What happened in the '80s stayed in the '80s, right?
Acid-washed jeans, shoulder pads, big hair, leg warmers - we haven't seen those for a while. And for most people, it was good riddance.
This week, though, a yearbook photo from 1980 resurrected a fashion Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee thought he had put in the past - a Confederate Army-style uniform he wore for what looked like an "Old South" party at Auburn University.
Also this week, videos surfaced from the 1980s of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, a declared 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, extolling the Soviet Union, praising bread lines there and boosting Marxist governments in Nicaragua and Cuba.
So at least two things from the '80s didn't stay there. What's the difference in the two?
Lee, who graduated from Auburn, went on to take over his family's business, expand it, get involved in missions and mentoring, and wanted to give something back to the state he says has been so good to him and to his family.
He does not hold now, nor did he then, any racial animus. The uniform, from all that can be understood, apparently was proper dress for a fraternity party. Nevertheless, he now says he can "see that participating in that was insensitive, and I've come to regret it."
Sanders?
He still refers to himself as a democratic socialist, has not apologized for his praise of regimes that slaughtered innocent millions and would like to govern as a Marxist, taking from those who have and giving to those who don't.
Indeed, Sanders refused this week to label Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who has helped run his once prosperous country into the ground, a dictator. And he refused to endorse Juan Guaidó, who would have been the likely winner if the country's recent election were fair and who is supported by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Vermont senator is still the same man who praised oppressive dictatorships nearly 40 years ago. Lee is not the same man who once donned a Confederate uniform for a party. There is a difference.