don’t look at me like I’m crazy!” she said. “It happens all the time sheltered girls like you are constantly getting brainwashed and turned out!”

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That felt real, too, Mr. Bryant said.

“Very small town, very ‘all that matters is where we are,’” he said. “That’s an attitude you see and feel.”

As the finale nears and viewers spin all sorts of predictions about how it will end, Ms. Altschul doesn’t have a theory so much as a wish: that Victoria turns out to be a villain, but a brilliant one.

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“I’m hoping that she ends up being kind of savvy,” Ms. Altschul said. “Sometimes there’s the equation that if you sound Southern, you sound stupid. I would like to think that that’s not the case.”

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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