In Which I Confess I Am a Coastal Elite Looking Down on the Crazy White People of Flyover States
By 
I have no idea what goes on in Arkansas except for white people voting for Donald Trump. And I guess my contempt for them is why they vote Trump instead of their racism. But I don’t care. Because I have no other way to process this.
An Arkansas couple who once ate at Olive Garden daily for nearly seven weeks plans to name their first child, due in December, Olivia Garton.
Justin and Jordan Garton, of Fort Smith, are Arkansas natives who grew up going to Olive Garden.
“I’m only the third generation on my dad’s side to be born in America,” said Jordan Garton, 26. “I just love Italian food and growing up in Arkansas that’s pretty much one of the only Italian places that we ever got to go.”
In 2015, shortly after they got married, the Gartons purchased a “never ending pasta pass” from Olive Garden. The $100 pass allows customers to have unlimited pasta and Coca-Cola soft drinks at their local Olive Garden for a limited time.
“We committed to eating there every day for six or seven weeks to get our money’s worth,” said Justin Garton, 28, an actor who works in a furniture store to make ends meet. “It saved us several hundred dollars when we really needed it.”
When Jordan Garton became pregnant with the couple’s first child, they immediately looked to give their daughter a name with Italian origins.
They passed on naming her Olive Garton, figuring it would be too much of a pun, even for them, and feared their daughter would be bullied.
When they looked into the name Olivia, they both said they knew “immediately” that was the one.
Look, there is plenty to be sympathetic with here. They made a long term investment in a restaurant so they could go out and save money. And lord knows the Italian food in Fort Smith or the entire Arkansas-Oklahoma borderlands region cannot be good. But c’mon. Naming your kid after Olive Garden? As a coastal elite, I am constitutionally required to laugh at this. I’m sure I’ve just created another generation of angry Trump voters.