Hoosiers

Friday night after Sir left, I was flipping through TV channels and I started watching "Oh Baby...Now What?", this crazy A&E special about a couple who was breaking up until they found out they were about to have a baby together. It was messed up!!!! Though these people were mid/late-20s, I don't really think they were ready at all to be parents, but that is not the point of this post. The show was taped in LA, where these people lived. When the father-to-be's roommate (who didn't like the mother) heard that the mother was thinking about going on welfare after she had the baby, she said it was, "Really Hoosier-ish." ???? That really puzzled me because I thought that using the word Hoosier to mean white trash was only a St. Louis colloquialism. (In fact, Sir has a very detailed explanation about why this came to be. I don't know if he is right, but it is very interesting.) Then, about an hour later in the show, the father-to-be mentions in conversation that he is from Missouri. Also, he and his roommate, who didn't seem to ever have been romantically involved, had lived in the same place together for three years. My guess is that they both moved to LA together from the St. Louis area to be actors, or she just picked up this specific usage of the word from having lived with someone from Missouri for so long. But it is still very weird.