SIGH.
I’ve been avoiding writing about this because I’m tired. I am tired and, frankly, more than a little stunned at the total lack of self-awareness on Jonathan Chait’s part. Also, part of me just didn’t want to have to write about this.
But as more time passes, I find myself becoming increasingly irritated. And then it started to eat at me. And now, it’s all I can think about. That’s what happens when there’s something I know that I need to address, but I just can’t bring myself to do it, because really?!
I have to write about it, though. It’s going to bother me until I do. But I can’t do the outrage thing, because I am more disappointed than outraged. I don’t know. Maybe 3.5 years of this shit has made me soft. Like I said, I don’t know.
Accordingly, I’m just going to say the following to Jonathan Chait:
Whether intentional or not, your statement that President Obama sounded angry during the “you didn’t build that” speech heard ’round the world, and that he was talking “not in his normal voice but in a ‘black dialect'” is ridiculously racist. Full stop. I know you were trying, in some twisted way, to defend the president’s statement or to figure out why the right is having such a field day with it. It doesn’t matter. What you said was incredibly offensive.
That you later doubled down and said that President Obama “alter[ed] his normal cadence to more of a black-sounding inflection, and [took] an unusually angry tone” makes your original statement worse.
Your statements promote racist tropes about angry black men. That they do so in an article in which you lament that “race is deeply embedded in American politics in ways conservatives don’t like to acknowledge” is depressingly ironic.
I submit to you, sir, that with these statements in your two posts —
The key thing is that Obama is angry, and he’s talking not in his normal voice but in a “black dialect.” This strikes at the core of Obama’s entire political identity: a soft-spoken, reasonable African-American with a Kansas accent. From the moment he stepped onto the national stage, Obama’s deepest political fear was being seen as a “traditional” black politician, one who was demanding redistribution from white America on behalf of his fellow African-Americans.
and then later:
The trouble with the Obamat clip is that it catches him in a moment, as he occasionally does, when he alters alters his normal cadence to more of a black-sounding inflection, and seems to be telling middle-class Americans they don’t deserve what they have.
— you have demonstrated that race is embedded in American politics in ways that liberals like you don’t like to acknowledge.
[full post here]
Hawes
I read the piece. I don’t think he was saying race wasn’t an issue. I think he was saying that the attack was successful because it used Obama as his own dogwhistle against himself.
I also think Obama spent a great deal of time making sure he doesn’t come across as “the angry black guy” cariactature, precisely because he understands this dynamic.
.
WereBear
Successful in whipping up the base, maybe. Normal people didn’t even notice.
arguingwithsignposts
Really, when it all boils down to it, the only thing that will make that attack successful is if Romney wins in November. Otherwise, it’s another nothingburger on top of a huge stack of nothingburgers in the RW pukefunnel arsenal.
El Cid
Why did this nice Kansas fellow start talking like a Kenyonesian Muslim warrior? Real America needs to know.
Anya
I don’t understand what’s the link between “Obama is angry” and “Obama sounds black,” what ever the fuck that is?
Yutsano
Uhh…wow. I’m shocked he didn’t mention watermelon and fried chicken.
wrb
OOOWWCH
I’ve respected articles that Chiat has written but he just exposed himself in away that should be terminal for his career.
Wow
Increase Mather
Obama sometimes drops his g’s in -ing words. Only black people do that (bad!) an regular folk whites (good!).
jl
@Anya:
Me neither.
I skimmed the silly piece by Chait: don’t think it is worth more time than that.
I do not know how many times I have typed this, and probably other comenters too: it does not make any difference what Obama does. Or Biden. Or Clinton. Or anybody. Give me the man, and I will give you the case, as Beria said.
No matter how Obama said it, there will be an angle. Assertive, charged up and ready to go: angry. (Edit: I think it’s ‘fired up’, though) Very quiet and ‘civil’: inadequate black man in over his head. Add a little pop culture, whether black or youth or whatever: laxy welfare bum, travelling and living in a house on the tax payer dime.
If HRC is soft and understated: you have to wonder whether these wimmins have the balls to run a country, are they assertive enough. Do they pass the ‘assertiveness test’? HRC aggressive: b*tchy b*tch b*tch, castrating b*tch.
Pathetic waste of time by Chait.
Edit: We have SATSQ. Let’s add SPFSP: Stupid Propaganda for Stupid People. That is all you need to say.
Hill Dweller
The attack ads are being completely undermined because the half-wits running Willard’s campaign continue using small business owners that have taken a shitload of money from the government.
Mnemosyne
Also, WTF is this whole “Obama tries to sound like he’s from Kansas” thing? You know where Obama sounds like he’s from? Northeastern fucking Illinois, which is where he’s lived for the past 30+ years.
Jesus fuck. These fucking coastal elites piss me off sometimes when they suddenly decide that Obama is trying to sound like he’s from a place he never lived because they can’t tell the difference between a fucking Kansas accent and a fucking northern Illinois accent.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, here are some recordings of men from Kansas. Note how they don’t fucking sound a thing like Obama, because he doesn’t have a motherfucking Kansas accent.
anthrosciguy
“Why the right is having such a field day with it” is because the right makes up shit at every turn. Why “the attack has been successful” to the extent it has been is that our news media goes along with the right instead of pointing out each and every time that the right is lying when they make this attack. If Chait doesn’t see that after all these years he is a total idiot. Period.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@jl:
Fixed that for you.
Mark S.
Obama has a Kansas accent? Well, it’s on the Internet so it must be true.
Also on the Internet, CNBC calls the election for Romney because of a three day surge on Wall St. The story is based on the musing of one dipshit who works for Morgan Stanley, but it’s probably an alias for Bill Kristol.
gex
@Hill Dweller: It’s like Mitt is going to prove, business by business EXACTLY how government helps make businesses successful. Let the corporate welfare freeloader tour commence!
burnspbesq
@wrb:
Oh, bullshit. Would you consent to be judged by the same standard you are applying to Chait (100 percent perfect 100 percent of the time)?
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
xian
@jl: a thousand times this l, and when the media isn’t pleading for some middle way they too take their potshots either way, as every tough call gores someone’s ox.
jl
@xian:
I have babysat tweener kids, and that has had a profound impact on how I view the US corporate news media celebs, pundits and ‘analysts’.
I charitably assume Chait overslept his nap and had to type something up quick to get in his quota of wisdom for the day.
Twelve year olds can ad lib this crud forever during pushy fights.
Am I bitter? Yes of course. I want a job where I type up juvenile tipsy happy hour beer talk and get paid handsome for it. Oh, the humanity!
Edit: as in ‘He looked at me funny when he apologized. It doesn’t count. That’w why my BFF Bobby hit him!’
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
I don’t think it’s a firing offense, but Chait and every other journalist who claims Obama has a “Kansas” accent should be embarrassed as hell for thinking everyone in the Midwest sounds alike.
Apparently I, too, let my “blackness” show on occasion despite, you know, not actually being black at all, because I have the same accent Obama does (though mine’s a bit modified after my years in So Cal) and have some of the same accent quirks that Chait is trying to claim are specifically “black dialect.”
Not that Obama never has any black dialect moments. He does. But the ones Chait is trying to claim as “black” in that specific speech are the same ones every person in northern Illinois has, and apparently Chait doesn’t realize that people in Illinois don’t sound like people in Kansas.
Steve
I feel like the words exist to convey the thought Chait was trying to express, in an acceptable manner even, but he didn’t really find them.
Having said that, I don’t think there is a whole lot of evidence for the claim that “you didn’t build that” is having a lot of resonance outside the conservative base, much less that it is successfully tapping into subconscious fears of angry black men among, one presumes, the daughters of the suburban housewives who freaked out over Willie Horton.
Having said THAT, “Obama needs to avoid sounding like an angry black man” has always been an overplayed meme, but 90% of the people who say it are Obots.
Roger Moore
@Hill Dweller:
FTFY.
Valdivia
I am so glad you wrote about this. I read it and went huh? And then he uses the wisdom of research done by Republican Operatives to confirm that this is Obama’s worst doom. Ugh.
fraught
@arguingwithsignposts:
This x 3. Did he say a Kansas accent? O doesn’t have a Kansas accent. That’s a Columbia accent. I have one two. It comes from spending years in classrooms listening to professors who studied in every great university in the world, who usually ended up with an Engish- y sort of accent, and then going out on Broadway and hearing every other dialect flying around you endlessly. Your standard English becomes fluid. These other dialects seem to float in and out of your speech. It’s a very appealing quality to have if you’re going to be doing a lot of public speaking. I don’t hear O speaking in a partcularly black dialect. I hear his cadence changes as a way of becoming more intimate with his listeners. And I amost never hear his tone as angry. And, yes, ABL, this sort of intellectualized racism makes me tired too.
jl
@Steve: Yes. I would think the fact that Mitt blatantly lied about what Obama said, and then stole the point Obama was making to bolster his fake moderate cred, just might (work with me here, people) possibly be a more important point to make.
Call me crazy!
I am confident that 73 percent of the population can figure it out on their own and do not require ignorant linguistic analysis of regional dialects from Chait.
Next up: Is Obama genuine reflection of the mixed Afro-American / White Hawaiian Indonesian ex-pat Ivy League Illinois recently transplanted to Tidewater community?
Edit: Me personally, I DO NOT think Obama is, quite frankly. I question his authenticness, and until he can fix it, whatever nasty lies Mitt tells are Obama’s fault. He asked for it.
And to avoid uncivilness, I did not mean to imply that Mitt is a fake moderate. He is just fake, period.
Ed in NJ
If the conventional wisdom is that we are replaying the ’08 election all over again, than this “you didn’t build that” is the ’12 version of “spread the wealth”, complete with pundits declaring that this statement might cost Obama the election. Yet in ’08, the Joe the Plumber was in October, less than a month before the election, and by November, everyone was sick of McCain constantly bringing up the quote. The same will happen here. Romney is going to believe all the right wing b.s. about how this is a game-changing gaffe, focus on it like a laser beam when he gets back from his European nightmare tour, and quickly annoy everyone for the next 3 months, to the point where it will actually hurt Romney.
Medrawt
I’m not commenting on the original clip, or condoning the connection between black and angry. And Obama doesn’t sound like he’s from Kansas (though there’s gotta be more than one Kansas accent). But as noted, he does code-switch, and the register he uses most of the time when speaking in public doesn’t isn’t one that’s particularly marked by African-American speech in Chicago (or anywhere else I happen to be aware of).
(In lieu of saying “I have a black friend so I know these things!” I’ll observe that I work in Chicago, in an office where around half the employees are black. Some of them don’t have a particularly obvious dialect to my ear, some always speak in a way that I think of as characteristic of Chicago [more reminiscent of the South than I’ve heard in Boston or NYC], and most code switch between the two.)
In re: Obama’s most-common way of speaking, I’m reminded of an interview with some blues guitarist who knew Jimi Hendrix, and said he used to make fun of Jimi (from Seattle, and not growing up around Souther accents) for speaking like a white man. People love to talk about accents, and they generally don’t seem to know a thing about them.
Anya
@jl: I usually like Chait, but this was a crime and he should be ashamed of himself.
@Mnemosyne: Obama has a generic American accent. People just like to assign all sorts of crap to him.
Poor Mr. Chait, I think all of 2008, he lived in constant fear that Obama will grabb his crotch and yell, ‘Yo, yo, wat up.’
kc
Wtf? He really wrote that? BLACK DIALECT?
fraught
ETA: Too, not two. Sorry.
Valdivia
@jl:
Also too. totally cosign what you said. Stupid Propaganda for Stupid People. Loves it! :)
ETA: @Anya: lol. Now I have that image of scare Chait. I too like him but this piece was horrid.
Silver
You are Americans. You all sound like fucking morons.
Because 99.9% of you are.
ChrisNYC
I so don’t get this fascination/fear/cringing with “you didn’t build that” on the left. I feel like this is the third or fourth crack at “why it’s working” that I’ve come across. The thing is, it does not appear to be working, since the race has not really moved since the bump the Pres got and retained following the healthcare decision.
Except on maybe Morning Joe where the President is really going to have to spend some time to win those votes of Joe and Willie because they are appalled, I’m sure.
Mr Stagger Lee
Maybe a Hawaiian mixed with a touch of Indonesian, with a sprinkle of Harvard(HahVAHHD), stirred with Chicago,I guess that equals a Kansas Accent. I propose we start drug testing writers, the standards are falling.
jl
Here you go kids:
List of regional dialects of the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_the_English_language#United_States
Please not the highest evolution, the true flower of the English tongue, the only worthy heir of Chaucer and Shakespeare, down at the bottom: California English, myaaaan.
Why doesn’t Obama talk that way. Then he would be authentic. I forgot that to be authentic he needs some mid South Coast CA beach twang in there (The ‘Occi years’ should have left a trace, if he is really who he says he is). I don’t hear it. What a faker that Obama is!
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
I don’t think his accent is “generic” at all — like many of us, it’s a mishmash of various accents from the different parts of the country where he’s lived. The northern Illinois sound is the most prominent because that’s where he lived the longest.
Like I said, this seems to be an East Coast problem — they can find minute differences between the accents they’re familiar with and are incredulous when no one else can tell the difference between, say, a Boston and a Cambridge accent, but they insist that all Midwesterners sound alike, probably because they’ve never actually been to the Midwest.
eemom
Already pegged Chait as an emmessemm hack who occasionally writes a good column. Saw this headline as just another point in the Official Emmessemm Obama vs Romtron Horserace Scorecard and didn’t read it.
I win.
scav
From the excerpts , it sounds like Chiat is mind-melded into the concept of identity and politics being organized around strict and hyperfocused Brand Management rather than a flexible adoption of whatever tools there are needed to get the task at hand done. Well, that and as he can’t really complain about the meal, he’s droning on about minor issues of plating, especially the subtle details of which that impress the judges from Bulgaria, extra-especially the fussy one with the glasses. Well, that and he’s apparently developed ESP into the supposed inner essence, dreams and fears of Obama. Idjit.
gex
Where did Jonathan get his information on “how black people talk” I wonder. Was there some sort of study that I am unaware of? Or is he maybe voicing some of our culture’s racism that has been internalized and normalized by many. Hmm…
Frankensteinbeck
I see what you mean, ABL – or at least, I see something that I think is what you mean. Chait specifically identifies Obama speaking in mildly more energized tone than usual as sounding like an angry black man. That he doesn’t think Obama is worse for that is immaterial. He swallowed the stereotype of what a black man should and shouldn’t sound like whole, so whole that he regurgitated it here even though the difference from Obama’s normal tone is slight. Obama’s normal accent is generically broadcaster, and his cadence is traditional gravitas presidential. That Chait hears Obama add even a small amount of emphasis to that and goes ‘You sound like an angry black man!’ IS the racism, and it’s imprinting a pretty grotesque stereotype over blacks.
MikeJ
@jl:
When I go to work for a new client anywhere in the UK the first thing that always happens is they haul out the person in the office who can do an American accent (to introduce to the American, as you do). It is always, always, a valley girl accent.
jl
@gex:
From TV? That is where I got my idea about how authentic black people talk authentic. Sadly, the actual black people I knew as a kid did not talk that way. I can only conclude that they were inauthentic, or posing, for some sinister purpose. Or whatever gimmick I can come up with to fill a few column inches.
Hill Dweller
OT: Colbert just called Tony Robbins a “goateed Easter Island head”.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
The funny part is, when Obama is actually angry, he’s adopted the Midwestern thing of speaking very. quietly. and. very. precisely.
If you grew up in the Midwest, you know that when your parents start speaking like that, you are in really, really big trouble. I can’t remember when it was, but there was some press conference Obama did when he was really pissed off and I was instinctively looking for cover because he was using that preternaturally calm “You have really fucked up this time” tone that I remember from my Midwestern youth.
But I’m guessing that Chait wouldn’t even recognize that as an angry tone because it’s not part of the dialect he’s used to.
fraught
The comments on the Chait piece are terrifying. And in New York magazine! We’re at the nadir of our culture. O MUST be re-elected. Or else its all over.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Enunciation and the full. middle. name. Worked in CA too, only the parents were Midwestern so I’m probably wildly inauthentic as well.
Anya
@Mnemosyne: What do I know about accents. My dad is from East Africa and my mom is from Beacon Hill. On top of that I grew up in Toronto, so probably without being aware I say: oot and aboot. Having said that, Obama’s accent seems very generic to me. Most Americans who are not southerners of from New Jersey sound like him. Most Americans I hang out with sound like him. My in-laws (native New Yorkers) sound like him.
Spatula
I keep waiting for it but I haven’t seen it: I’ve always thought it was clear to anyone with an unbiased brain that in the “you didn’t build that” speech, BO was referring back to the roads, bridges, infrastructure he had referenced just before saying “if you have a business…”
And I don’t see this point getting made clearly by the Dems.
Also too: BO has a fairly generic but highly educated manner of speaking which he usually employs.
Is anyone really going to deny that in this speech the president is using a slight twang and a faux-folksy way of speaking which involves dropping the “g’s” at the end of words? And that this tendency becomes even more pronounced when speaking to a largely black audience?
That said, who cares? Why is it a bad thing? Fuck what the republicans say.
Just Some Fuckhead
What is with all the angry black people?
Odie Hugh Manatee
I must not be white enough because in that speech Obama sounded like, umm… Obama. Do I need to drink more Clorox to whiten up?
Naah, I’ll stay off-white. :)
@Hill Dweller:
“Tony Robbins hungry!“
catperson
John’s expression of his feelings is charming. Yours just makes me think “narcissist!” I didn’t make it below the jump.
jefft452
“…like many of us, it’s a mishmash of various accents from the different parts of the country where he’s lived”
That is why I sound like Bugs Bunny doing a cheezy JFK impression
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh. Nevermind.
I don’t suppose Romney sounds Messican when he gets his back up?
Spatula
Reflect on this, Juicitariat: How would this comment section react if and when the MittBot begins changing his accent depending on whom he is speaking to?
I think we know: “INAUTHENTIC!” “FAKE!” “POSEUR!” “FLIP FLOP!”
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
I suspect you may not have an ear for American accents since you didn’t grow up here. But I bet you can tell the difference between someone from Toronto and someone from Ottowa in a flash, right?
dead existentialist
@Mnemosyne: Pft. Those people sound nothing like my cousins, who have what I’d call a Kansas twang. It sounds mildly like Southern drawl but is busier. OTOH, I lived down that-away for three years of my life (in the central part of the state) and people there do sound like our President.
And to Imani @ top: When the man gets down to basics, he does tend to do a black preacher thing. Polite company might refer to it as a rhetorical device. “Dog whistle”? Uh, what shall we call Crazy Uncle Joe when he goes full-on, passionate “Scrantonese”?
Bloggers get to type on their keyboards in the privacy of their homes. Politicos have to speak to crowds and fire ’em up. Language is a funny beast, ain’t it?
texascowgirl
WTF? Angry=black. Got it.
Fuck this guy, whoever he is.
Just Some Fuckhead
Romney: Yo mane, you deed not beeld dat. My homeys beelded dat.
jl
@Valdivia: Authenticity pop quizz! You’re up, Valdi.
Unless Mnemosyne is still around. She should be challenge.
Or, that coot Stuck ‘n’ Feathers around?
I myself am authentic by definition, and the one true judge, it is a given. For, I am the pundit!
Spatula
I grew up in Kansas. Most people sound midwest/generic with a BIG exception: Farmers and ranchers and their peeps. That’s where you git lotsa twangin and g-droppin and what not and such.
It’s pretty much a country music pose thing.
texascowgirl
The trouble with the Obama clip is that it catches him in a moment, as he occasionally does, when he alters alters his normal cadence to more of a black-sounding inflection, and seems to be telling
middle-class Americanswhite people they don’t deserve what they have.Another Halocene Human
@Mark S.: Whoa, did the weather suck at the Hamptons this year and the MOTUs cut their vaycays short?
Anya
@Mnemosyne: Like all Americans, all we did was hang out with other Americans. So, not really.
Can you tell the difference between someone from Toronto and someone from Michigan?
Donut
@Spatula:
Spatula is maybe DougJ. The “also too” that leads off paragraph three is the tell. And if it’s not Doug, it’s definitely a spoof. No one, and I mean no one, who actually votes Republican starts paragraphs with “also too”. That is a liberal blogger thang only.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I should be “challenge”? How many + are you? And on a weeknight, too. For shame. ;-p
I have a halfway decent ear for accents, but I’m no expert. Terry Gilliam probably has my all-time favorite accent — he still sounds 90 percent Californian, but uses British idioms. Always cracks me up.
Lars H
@wrb: If his cheerleading in the runup to the Iraq War didn’t cost Chait his career, this certainly won’t.
Another Halocene Human
@Anya: If bopping, zoot suit Obama did not exist, we would have to invent him.
The thought of Chait peeing his pants about that in 2008 is soooo very funny and tells me that he didn’t know Obama very well if he thought there was a non-zero chance of that happening. And it’s so very funny when so many voters (obviously not the Very Serious People who count) would have welcomed President Samuel_Jackson_playing_any_famous_role_except_Mace_Windu.
The Other Chuck
I don’t know what Obama was trying to sound like, but I think Chait was trying desperately to sound smart, relevant, insightful, or something. And whiffed on everything but “or something”.
Hey Chait? You don’t know shit about linguistics, accents, dialects, black people, political motivations, or apparently much of any god damned thing at all if this is all you’ve got to write about. Stop digging.
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
Sometimes, but, like I said, I have a bit of an ear for accents. (The dead giveaway is always “aboot.” I’ve had so many Canadians accidentally out themselves that way …)
I’m no Meryl Streep, I can’t “do” an accent to save my life, but I can hear fairly small differences pretty well.
Spatula
@Donut:
Donut, um, what gives you the idea I’m a freaking republican?
Just Some Fuckhead
So, beins how it’s entirely possible Obama didn’t actually encounter a real live Person Of The Dialect until he arrived in Chicago as an adult, where do you think he learned to speak this way?
I’m positing Bill Ayers and other members of the Weather Underground forced him to sit through episodes of What’s Happenin’ between communist indoctrination sessions. As evidence, I point you to how eerily similar he and Rog sound when Rog is yelling at Dee and Obama is yelling at Republicans.
cinesimon
I’ve found Chait to be extremely racist when he’s typing without reflecting on how it’ll make him look.
Especially when it comes to Arabs. Regardless of where on the planet the Arabs happen to be.
He’s no different to the hard right when it comes to the middle east – so it’s no surprise that his bigotry occasionally crosses the border.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: Most Americans don’t have a good ear for American accents. How many people who aren’t from California can tell the difference between someone from the Bay Area and someone from LA?
Another Halocene Human
@Silver: Be that as it may, it’s our 99th percentile you have to worry about, ain’t it?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
What’s all of this Kansas nonsense? The man grew up on the mean, mean streets of Honolulu (with a stint in Jakarta from ’67-’71).
Groucho48
Obama does tend to drawl a bit when he is trying to be more folksy. I never thought of that being his talking black, as none of the black folks I know have a drawl like that.
I think he knows he can come across as a bit too formal when he talks and he deliberately tries to talk in a less formal way when it is appropriate.
jl
@Anya: As a native true born and bred Californian, those Fresno accent people really piss me off. I won’t even talk about Bakersfielders trying to pass.
I was in a bar down by Wasco awhile back and this Redding trucker said to some gal, ‘you are swell and fine.’
She didn’t hear him so I said “He said you are swine”. So she slapped him.
And you know, it was his fault. The Redding guy, when he gets smitten with some chick at a bar tries to hawk himself off as a Porterville dude, for genuine CA country cred, probably unconsciously, but still, it was his fault.
He should be more careful when he talks, and meet my stereotypes more than half way. Actually all the way or its his fault.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@
SpatulaTimmeh:The pedo bit of yours is a dead giveaway.
Anya
@Mnemosyne: Torontonians don’t say “aboot,” unless they’re messing with Americans.
scav
@The prophet Nostradumbass: That may in part be because the difference is more important locally — much the way most people can’t distinguish the variations between Midwestern ones.
jl
@Mnemosyne: Ha ha. Pop quiz? that was a joke. Just joking. Honest.
Redshift
@Frankensteinbeck:
Exactly. I’ve heard that clip about a hundred times now, and all I can think is “who could listen to it and think he sounds angry?” If you can’t figure it out from the tone, there’s video of it; he doesn’t look angry. He’s slightly mocking and somewhat amused at the right’s “I did it all myself without any help” line of BS. Based on having been at a rally recently, he’s enjoying the energy of interacting with the crowd. But angry? WTF?
I understand it’s the “silly season,” but even relative to that, the whole Chait article is about as insightful as a Fox News body language expert.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, if you think Bob Dole and Barack Obama have exactly the same accent, well, you may be as tone-deaf as Jonathan Chait.
Donut
Oh, and Chait is a buffoon for several reasons, but especially for making that post.
There is a whole gucking lot to take issue with in thst piece, but let’s stick to stabbing his weak-ass his thesis in the heart. The attack works not because of Barack Obama’s dialect and supposed racial baggage. It only works because the ad splices up the context in order to plant uncertainty, fear and doubt into the feeble minds of low info fuckwadded nitwits, mainly meaning the Village press and nincompoops like Chait.
Anyone who has a fucking cue about marketing and advertising knows – fear, doubt and uncertainty are powerful motivators, and that’s why political attack ads focus pretty much only on those emotions. Chait needs to get out of the damn bubble a little bit.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Like I said, this seems to be an East Coast problem—they can find minute differences between the accents they’re familiar with and are incredulous when no one else can tell the difference between, say, a Boston and a Cambridge accent, but they insist that all Midwesterners sound alike, probably because they’ve never actually been to the Midwest.
Pretty much this.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
All right! All right! You caught me. You know my secret shame.
Yes, after living in California for 20 years, I … I … I call it “soda” now. I couldn’t help it! It was the peer pressure!
Plus the clerks in stores kept giving me funny looks whenever I would ask where the “pop” aisle was.
Anya
@cinesimon: That’s disappointing. I’ve only read his domestic stuff, and he was really great on the ACA stuff.
Anya
@jl: Californian accent rules.
Good night everyone!
Donut
Fucking iPad typing sucks.
jl
@Mnemosyne:
I saw a map of all the different ways to call soda pop fizz phosphate, whatever around North America. California was tragically fractured, as I remember. I think that cultural divide was our downfall.
Another Halocene Human
@jl: Ahem. The term is “fronting.”
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Halocene Human:
I know I’m voting for Black Metrosexual Abe Lincoln. Who thought that was an insult? Black Metrosexual Abe Lincoln is the coolest damn guy you will never be lucky enough to meet.
The Right Honorable Member for, the Very Reverend Mother, Her Duchal Serene Highness. Dr. Hortense Sussudio Fuuckerfaaster
i drove past the bait store, for the first time in a while, they were sold out. i am happy for them,an uptick in demand has been a long time coming.
The Right Honorable Member for, the Very Reverend Mother, Her Duchal Serene Highness. Dr. Hortense Sussudio Fuuckerfaaster
i drove past the bait store, for the first time in a while, they were sold out. i am happy for them,an uptick in demand has been a long time coming.
Hypatia's Momma
@Another Halocene Human:
No, “fronting” is what your headmates do.
dead existentialist
@Mnemosyne: Win!
I’m Bob Dole!
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: People from Toronto don’t say “aboot.” They say “aboat.” People from the maritime provinces say “aboot.”
Obama’s accent isn’t particularly northern Illinois. It’s far more generic than that. On purpose.
jl
@Another Halocene Human: I don’t know what fronting is.
Do you mean the blacks I worked with when I was a kid ‘fronted’ around me, and talked like TV dialog otherwise?
I don’t think people fronted much bucking hay, picking fruit, and trying to fix broken down old crap machinery out in the boondocks, but maybe they did, if that is what you are getting at.
Edit: On other hand, cursing is a common denominator, so that might have made a difference.
Donut
@Spatula:
I dunno. Pretty much everything you post is basically a chance for you to crap on Obama, but you manage to refrain from firebsggery. That is pretty much a giveaway that you’re either a spoof or a “right-leaning independent,” aka a Republican.
Spatula
@Donut:
Nope, I’m a lefty democrat, which is very rare, especially here.
I crap on Obama from the left so he’ll move this way…or something. :D
Another Halocene Human
@Anya: Generic or what they call network/broadcaster English but I would say he does have a bit of Illinois twang to it.
What he does not sound like is native of South Side. Perfectly nice accent but it’s not him.
And I think I have now officially spent too much time worrying about his accent. Lame.
Fun fact: if he does sound Hawai’ian, I would not know, as I have never been there and haven’t listened to recordings of natives of that state. I’d be shocked if it weren’t a component of his speech, but I doubt few others than the Hawai’ians can hear it!
dead existentialist
@Donut: Spat-Timmeh is not a
spoof, and he is BJ’s Troll Emeritus. He is a master at his trade. He can dial a thread to 11!Donut
Fuck it, dude grew up in Hawaii, fer fuck’s sake. Did anyone ever stop to think, maybe he sounds like a god damn Hawaiian whose family isn’t Native Hawaiian/Polynesian? The fuck?
cat48
Basically, the mostly white media often fails when they cover different races and cultures; in and outside America. They all need to to go for racial awareness/culture training. But, heh, why bother, right? This is Anglo-Saxon America; at least for a few more years…..
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Even after living in Washington state since I was 10, I still have a slight Carolina twang. I blame Obama.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@shortstop:
I’d love to hear him go full-on Chicagoese– “dis”, “dat”, “over by dare”, “da perks dipertment”. It would make my day.
Donut
@dead existentialist:
I know who the troll is. I’ve been reading the blog s long time. I still think it is a spoof.
Spatula
@dead existentialist:
Actually, it’s you folks who dial the threads to 11, but thanks.
jl
@Yutsano: Is there a Pacific Northwest accent? They speak a kind of Dudley-do-right in OR and WA, amirite? Or not?
Spatula
@Donut:
I’ll take that as a compliment.
Yutsano
@jl: There supposedly is, but I’ve lived here so long I can’t really hear it. Folks have commented on it when I go to Arizona, mostly a, “Where are you from?” sort of thing. But that could be the twang. Best reaction I ever got over it was in Vancouver. Coffee shop guy was pretty amazed.
Donut
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
He does occasionally let out a “whichoo” when saying “with you.” which is pretty Chicago-y.
I grew up in southern IL and never said “you bet” instead of “yes” or “have a good one” instead of “have a nice day” until I moved had lived in the upper Midwest for a few years. So anecdotally I can say, 22 years later, I have picked up some new language habits and dropped some from my early life.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@jl: They sound similar to, but not exactly the same as, Californians. At least those in the cities do.
dead existentialist
@Spatula: Now, now, let’s not bicker and argue. (Please forgive the 15 second ad, ok?)
Donut
@Spatula:
That’s really great for you. Enjoy that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Yutsano: The weirdest reaction I ever got was people in England thinking I was Canadian (!). When I told them I was from California, they were vaguely disappointed.
My dad, from Northern Ireland, was once asked by someone here if he was German. Hilarity ensued.
shortstop
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Minus a couple of stints living abroad, I’ve called Chicago home for more than 25 years, and I’ve never heard a black Chicagoan speak that way. That is a very, very white accent, endemic to a limited number of neighborhoods.
Another Halocene Human
@Donut: His posts were less inflammatory than usual.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I knew I shouldn’t have looked at any of the comments at the end of the Chait piece, but I did anyway.
Fuck. I hate those people. I fucking hate those fucking motherfuckers. I’m so fucking sick to death of ignorant asswipes screaming about the outrage of how a moderate to liberal president doing his best to save this capitalist (for lack of a better word) system is really some kind of fucking communist, while all the while a crowd of greedy, psychopathic plutocrat dickwads drag this country back to the fucking Gilded Age.
The Kochs, Adelson, and scores of other soulless fucks are raping these ignorant teabaggers–along with all the rest of us–while those very victims cheer on their violators, ranting about how the thieves are really the beleaguered ones in America today. And then, once the stupid, brainless, dumb fucks are done sucking David Koch’s koch, they turn around and excoriate the president who is doing his best to look out for their interests. Oh, yeah, and while they’re screaming about the Kenyan-atheist-Muslim-nazi-communist usurper, they never forget to take a little time to vilify the poorest among us who are struggling to scrape by, calling them leeches for daring to ask for a pittance of Welfare to help them feed their children, and maybe, if they’re really lucky, stave off for another month that awful day that they wake up to find themselves thrown out of their houses into the street.
I’m so fucking sick of these assholes. I could go on for pages about this shit. I feel like just throwing my hands up sometimes and saying, “You know what? All right. Fuck you. You want to slide slowly back into the 1890’s while David and Charles Koch get rich off your backs? Great. Have at it. Sell yourself into slavery for nothing more than the vile pleasure you get from kicking those who are weaker than you are. Go on, give up everything you have to these rapacious monsters. Lord knows you deserve it.” I feel like saying that and just giving up, only these teabagging fuckleheads are consigning a whole lot of other, decent, unlucky people to unending poverty with their willful blindness to who the bad guys are, so I can’t do that. I swear, sometimes teabaggers drive me to utter hopelessness. I’d be getting dead drunk to forget this nightmare only I’m not much of a drinker.
Sorry to be such a killjoy, but that thread really sent me into a foul, foul mood, wherein I despair that there’s any hope of saving this country. After the Constitutional Convention, so the tale goes, somebody on the street asked Benjamin Franklin what they’d built in those locked rooms through t hat long, stifling summer. Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Sorry, Dr. Franklin. We did our best.
Mnemosyne
@shortstop:
Nah — I think you’re just in the middle of the accent every day and can’t quite hear it. You don’t realize how distinctive it is until you go away for a year or two and then go back. When I get off the plane at O’Hare, no one working at that airport sounds anything like they do in Los Angeles.
Obama has certain cadences and rhythms that he learned in order to be an effective public speaker that he uses in formal speeches, but that’s not the same thing as an accent.
Another Halocene Human
@Spatula: If it walks like a Republican troll, and it quacks like a Republican troll…
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: When my old friend from college comes back to visit from Atlanta (which better be soon dammit!!) I’ll try to remember to ask her. Of course she was from South Dakota, so her speech patterns already were rather distinct to me.
scav
Stands to reason everywhere has some sort of accent. I’d imagine the NW one covers pretty much the whole Ecotopia area with some Dryside / Wetside differences. But with all the in-migration and the probable large Midwestern influence, it likely wouldn’t likely be a strongly marked one (I think the usual newscaster accent is a generic blended Midwestern. Certainly was for Christopher Robin in the original Winnie the Pooh, the fiends. Kidlet was English!) And the clue behind behind asking where you’re from when in AZ may be more due to the general pallor, dermal hydration level aka the slight layer of moss, no?
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@fraught:
That long, rambling screed was meant to be an elaboration to your comment…
Spatula
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
You probably shouldn’t read those comments.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Donut:
Dad’s cousin- who grew up around Green Bay (and that accent is something else)- claims that the least understandable accent is from down there around Cairo. Thick, thick southern accent.
One of my best friend’s dad was an older black man (born in the late ’20s) who grew up in the Delta area of Mississippi. I’ve always been pretty good hearing through accents, but I couldn’t understand a damned thing the man said- except for my name.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne:
With all friendliness, several of us have noted above that your ear isn’t quite as tuned as you think it is, even as you’re refusing to give anyone else here credit for picking up on nuances of accent. I’ve been away for more than a year, more than once, and come back, more than once. And I didn’t say people at O’Hare sound like LA (who would say such a thing?); I specifically said that one guy, the president’s, accent is more generic than simply northern Illinois. He works hard at that–mostly he worked on it when he was younger–well beyond “cadences and rhythms.”
jl
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): thanks. Chicago, or Philly? You sound authentic.
And, BTW, I agree.
Geoduck
@Yutsano: One WA state accent quirk that stands out is that we tend to add an R to “Warshington”. But if you really want to spot a native, test them on local place names. Quick, say “Puyallup!”
And yes, my nom-de-net is another example..
Another Halocene Human
@Hypatia’s Momma: What is this word? It looks like English, but Urban dictionary does not know it.
Yutsano
@Geoduck:
Hilarity inevitably ensues.
Most folks learn this one quickly. You have to. Otherwise you’ll end up with well-traveled fowl upon your dinner plate.
@scav: This. Also. Too.
scav
@Geoduck: Sequim is a lot of fun.
shortstop
Was a good evening — glad to have been there for the Cubs’ nine-run inning (we almost needed oxygen and we laughed out loud at the Pirates fans behind us who stomped out in a snit). Good night, Juicers, all of whom talk funny!
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Fargo was right — Minnesota and the Dakotas are in the same accent region, so it’s a pretty distinctive sound.
@scav:
And yet, ironically, the American Christopher Robin voice you’re probably thinking of was not from the Midwest. He was a kid from Burbank, California. Who was also the director’s son. Ah, Hollywood!
Another Halocene Human
@jl: Oh no, wasn’t saying that. I was just joking because it was stated facetiously that black people who don’t talk like a minstrel show must be posing in front of Whitey and of course the Black English term for such posing is fronting.
Many Blacks do engage in diglossia but that isn’t necessarily fronting… I mean, anyone who speaks more than one dialect does this to some extent. I don’t feel that I’m fronting when I do this, not per se.
dead existentialist
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Now, seriously, tell us how you really feel and don’t be afraid to hold back.
(Why are you reading the comments at Chait, let alone Chait?) Here, there’s a world beyond this nonsense. Courtesy of another BJ commenter, who posted it. Don’t be so Horrendo.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Usual joke once was that every other person on a So Cal street was from Iowa.
Another Halocene Human
@Donut:
“embarrassed Republican”
Mnemosyne
@shortstop:
I think what I’m objecting to here is the word “generic” (and not only when you use it — I objected when someone else used it). To me, it sounds like you’re buying into Chait’s assumption that Obama had to learn to sound less “black” and more “generic,” i.e. white.
I don’t think Obama sounds “generic Midwestern” the way that, say, Dan Rather tries to sound “generic Midwestern” rather than Texan. I think he sounds like a guy who moved to the Midwest as an adult and has a couple of other influences in his accent. He sure as hell doesn’t sound like someone from Kansas.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@jl:
Grew up west of Philadelphia in a town called Media (Everybody’s Hometown!). That slogan might even be trademarked; it’s on all the signs as you come into town. An interesting claim we have is that it’s the only suburban town in the U.S. to have a streetcar running down the main street. You can ride it right into Philadelphia (well, you have to switch the El from 69th Street, but still).
SOmehow I got away without taking on the awful (to my ears) Philadelphia accent. I still can’t to this day say “water” the way Philadelphians say it. I don’t know why; could be that my mother was from Tidewater Virginia and my father from Central Pennsylvania (Dutch Country), so in those earliest years when I was learning to speak, most of the spoken English around me wasn’t from Philadelphia…
@dead existentialist:
No, believe me, you don’t want that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
If you want to hear a regional accent, listen to a recording of your own voice. When I really listened to a recording of my own voice, I was surprised just how much of a California drawl I had.
Oh yeah, the way I have to tell the difference between someone from the Bay Area and LA is to have them say the name of the town “Saratoga”.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@shortstop:
Neither have I- most black people I know up here in the rust belt (I’m in Grand Rapids) have a “down home” accent that depends on where “down home” was for the ancestors. Doesn’t matter if they grew up in G.R., Lansing, Detroit, Chicago, Indy, Milwaukee, I hear a bit of Mississippi here, Tennessee there, some Texas…
And, yes, I realize that Chicagoese is limited to certain neighborhoods. It’s going away, too. But I can drop in on a friend of mine who grew up on the North Side of Chicago (or her brothers and sisters who still live there), and it takes ’em back a few decades to an era when it was still heard pretty frequently. I blame national mass media for killing regional accents.
I’d still love to here Obama break it out. I’ve heard the guy switch up the accents in the past (and I don’t hear what Chait heard in that Roanoke speech), and I’ve gotta believe that he can do a good Chicagoese accent.
Another Halocene Human
@cat48: The scions of the established elite are curiously incurious about the world… hence the daily punditry fails.
We were better served with meritocracy but like the boiled frog, it slipped through our fingers gradually and now we’ve forgotten what functional institutions felt like.
Another Halocene Human
@Donut: Either that, or he’s just smoked a really sweet bowl or finished off a mellow bottle of red and it’s like he’s a totally new troll.
dead existentialist
@Mnemosyne: WTF? Did you not listen to the tapes (MP3s whatever) earlier? They all sound Kenyan to me. How are they so not-Kansan?
Another Halocene Human
@Donut: Have a good one is popular in the Northeast, too. Hell, Veryfine juice made it their motto, and they’re based in rural Mass.
So my theory is that particular annoying mindworm spread between cities.
Mnemosyne
Okay, since I’ve decided to ride this hobbyhorse into the ground, here’s two pieces of Obama talking in the early 1990s:
Obama on his election to the Harvard Law Review
Obama speaking at protest for Prof. Bell
This was after he’d spent about three years working in Chicago. Generic Midwestern?
Donut
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Yep, I grew up about 50 miles from Cairo. Lots of my school mates and friends from he region have thick drawls. Culturally, a lot of people from So. IL, African Americans, and whites alike, are pretty Southern. A lot of migration from KY, AR, TN, MS and AL. After growing up there, I then spent 10 years in WI. 450 miles makes a lot of difference in accents and colloquialisms. A couple of years in CA after that, now Chicago for almost 10 years. Obama does not sound terribly Midwestern to me, but as mentioned before, sometimes you can catch him sounding like a Chicagoan. Mnemosyne may also have a point though about his cadence and phrasing being more Midwestern.
BillinGlendaleCA
@scav: I came very close to living my high school years in Sequim.
Brachiator
This has nothing to do with regions or accents, but with the idiot fantasy that there is no such thing as a black middle class or, deity forbid, a black upper class, or even a hard working, struggling black lower class who want the same thing as any other group of Americans, but only an angry, shiftless black horde (and an equally undeserving band of Latinos) waiting to be called to action by Obama to prey on nice innocent white folks.
There is all kinds of offensive stupidity jammed in here, for example the contrast between a normal cadence and an inherently hostile or threatening black-sounding cadence, and the idea that Obama, like the Hulk or a black Mr Hyde, becomes a menace to Real White Americans when he becomes angry and turns into a presumably revolutionary black militant.
And yet it seems like only yesterday that morans like Ann Coulter were claiming that somebody like Herman Cain, complete with black inflection, was more authentically black, yet paradoxically less threatening than Obama.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Donut:
Nor to me. I think it’s because he grew up in Hawaii, which is full of the accents of people from all over the other states.
Mnemosyne
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
The actor John Mahoney has a really good Chicagoese accent. It’s especially impressive since he’s from Manchester, England.
Geoduck
@BillinGlendaleCA: Dodged a bullet there. :-) The whole Olympic Peninsula is a lovely place to visit as a tourist, but avoid living there if you possibly can.
Donut
@Another Halocene Human:
Ha. That is interesting. I have been traveling to Long Island a lot for work over the last 8 months. Last time I was there, in a pretty working class ‘hood, I dropped “have a good one” on a cashier at a grocery store, just to see if it phased her, and it did not. in some parts people find that phrase odd.
taylormattd
Shit like that is why I hate the allegedly leftish blogosphere.
Can we just rename it the whiteosphere and be done with it?
Hypatia's Momma
@Another Halocene Human:
“Headmates”? Those are what Tumblr-types call the (mainly) characters they’ve decided share space in their heads. No, really. Like SnapeWives, but with more attention-mongering.
Fictives are headmates that are from some form of fiction, Factives are actual people, living or dead. One person claims to have a headmate that is a toddler and a another that is a flying dog, therefore she cannot get a job or attend college because those aren’t things toddlers and flying dogs do. (So fuck you, mom and dad! You can’t tell me what to do!)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Geoduck: We were going to move there after my dad retired, had property up there. He had heart surgery soon after his retirement, so we stayed in the LA area.
scav
@Geoduck: Port Townsend excepted — need to avoid a few streets when the tourists are in full spate but otherwise? Some damn fine bakers too.
Another Halocene Human
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Some of the accents do sound similar to me. Not all Irish accents, not all German accents. But some of them do sound similar to me.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mnemosyne:
Well, if you’re going to bring up actors who do good Chicagoese, Dennis Franz is the Alpha and Omega. I don’t think I ever heard an explanation for that accent on NYPD Blue, in which, iirc, his character was a native New Yorker.
As for Mahoney…Whatever that accent is supposed to be (it sounds pretty generically northeastern/midwesrtern USA, it ain’t Mancunian or any other accent from Old Blighty. It really surprised me to find out he’s a Brit.
gwangung
@taylormattd:
Dude? You just realizing this?
Yutsano
@taylormattd: That would be uncivil. Dare I say, shrill. Sully would wear out his fainting couch.
OT: I never answered your question the other night: yep I live in Seatown up in Northgate. CaseyL is my neighbour in fact. :)
TS
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
A sentiment I share – those “small business owners” crawl out of the woodwork to support Mitt – and most of them will go bankrupt and/or live on food stamps (if they still exist) under a Romney administration. The rest of said commenters are probably old white men who live on social security and medicare and never built anything in their previous existence.
taylormattd
@Yutsano: Haha, I’m totally close. In Greenwood.
Another Halocene Human
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): This particular post didn’t set me off, but this whole summer more or less has.
I’ve been thinking about some sort of effort to combat white supremacists or white supremacist thinking. Because that’s what it’s all about. Children can be inoculated against this kind of thinking. IDK. Needs some study. But I think Stetson Kennedy was right that ridicule is a good weapon inthe struggle.
Brachiator
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
There are all kinds of California accents, with lots of overlap. I know people in the beach cities of Los Angeles who don’t sound like people from Glendale, but with other people, I cannot necessarily tell one way or another.
But even though it’s been a very long time since my family moved from Texas to California, I can usually tell one of the various Texas accents from Oklahoma accents, from, say, a Georgia accent.
Donut
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): @Mnemosyne:
I raise you both a Dennis Farina and a Bernie Mac.
Mnemosyne
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
He worked really hard to lose the British accent. And his current accent is definitely not generic Midwestern — it’s Western Chicagoland, with a few hitches in it. Oak Park, to be precise.
(Full disclosure: Mahoney was a friend of my late father-in-law’s. Very nice guy, but they lost touch when both of them started having age-related illnesses. Plus I now suspect that Mahoney was not fond of my FIL’s last girlfriend.)
Another Halocene Human
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Oh, well, that’s Karo, worlds away from Chicago. South IL was settled by completely different population as the northern end.
Hypatia's Momma
@Another Halocene Human:
You’ll have to fight off the anti-vaxers.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
As others in the thread have posited, I think it’s the humor in Obama’s voice that Chait is unconsciously interpreting as “threatening.” As in, “Wait a minute, he doesn’t respect me! He’s mocking me!”
That’s the real threat in what Obama said. The threat that maybe Obama doesn’t secretly want to be white and is perfectly fine with who he is and what he has.
I dunno, it’s getting late and I’m getting tired, so I may be getting a little too Freudian here.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Donut:
Every now and then I hear something a bit more Sicilian than Chicagoese in Farina’s speech, though. Sorta like with the late Studs Terkel, whose first eight years in NYC would pop up in his Chicagoese from time to time.
Other than Franz, the best example, imo, is the late Chicago sportswriter Bill Gleason (it’s not as strong in that link as I’ve heard it at other times).
Another Halocene Human
@scav: Do tell.
scav
@Mnemosyne: 60302 or 60304?
Another Halocene Human
@shortstop: What a wonderful night!
It’s family lore how I and my sibs started the chant “Three Grand Slams!” late at a Cubbies game 15 years ago… 12 runs being approximately what they needed to pull even at that point in the game.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Another Halocene Human:
Oh, I know, I know.
They’ve got the same thing going in Ohio and Indiana, too. The most annoying accent I’ve heard with any regularity was that of an old boss from Fort Whine, IN, the exact middle of the transition in that state from a Southern to a Northern accent.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Another Halocene Human:
Is this supposed to be a joke? Do you have cloth ears or something?
Another Halocene Human
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Probably more of a suburban vs. urban thing. Who were your playdates in preschool? That’s where your accent comes from. Anything acquired later is an affectation/adaptation. For example I affect a “Northeastern vowel shift” which is, in fact, generic and was completely learned. I grew up in the ‘burbs and my speech is entirely suburban except for that lingering California from my early childhood.
If you don’t grow up IN the city, you won’t have that city accent. While it’s not often recognized in the US, there is a class aspect to accents and those really strong accents we all know and love from Northern cities belong to specific working class neighborhoods.
There is also a generational thing. My northeastern urban vowel shift is a youth thing, maybe people under 40 or 50? (Ask a linguist.) All the people “of a certain age” (incl. John Kerry) who are middle class have this specialized accent in Eastern Mass which the generation after does not share. The “haaf” and “caaf” for half and calf thing. It actually persisted for over a century according to language scholars but it is gone, gone, gone in the younger gen.
(The Kennedys, for example, lived in a posh section of Brooklyn. Their accents were conscious fakes. They affected a working class Boston accent to connect with, identify with, the working class ethnic whites who formed their core constituency.)
Another Halocene Human
@The prophet Nostradumbass: lol, one of my customers heard that stupid drawl and said, “Don’t tell me–I know exactly where you’re from. Tennessee.”
Poor man.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Oh, I dunno…English is a Germanic language. If you can’t quite locate the accent, there could be some things that would lead one to believe…
Another Halocene Human
@Brachiator:
A good jester is always less threatening.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
60302. (At least, I think so. That’s where the funeral home that was within walking distance of my FIL’s apartment was — right across from Poor Phil’s.)
Though I am not from Oak Park, so I have no idea what that signifies. I am from the North Shore, thankyewverymuch. Rick Santorum went to the Catholic high school that I refused to go to.
Another Halocene Human
@Donut: It IS weird, though! But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I heard it a lot, especially as a cashier in the city back in the day.
Doesn’t get much use in the South but it’s not unheard of. (Different stresses when it’s said.)
Another Halocene Human
@taylormattd: Seconded.
Another Halocene Human
@Hypatia’s Momma: OOOooooOOOOh.
I am not so up on the tumblr. All the fun fandom is there but I am stuck in my ways. Sometimes visit it. Hate the giant scroll through of people reposting or whatever the fuck with microcomments, a la buzzfeed. I like actual discussions, bad habit from the old usenet days.
Another Halocene Human
@Hypatia’s Momma: Trudat.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, the “generic Midwestern” that some people may be hearing in Obama, per Wikipedia:
The Hawaiian English accent is considered part of the Western dialect group (and has its own “creole” dialect, Hawaiian Pidgin).
Now I want to see if I can get Obama to use “cot” and “caught” in the same sentence — they merge in Western American English, but not Inland North/Great Lakes.
Another Halocene Human
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Maybe. It’s generally Germans who speak English really badly and end up sounding like the kind of Irish accent that sounds discordant to my ears.
I mean, I have an Irish inlaw who has a lovely sort of cant and doesn’t sound anything like that. But Irish accents vary wildly.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Ugh, I never understood that one, probably the Cali, just pronounce them the same, but after growing up in the Northeast I am aware that some people pronounce “cot” a particular way. So confused now….
Bleh. Who cares.
Hm, living in the South I would drawl caught but not cot because that just seems silly.
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
That seems to be one of the Inland North/Great Lakes parts I’ve kept of my accent even though I’ve been in So Cal for over 20 years — I definitely still pronounce “cot” and “caught” as two different words.
Mnemosyne
Last dialect thing before bed:
Some of us may have to agree to disagree about whether Obama is trying to sound “generic Midwestern” or if that’s just how his accent developed, but I think all of us Illinoisans and former Illinoisans can join hands and agree that only idiots pronounce the “s.”
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Another Halocene Human: So, (some) Irish people sound like Germans who speak English badly? Are you serious? Are you sure you’re not actually from the pleistocene?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mnemosyne:
Not a dialect or accent question….But have you ever heard the term FIP before? Just wonderin’…
Origuy
I don’t know what a Kansas accent sounds like, but since Obama’s parents and maternal grandparents were from there, he probably has some traces of it.
Thymezone
Chait is right about Obama’s diction. But … it doesn’t matter. The only people who are affected by the change in speech are people who already hate Obama.
The rest of us are pretty used to Obama’s various voices, and aren’t put off by the changes.
Chait is a ding dong, but ABL, you need to just chill. Racism is still a real problem in this country, but obsessing over it at the thinnest edges is not really very useful. Millions of black men in prison, that’s a disaster. Chait and his nonsense … not a disaster. Just make a mental note of it and move on.
Thymezone
Jesus, people, your mod filter is still as fucked up as it was seven years ago. Can’t you fucking fix it??
Thymezone
Chait is right about Obama’s diction. But … it doesn’t matter. The only people who are affected by the change in speech are people who already hate Obama.
The rest of us are pretty used to Obama’s various voices, and aren’t put off by the changes.
Chait is a ding dong, but ABL, you need to just chill. Racism is still a real problem in this country, but obsessing over it at the thinnest edges is not really very useful. Millions of black men in prison, that’s a disaster. Chait and his nonsense … not a disaster. Just make a mental note of it and move on.
Emma
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Yep. Ditto. Preach it.
Pat
Yeah, I guess when the President gets angry he should get angry like a Joe McCarthy or a Richard Nixon or how about Barry Goldwater, or maybe even Joe Apaio!
Yeah, Chait, you really should go fuck yourself for writing that shit.
Keith G
@Steve:
Good catch.
I work, live among, and am related to enough GOPers (and a few non-aligned conservatives) to observe that fear at of an angry Black Obama (as opposed to an angry Black lady) is not a thing. Nada. Zip. Zero
The only time I have come across this construct is here. So is this Chait guy just incompetently mining concerns often found in these parts?
I often note that ironically when I find myself beating down attacks against Obama, they often have the theme that the President needs to be more of an alpha administrator – that real leaders need to be aggressively assertive, that this Obama fella is just in over his head.
So yeah, Steve, it certainly does seem to be Obots who pull out the “Angry Black Man” imagery.
Edit
@Thymezone:
It is so sad that some would rather discuss outrage and not policy
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne: That’s what I was wondering too. What exactly does a Kansas accent sound like?
Chait may have been trying to be ironic. Would like to see his response to ABL.
brantl
@burnspbesq: 100% all the time? What a load of steaming dreck that is. This is pure, histrionic bullshit, as was your comment.
bemused
Chait should have known better. As soon as he writes “black dialect”, he has stepped into quicksand. Stupid assertion. Stupid move.
Narcissus
I could not tell you the last time I paid attention to Chait.
brantl
@Silver:
Bite all of us, bumbaclot.
Kay
To me, this kind of analysis comes from fear.
Chait on some level BUYS the attack that Democrats hate small business, and fears that hatred will be “exposed”, but rather than saying that, rather than saying HE responds to these ads emotionally, he says he fears some other group of unidentified (dumber) people will respond to these ads.
Andrew Sullivan said the same thing without the “black dialect” nonsense, because Andrew Sullivan actually believes Democrats are hostile to small business (IMO) on some small level, so the attack scares him. Sullivan was angry at Obama for saying something dumb, or inartful, because it resonates with him so he’s worried it will resonate with others.
It’s like Corey Booker and Ed Rendell with their terror of attacking Bain. I don’t feel any need to reiterate Democrat’s fealty to “private equity”, I wish Democrats were a little LESS loyal to “private equity”, myself, but they do. THEY responded AS IF Democrat were hostile to private equity, they responded defensively.
EJ Dionne thought “Catholic voters” would punish Obama over the contraception rule because EJ Dionne wants to punish Obama over the contraception rule, thinks it’s mean or disrespectful or disloyal to Catholic Obama supporters. Why he won’t just say that, say “ I think this is mean to Catholics” rather than guessing how “Catholics” feel, I do not know.
I feel as if I’ve seen this again and again and again. The “celebrity attack” the “Greek pillars” at the convention attack, the Joe the Plumber bullshit, the people who were afraid of those saw some truth in them, so told me “this is VERY BAD for Obama”. I think it would b easier if they’d own it, if they’d say “I think those pillars at the convention are a bit much and I’m embarrassed by them” rather than saying “VOTERS may be turned off by those pillars at the convention”.
Anyway, my (personal) general rule is to steer clear of fearful people and pundits this close to an election. They say dumb things and they’re crouched all the time, just waiting for the fatal blow. It’s miserable being that scared and it’s just no way to spend 100 summer-to-fall days.
We can talk about Obama’s massive blunder (fill in the blank) that sealed his fate after we lose :)
MomSense
@bemused
Even worse than writing “black dialect” was that he equates using the “black dialect” with being angry.
Donut
@Kay:
Your post reminds me of Obama’s great off the cuff phrase from the early months of his presidency, “There is something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-wee’d up”.
Problem is, Chait resorts to some really fucked up, completely wrong racial stereotyping and, as you point out, his piece says far more about what bothers Chait personally than what might rankle the electorate at large, which is really true of almost all paid punditry. Generally, we give people like Chait, Sullivvan, et al far too much credit for shaping public opinion. They are not the powerhouses they or we think they are. I think they are waning badly in influence now (see Freddie’s recent posts here at B-J on the topic, which I mostly agree with), thankfully.
schrodinger's cat
WTF is a black dialect, I used to live in PG county outside DC which is majority black, and the accents among the black people there were just as varied as amongst any other group of people. Depended on where they came from. Does Chait think that all Indians speak like Appu? Or everyone from New England sounds like the Kennedys.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I don’t think our pampered Punditubbies have their fingers on the pulse of the nation. If they think they do, they are deluded.
General Stuck
@schrodinger’s cat:
Jive
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
Not quite. Newfoundlanders certainly don’t say “aboot.”
Dave
Your statements promote racist tropes about angry black men.
What Chait wrote was dumb, but this, I think not.
jayackroyd
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah. No Kansas accent. That struck me as well. (I’ve spent a lot of time in Kansas. Looks like Chait hasn’t)
But I don’t get the outrage here. Chait’s slant is wrong, of course. It’s Rove who is manufacturing an angry black man moment out nothing, not Obama who has forgotten not to do this. And if, err, Angry Black Lady doesn’t think this meme still has power, then why the handle?
IAC, Jay Rosen talks about what is really going on here:
http://bit.ly/NSf50h
On the inability of the media to deal with a post-truth campaign environment. Reagan’s people figured this out, and it’s been a core element to every GOP campaign since, but Romney (and Rove and the superPACs) are taking it to a new level
Cassidy
Late to the party, but I want Obama to have more of an “urban, black” dialect, sometimes. I’d piss my pants laughing at the whiter than whites shitting themselves over a real angry black man. And fuck that. It’s the angry, black Michelle they need to be scared of. How that woman has had the grace to put up with all thier shit and keep on going and doing her thing amazes me.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat:
I once was at an academic conference in KY, and the blacks had at most a hint of an accent. The whites were another matter entirely.
liberal
@Cassidy:
Sounds like my liberal/quasi-firebagger dad, who wishes Obama were “more black” (in terms of attitude re the Rethuglicans and the right).
liberal
@Donut:
Who amongst the masses reads those guys? Or the pre-eminent deadtree papers, for that matter?
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Another Halocene Human:
I didn’t go to preschool. And the Philadelphia “wooder” thing is found in the suburbs, too. I had a lot of friends with this accent.
My own early upbringing was kind of weird, though. For my first 4 years, I lived on an actual working farm in a shabby, run-down inner suburb of Philadelphia. There’s a family that built a huge stone farmhouse way back in the early 1700’s or maybe a little before then, even. They were one of William Penn’s early land grantees. Over the next 300 years, the family had to slowly sell off bits of land that sprang up into inner suburb-light industrial neighborhoods, yet here was this farm, still standing in the middle of it, with a huge barn, meadows, a wheatfield and some woods.
The descendants of this family still lived there, but the father was an English teacher at Washigton College in Chestertown, Maryland, so the family was only there in the summer. Anyway, the house was so big that they had walled off about a third of it at some point, andrented it out. My father and mother had come to Philadelphia where he took a job on the faculty at the U. of Pennsylvania, but they didn’y have enough money then to buy a house, so they found this place somehow and rented the smaller part. So for 4 years, I pretty much spent all my time with my mother and father and this other family. They had 4 boys, slightly older than I was, and their mother was from England, so the English I heard was a mishmash of dialects–Tidewater American, slightly Pennsylvania Dutch, patrician Philadelphia and British English. I was crushed when my parents bought a house and we moved to Media; I really didn’t want to leave.
Not long after I had met my now-wife, I took her to the farm to see the son who still lives there. I told her we were going to Shipley Farm, but we drove toward Philadelphia. The neighborhoods got more and more run down, and the houses kept getting more and more crammed up agaisnt each other, and she kept asking me, “We’re going to a farm?” And then, all of a sudden, there was a little gravel drive into some trees with a small wooden sign reading “Shipley Farm” nailed up on it. We turned in, and lo, there it was, a farm in the middle of borderline blight.
General Stuck
I think what ABL was mostly talking about, was the ‘angry black man’ stereotype, some wingnuts have been toying with in their wingnut dialect. It is related to other tropes, like inadequate black man, and meant to conjure fear in the white mind. Either of violence, or incompetence for the first black president. We expect this from republicans, but is disappointing when liberals fall into such stereotypes, even when not meaning harm. It should be thoroughly obvious by now, that Obama is neither an angry man, nor a weak and incompetent one, and is pretty fucking normal as well adjusted persons go, whatever the skin color. He can certainly be wrong, however, just like all the rest of us frail humanoid types.
Cassidy
@liberal: I don’t mean “more black”, exactly. I just want to see the whitier than thou’s have a mass fainting, possibly causeing significant head trauma in a majority of them.
Kay
@Donut:
I do think there’s something to the “added value” theory of punditry. They are going to have to add some value. Like Nate Silver. Or Ezra Klein. Or Kevin Drum. They are going to have to know something specific, do one or another thing really well, and stick to that “thing” rather than generating airy political commentary, “pulse of the nation” type stuff.
I think it’s a mistake when someone like Krugman goes into political advice because that is not what’s valuable about him. That’s not what sets him apart, makes him worth reading. Leave that stuff to Chris Mattews, who isn’t a policy person and doesn’t (to his credit) pretend to be one.
Have you ever read a Maureen Dowd column and learned anything other than something about Maureen Dowd? We get it. YOU think Obama is cold and professorial and “weak” according to some personal notion of manhood. Fascinating, but jesus christ, how many different ways can you say it? The snark and super-savvy cleverness gets old. At some point you want to learn something.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: Okay, at that point he’d lived, what, two or three years in Chicago, his first time here? Is it then your theory that after Harvard law he talked like someone from Cambridge? I’d love to see the video on that.
@Another Halocene Human:
Can’t be stressed enough. Obama’s accent is primarily from the Oahu crowd his family ran in when he was a toddler. He has overlays from living other places, but when you move somewhere as an adult, you don’t trade in all your childhood speech and replace it in total with the accent of the new place no matter how long you live there, unless you’re a) affected or b) have a lot of motivation to lose your childhood accent and work extremely hard at it. Of course your speech changes, sometimes quite a lot, to accommodate the new place, but as you say, it’s an adaptation, not a replacement.
This is why I called Obama’s accent more generic, meaning American newscaster generic–I never said “midwestern generic,” although it’s got a lot of general midwestern sound to it. (That’s actually how a lot of people in Hawaii and especially on Oahu sound to many mainland folks, although there are island-specific quirks of pronunciation, for sure.) He started with Oahu and added overlays from the other places he’s lived and even institutions he attended.
@Rafer Janders: Your ex-girlfriend didn’t. At least 10 Newfoundlanders I know do. But okay, more from NS and especially NB.
Mnemosyne
@shortstop:
Sooo … your theory is that Obama worked really hard to make himself sound “American newscaster generic” and get rid of his original accent? Or is that accent just how he ended up sounding because of the various places that he lived, kind of like how Terry Gilliam sounds like a weird amalgam of California and Britain?
That’s what I’m trying to figure out here, because that’s what I think Chait is saying — that Obama’s “real” accent is somehow a “black” accent and that “real” accent comes out sometimes even though Obama tries to disguise it with a “white” Midwestern accent.
Mnemosyne
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I had a cat die of FIP (feline infectious peritonitis), but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking.
IM
Obama uses the Black Speech?
I knew that the stench of mordor wafted about him…
shortstop
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not sure how you could have arrived at so thorough a misreading. Obama speaks in his “original accent,” as I said pretty clearly above.
Chait is being a complete idiot here. Obama’s “real” accent is not Chait’s idea of a “black” accent, obviously, and I’m not sure why I’m being asked to defend what we all agree is his racist misapprehension.
Try to forget Terry Gilliam for a minute. My “theory” is the simple observation that Obama speaks primarily as those around him spoke when he was a small child…on Oahu. He has overlays from long years in Illinois and perhaps from some years in other places, although as noted, no one ever seems to hear New York or Cambridge in his voice. The net result is largely newscaster-generic because that’s close to the dominant pronunciation/accent where he learned to speak (ever been to Oahu?). As I said above, it happens to sound a lot like generic midwestern. So yes, his accent is naturally obtained, and naturally “American generic.”
And as a politician seeking national office, it’s in his interest to make sure it stays that way. He has pretty carefully eschewed any noticeable quirks of Hawaiian, Illinois, Chicago or other regional or local pronunciation for the obvious reason that he wants his voice to be as unremarkable in accent as possible.
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
Nah, they don’t, though. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, sure, I’ll give you. But not folks from The Rock. They don’t sound at all like other Canadians do.
Newfoundlanders have an accent that’s basically a mix of Irish and West Country English. There’s an accent on “about” (just as on most other words) but it’s not the same nasal “aboot” that Americans imagine all Canadians have. It’s more of an “aboat”, as in:
“Wadda ya’at, me son? Did ya see buddy aboat town last night?”
“Ah, you knows yourself, I did, b’y.”
“Well, tell him oi’m after to speak wit’ im.”
Rafer Janders
@shortstop:
Yep. People forget that a lot of the white Americans who settled on Hawaii were Midwesterns or Californians (who were themselves often one generation out of the Midwest). It was generally white Methodist/Lutheran etc. Anglo-Germano farm and small town types who moved to Hawaii, not big city Irish, Italians, Poles or Jews.
Mnemosyne
@shortstop:
Except that “newscaster generic” is something that newscasters are actually trained to do and spend hours learning.
And, yes, I’ve been to both Oahu and Kauai. I felt very comfortable there, in part because the people there sound very familiar, and not in a “I heard them doing the five o’clock broadcast” way. I’m sure Obama occasionally breaks out the pidgin while he’s there, if only to amuse Sasha and Malia.
shortstop
@Mnemosyne: Now you’re getting sidetracked by rhythm and cadence. Leave aside the lilts and uplifts, the drawn-out last words, and other tricks of news delivery. The fact is that the foundational accent, the “lack of regionalism” on which all of those details of presentation are based, is really a generic American accent that is closer to general midwestern than to anything else. Yes, if you don’t already have one, learning to approximate one is the first step in training for newscasters. Obama, and the majority of people in Hawaii, already have one. That’s why they sounded familiar to you when you visited.
nastybrutishntall
@Mnemosyne: “pro-gress” is also a good tell. Watch the X-files or anything on SyFy and it becomes a drinking game.
Spike
@Yutsano: No doubt. I’ve lived in Vancouver for about 5 years now, and my deeply-ingrained Eastern Kentucky Appalachian drawl still blows people’s minds here.