Saturday, April 28, 2007

America: Stop Talking about Hillary Clinton's Accent

This is about as fair as it gets in the MSM when it comes to the story about her accent shifting with the audience. Still, the writer has to get a dig in, with this:

"But observers have long noted her tendency to speak Southern primarily in front of black audiences, as she did with Sharpton last week and at a civil rights commemoration in Selma in March.

"All the Democrats are vying for the support of black voters _ a crucial constituency especially in the early voting state of South Carolina. In 2004, black voters comprised nearly 50 percent of the state's Democratic primary turnout.
"


Ah, insinuation: the first, second, and last refuge of the lazy journalist. For what is the typical palaver of the Mr. African-American Everyman if it is not the legacy of the slavery that flourished in the South and the segregation that continued well after the Civil War? There is a reason Al Sharpton does not talk like Mike Bloomberg.

Polyglots unconsciously adopt the speech patterns of whatever linguistic group he/she is conversing with. If anything, Hillary showed an uncalculating empathy, something that she has often been accused of lacking.

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