Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit

He's six foot one way, two foot the other
And he weighs three hundred pounds
His coat's so big, he couldn't pay the tailor
And it won't go halfway round

— Description of a slaveowner from Kingdom Coming, Henry Clay Work

Like Dastardly Whiplash, this is an oddly specific character. Often a villain, or at the very least extremely shady, the Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit is where the Small-Town Tyrant intersects with the Villainous Glutton. They are always obese. They always speak with a strong Southern accent, normally an upper-class drawl. They are almost always dressed in a white suit, cane optional. If it's not truly white, it'll be pale enough to have the same effect. If it's someplace in the Deep South, like Mississippi or Louisiana, they will be extremely sweaty and constantly dabbing themselves with a handkerchief when not lazily fanning themselves. This is optional in places like Kentucky, but they will occasionally manage to be sweaty even in an Appalachian winter.

The root of the stereotype is in actual Southern fashions, combined with negative stereotypes of plantation owners. The white suit was an enduring Southern fashion down to the '70s, and can still be seen to this day because the South is hot, not to mention humid. The best such suits were made of linen, which is naturally moisture-wicking and highly thermally conductive; the next-best quality was seersucker, a cotton weave in which most of the cloth stays away from the skin. (Seersucker suits are fashionable to this day in Washington, D.C., which is very much a part of the South's subtropical climate zone.) Being white meant that the suit reflected light, and so didn't get hot as fast as other fabrics; it also allowed its wearer to show off that he didn't have to do anything that would get his clothing dirty.

Historical figures who sported the Southern white suit included Mark Twain and Colonel Harland Sanders, but neither of them were particularly fat nor particularly villainous, unless in the latter's case you asked the chickens. Mark Twain's satires of Southern aristocracy might have been the Trope Codifier here.

The villainous version is a shameless glutton; the usual objects of his gluttony are mainstream Southern foods (sweet, fatty dishes which originated in the wet, cold, rainy Scottish Lowlands, and were definitely not adapted to suit the wet, hot, rainy Southern ones), but he's often found in association with gumbo, suggesting that he may have Cajun origins.

He occasionally has Jabba Table Manners and often has a careless, laid-back manner. He's probably Nouveau Riche and quite possibly a Small-Town Tyrant; he's almost certainly not an aristocratic, genteel, warlike Southern Gentleman.

He might be rich by anyone's standards, or he might just be better off than the rural poverty that surrounds him. One way or the other, he can afford very large quantities of very good food, and it's not at all unlikely that he gets the money from being part of, or the leader of, a corrupt local government.

One occasionally sees an uncorrupt or out-and-out heroic character of this sort. They sometimes sell food; at other times, they, like the Southern Gentleman, are lawyers.

For non-fat, non-sweaty, non-Southerners who may have a different set of villainous characteristics, see Villain in a White Suit. For Southerners too blue-blooded to sweat, see Southern Gentleman. For characters who are more powerful and even less genteel, see Small-Town Tyrant (remembering that there's a lot of overlap). For villains who eat a great deal, Southern or not, see Villainous Glutton. And for other stereotypes of the obese, compare and contrast Fat Bastard, Fat Idiot, and Fat Slob.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A Little Caesar's Pizza commercial for its bacon-wrapped pepperoni pizza features the Simple Country Lawyer variant who would like to reassure the audience that having that much bacon on one pizza is "perfectly legal."
• A series of commercials for Roomaire (No Sweat!) air conditioners in the mid-1980s used a typical country song playing on midwestern and southern stereotypes this way. "The big fat sheriff was heard to mutter/ If it don't cool off, I'll turn to butter."

Films — Animation

• Layton T. Montgomery (played by John Goodman), the attorney defending the honey industry from Barry's lawsuit in Bee Movie.
• "Big Daddy" Labouff from The Princess and the Frog, also played by John Goodman, is a rare positive example. He's a Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit and a bit of a glutton, but a pretty Nice Guy: a Doting Parent, immensely Nice to the Waiter, and popular enough to be elected King of Mardi Gras five years in a row. Goodman seems to like this role.

Films — Live-Action

• Senator Seabright "Sebe" Cooley of South Carolina in Advise & Consent, although he's more wily and shrewd than villainous.
• One shows up in Angel Heart. He gets his head boiled in gumbo.
• Davido, the greedy building developer from (the live-action part of) Arthur and the Invisibles. What he's truly after is the treasure hidden by Arthur's grandfather in the world of the Minimoys.
• CJ Ramage III from Blackstock Boneyard is the white suit-clad mayor of a South Carolina town and an over-the-top racist who is constantly shown publicly disparaging Black people.

• Casablanca isn't set in the American South, and Signor Ferrari is a suave Italian, but he otherwise fits the description quite well.
• Constantine (2005): The personification of Lucifer. Complete with Louisiana accent and white suit, which should be noted, is missing shoes, so you can see filth literally dripping off of his bare feet. Probably hot tar or pitch — which sort of makes sense.
• Parodied in Doctor Detroit, in which Clifford pretends to be an example of this trope in order to curry favor with a judge who is an actual example.
• Sheriff Bess is this in A Face in the Crowd. He doesn't have the white suit on when we see him, but we can assume he has one.
• Freedom on My Mind: A stock footage newsreel shows a fat double-chinned sheriff in a white shirt blocking entrance to a county courthouse where voter registrations are accepted. This causes a moment of conflict between the white and black civil rights activists. The white kids from all over Yankeeland laugh at the stereotypical newsreel. The black activists who are native to Mississippi get angry, pointing out that this is all deadly serious.
• Guns, Girls and Gambling: Powers Boothe isn't especially fat, but everything else about the The Rancher fits the bill: he is a Small-Town Tyrant who controls everything not on the reservation and dresses in a white suit and cowboy hat.
• In JFK, John Candy portrays Real Life New Orleans defense attorney Dean Andrews this way.
• Life (1999) features at least three examples. Two are prison wardens, the first of whom fits the trope to a T. The second warden is identical in appearance but a much more decent human being. A minor but eventually important villain at the beginning of the film also shows that fat, sweaty, white-bedecked Southern bastards aren't exclusively white.

• The Muppet Movie: Doc Hopper, the owner of Doc Hopper's French-Fried Frog Legs is fat, Southern, and wears a white suit. He also tries to force Kermit to advertise his restaurant, resorting to attempting both brainwashing and murder when he refuses.
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Governor Pappy O'Daniel. Corrupt, but in a self-interested, neutral way. Also, John Goodman plays a straighter, evil example, as a shady bible salesman/Klansman who beats the heroes senseless with a tree branch and steals their money. The Real Life Pappy O'Daniel is not an example, however.
• Although the main villain from Overdrawn at the Memory Bank has based himself on a character from Casablanca, he still belongs to this trope, particularly when it comes to his constant eating and his Faux Affably Evil personality.
• The John Sayles movie Passion Fish kinda-sorta averts this, or maybe deconstructs it. A Fat, Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit shows up at one point, but he's the main character's gay cousin (who else wears a white suit nowadays?) and the two of them spend a delightful evening drinking heavily and trading family stories.
• The Big Bad of Prime Cut is an overweight, psychopathic lookalike to Boss Hogg.
• An ancillary character in Psycho, a customer at the realty office Marion works for. He flirts outrageously with her and ostentatiously pays for his tens-of-thousands-of-dollars purchase in cash ("Never carry more than I can afford to lose!"), which sets off the plot.
• Senator Raymond Clark in Seven Days in May is a non-villainous example of the trope.
• Tales from the Hood 2: Minus the fat and sweaty parts, William Cotton sports one, and jokes about how Henry would have been serving the party in the good ol' days, rather than hosting it.
• South American variant in That Man from Rio. As Adrian is shining a shoeshine kid's shoes (not having any money for the kid doing his), a fat guy in white brushes the kid aside to get his own shoes done. Adrian polishes his white shoes black, and, of course, he can't see his own shoes.
• The Waterboy: One of Bobby's professors — so much so that Bobby calls him Colonel Sanders. He isn't evil so much as a Butt-Monkey, and he quickly finds out the hard way that you don't make fun of Mama.

Literature

• Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces actually aspires to this.
• Elemental Assassin: Captain Wayne Stephenson is a Dirty Cop who is constantly dabbing away sweat with a handkerchief. In Spider's Bite, he shows up at a formal fundraiser wearing a white suit.

• A horror story "The Suit" by G.W. Thomas had the white suit be a Clingy Costume; its overweight Southern owner is promised wealth and power if he keeps feeding the suit with his own fat. Problem is the suit's hunger exceeds his intake of food.

Live-Action TV

• "Boss" Jefferson Davis Hogg, from The Dukes of Hazzard. Possibly the Trope Codifier.
• On Good Eats, Alton has an uncle (actually Alton in a costume) who wears a white suit (although he isn't fat or abnormally sweaty), since he's supposed to be a parody of Col. Sanders. He usually shows up when the recipe in question is distinctly Southern (such as fried catfish).
• In the Horrible Histories sketch about Harriet Tubman, she has to hide from one of these — he's stupid enough for her to do so easily.
• In MADtv (1995) the recurring character Son of Dolemite's Arch-Enemy is the fat, sweaty white Sheriff.
  "Kill that boy! Kill 'em dead!"
• Magic City: Florida State Senator Ned Sloat represents Northern Florida. The more north you go in Florida, the more Southern you get.
• Matlock: Ben Matlock has the suit, is a bit on the large side, and sweats a lot, but he's the protagonist and his clients are always innocent. He can be really terrifying when he harangues the witness though.
• Mission: Impossible: Jake Morgan, the villain in "Bayou", is a fat, sweaty southerner in a white suit who runs a white slavery ring.
• Ray Ray (who is skinny) and Randy (who is not) as "The Man" in My Name Is Earl.
  The Man: "YOU! Back of the bus!"

Music

• The lead singer of the Serbian turbofolk metal band Pero Defformerocultivates this image◊, as a parody of the group of Balkan music genres turbofolk belongs to, in which male artists often exhibit a Southeastern European version of the trope.

Pro Wrestling

• Gary Hart (no relation to the Hart Family or Jimmy Hart), a prominent wrestling personality in the South during the territorial days, did the Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit routine.
• Although Ernie Ladd wasn't fat, he did have some of the mannerisms. Southern accent, intensely classist and racist, and when doing interviews, he sometimes donned white or otherwise pastel suits.

• Jim Cornette, who didn't like working people or women and (at the very least) was very unconscious or apathetic to the concerns of black people, and often wore a white suit. But he didn't get fat until a fall from a scaffold busted his knees.

Theatre

• Some productions of Finian's Rainbow make Senator Rawkins look this way, though it isn't indicated in the script and doesn't follow Original Cast Precedent.

Video Games

• Hitman:
  • Skip Muldoon of Blood Money is the captain of a luxury Mississippi riverboat, drug smuggler, and Depraved Bisexual with an emphasis on the depraved. His half-brother, John "Pappy" Le Blanc, is the paranoid, senile, and dangerously rich head of the drug cartel that Skip worked for.
  • Subverted with Blake Dexter, the Big Bad of Absolution. He has the girth, suit, drawl and attitude down to a T, but he's actually a midwesterner from South Dakota. It's very obvious that Dexter and his cowboy hat-wearing cronies were originally meant to be Texan, but for whatever reason, this was changed sometime before release.
• While he's not fat, Emile Dufraisne from Splinter Cell: Double Agent otherwise fits this trope.
• The villain of The Adventures of Bayou Billy is one of these. He kidnaps Billy's girlfriend Annabelle and takes her to his estate just outside The Big Easy, and Billy has to go on a very difficult adventure to rescue her.

Web Original

• In reaction to Tariq Nasheed's controversial documentary Buck Breaking, right-wing memers began crafting memes featuring Pepe the Frog as a fat sweaty southerner in a white suit to make fun of it. This is a relatively inoffensive example, most of them are much worse.

Western Animation

• Mayor Toadstool of Amphibia doesn’t wear the white suit but qualified in all the other ways including being a Corrupt Politician (though he mellows by the second season).
• Batman: The Animated Series: In "The Forgotten", homeless people are being kidnapped and forced to work in a mine run by one of these types, pictured above complete with a piece of fried chicken and a fan. (All he lacked was a Southern accent.)
• Mr. Fishchoder (who even has a white Eyepatch of Power) from Bob's Burgers, minus the fat part.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Piggish villain Hoggish Greedley usually prefers the army fatigue look, but appears in a white suit on occasion. He has a grandfather, Don Porkaloin, who plays this trope to the hilt.

• Codename: Kids Next Door: Jimmy Nixon McGarfield, the Fourth Grade President-for-Life, is a tween example. He starts out with the typical white suit, but gets a black one once he's officially a villain.
• Big Boss, the main villain of C.O.P.S. (1988), minus the Southerner part.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Doug Dimmadome, owner of the Dimmsdale Dimmadome and several other buildings and companies in Dimmsdale, and the richest and most powerful man in the city. Based on his mannerisms and Western attire, he is most likely a parody of American businessman William Randolph Hearst.
• Peter Griffin briefly becomes one for the sake of a cutaway in the Family Guy episode "Start Me Up".
• Futurama:
  • Parodied with the anthropomorphic chicken lawyer.
  • Played straight in the Atlantic episode with a Fat Southern Merman in a white suit.
• Gravity Falls has Gideon Gleeful. He's ten years old and his suit is baby blue, but he's chubby, pig-like, has an impressive Southern drawl, is a Small-Town Tyrant and a villain through and through.
• Hose of the Guapo Brothers in The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show qualifies.
• One episode of Saturday Supercade, the Donkey Kong cartoon "Mississippi Madness" has someone named Colonel Culpepper as the main antagonist, who plans to steal a jewel.
• The Simpsons:
  • The recurring character of the Rich Texan fits the "fat", "southerner", and "in a white (or, at least, light tan) suit" elements of the trope, though he isn't commonly shown to be sweaty or gluttonous. He is very rich and occasionally somewhat shady.
  • Homer is definitely trying for the look when he restyles himself as "Colonel Homer", manager of Lurleen Lumpkin in the third-season episode of the same name. He brings the suit out again in Season 19's "Papa Don't Leech" when Lurleen returns to Springfield.
  • Also played with in the episode "Bart the Fink", in which the IRS is investigating Krusty the Klown's offshore accounts and a Fat Sweaty Cayman Islander in a White Suit answers the phone:
    Fat Sweaty Guy: [laughs] Ho ho, I'm sorry. I can't divulge information about that customer's secret, illegal account. [hangs up] Oh, crap, I shouldn't have said he was a customer. Oh, crap! I shouldn't have said it was a secret. OH, CRAP! I certainly shouldn't have said it was illegal! Eh, it's too hot today. [fans himself]

• "Mayored to the Mob": Homer trains to become Mayor Quimby's bodyguard by going to Leavelle's Bodyguard Academy, where Leavelle (Mark Hamill) is this trope. Judging by his accent, he seems to be from Texas.

• "The Monkey Suit": During the trial against Lisa and evolution, Ned has an overweight Simple Country Lawyer named Wallace Brady (guest-starred by Larry Hagman) at his side. The guy opposes Lisa and greatly supports creationism, calling evolution a load of "Hollywood hooey", not to mention he's not afraid of manipulating the audience at the courtroom with a cute baby deer (Bambi apparently) by claiming evolution is what allowed humans to kill his mother, with the intent of siding people against Lisa. Brady also sees no problem whatsoever with sending an eight-year-old girl straight to jail if it means teaching religion at schools.
• "Love, Springfieldian Style": Wiggum himself gets a related classic line, after watching a racially insensitive cartoon: "Even I find this offensive, and I'm a fat Southern sheriff!"

• The father of the alligator Southern Belle sisters from Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation. Voiced by Boss Hogg (Sorrell Booke) himself, no less.
• The Venture Bros.: Tiny Attorney, another heroic example. Bonus points are awarded for simultaneously being a Simple Country Lawyer.

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