The cover of the New Yorker for July 22, 1996, depicts a Georgia pig farmer holding an Olympic torch. In the summer of 1996 more than 2 million tourists flocked to Atlanta to attend the Centennial Olympic Games. For decades the city, known as both the capital of a romanticized Old South and an emblem of the business-savvy New South, had struggled with a conflicted identity. Olympic promoters selectively adopted elements of southern identity for the event, fully aware that the Games offered a prime opportunity to sell Georgia to a worldwide audience.
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