“I figured I’d better wait awhile to see if y’all would settle down and get back to doing what you do best: aggravating people, but not insulting them.”

It turns out that it would have been easier to quit the Mafia. We’re referring to our attempt to place a little time and distance between our current work and the now-infamous Winter 2002 cover photo of a bare-bellied Britney Spears. Not that we mind entirely, of course. But since the pop diva’s navel graced our pages—over a year ago—we’ve published essays and articles about re-fighting the Civil War, the songs of the South, Jackie Robinson’s breakthrough into baseball, southern religions, the Confederate Flag controversy, the Neshoba County Fair, Robert E. Lee’s inner battles, the Father of the Blues and the search for his soul, the investigation into a missing ghost ship’s crew, the dying art of deer-driving, and many, many other topics. And what do our readers have to say about all this? Well, not nearly as much as they have to say about Britney. If she’s on your minds, though, she’s on ours, too.