3.05.2007

Of Democrats and Dialect

This weekend in Selma Alabama while commemorating the Selma March Barack Obama, who is as southern as I am, increasingly picked up the cadences of a evangelist preacher. Hillary sounded like an alternating mix of Foghorn Leghorn, Rosanne and Nell. I was forced to relive this inexplicably asinine behavior repeatedly while listening to NPR gush at Hillary and Barak’s thoughtfulness and political acumen for using tragedy opportunistically while running errands this weekend. Over and over I wondered why southern black people don’t feel slighted when people who don’t typically talk like them start doing a bad MLK or Mammy impression. If Bush started talking like one of the Mario Brother’s when addressing the Order Sons of Italy in America, delivered a speech pronouncing his “W’s” as “V’s” when addressing Germans in Milwaukee or larding up a town hall meeting with “you betcha’s” with a clothes-pin on his nose in Brainerd would people hoot and holler in appreciation? Probably not. People would probably rationally assume the man was brain damaged or an unbelievable fraud.