Miscellaneous

Nothin' But a G Than(g)

As if Sarah Palin's conspicuous g-free delivery (she's always "plannin'" and "hopin'") over the past five weeks wasn't enough, in Tuesday night's debate, it appeared that John McCain had caught the fever as well. Evidently this is all part of a coordinated effort to connect with "ordinary" -- meaning stupid -- Americans. The Republicans have made this process into something of an art form -- they heap public praise on the "main street"/"small town"/"normal" segment of the population while at the same time treating them like backward grammar-challenged racist imbeciles.

The cynicism such a "tactic" requires is breathtaking. But it only works as well as it does because of the deeply anti-intellectual stream in our culture -- as much as we have deified the "founding fathers" we have failed in many ways to appreciate and honor how cultured, thoughtful and educated most of them were. So now the same people who go on and on about Franklin and Washington and Jefferson and try to inculcate nostalgia for some long-lost golden age of American hegemony find stuff like, y'know, proper pronunciation, annoying.:

"When Obama says Pock-i-stahn I have an uncontrollable urge to read the New Yorker and find some Chardonnay. Fortunately I have an old copy of NR and a Coors Light to snap me back to reality. Seriously though -- no one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It's annoying." [E-mail posted by Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I swear. I'm goin' to do some chokin'.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on October 09, 2008 (boomark / email).