Obama appreciates firmness.
Posted on 03/02/2008 11:16:58 AM PST by grundle
When Bill Cosby said something similiar, the Blacks went off on him...hopefully they will for Obama too.
I don't want to eavesdrop where I'm not wanted, but what's a "popeye"?
I was wondering the same thing.
But did he quit his church before he started up trying to be the new Bill Cosby of the century?
libertarianism leads to socialism. yeah let’s have lots of pot and oh... we’ll need universal health care to take care of the unemployed sick druggies. Let’s trash marriage...oh we’ll need universal child care to help all the single moms and out of wedlock kids.
it is conservatism that leads to smaller govt and more freedom.
Front page story at the Chicago Sun Times.
I have to side with him on this one, took some balls Im not going soft 99.9% of all he says I disagree but he got it right with this one RESPOSIBLE DEDICATED PARENTS WHO HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN THIER CHILDS LIFE! GET ER DONE!
The Great Migration that started in the 1920s (when Ford offered black workers the same wages as white in his factories) brought a lot of blacks from the South to Northern and Midwestern cities. They brought their dialects (and their cuisine, but that's another story) with them.
I don't see anything wrong with speaking colloquially on the stump, to reach people where they live. George W. Bush certainly does it, as did Bill Clinton. Hillary does it badly.
Fried chicken is extremely high in fat, and the fast-food version uses batter laced with tons of sodium compared to the homemade version. It's not poison, but it's not for every day.
Obama appreciates firmness.
It's referred to as colloquial or casual speech. I'm an educated Southerner, more than capable of formal speech and writing in standard American English, but I use constructions like that all the time in casual conversation and writing.
The primary purpose of language is to communicate, and sometimes that means meeting the audience halfway. If that means breaking the rules of formal grammar, then the rules go out the window. Show me any writer who strictly adheres to the formal rules of grammar, and I'll show you Mark Twain.
Compare the effectiveness of the following two statements: "Up with this we will not put" vs. "That dog won't hunt."
One last note: I am a zealous, almost militant, advocate of "y'all." It's a second person plural pronoun, like the French "vous," It's a useful, functional word that formal English lacks. And contrary to its misuse by New York and Hollywood screenwriters (which makes me wince), it is only used as a plural.
But Obama, if anything is Hawaiian, not southern or a product of the Black Diaspora in the ‘30s. So y’all is either something he picked up in Chicago in his 20s, or simple Hillaryesque pandering (”I’s in no way tarrrrrred...”) for which he will not be ridiculed by the press, because his melanin content is significantly higher.
"The Blacks" are not monolithic. There was certainly a considerable backlash, but he also got support from a number of black leaders, Jesse Jackson among them. Cosby wasn't run over by a train of public opinion -- he sparked a debate.
Popeye's is a fried-chicken chain with a New Orleans theme. They have sides like etouffe and red beans & rice, and their batter tends to be a little spicier than the other fast-food chicken chains. It's a watered-down version of cajun/creole, of course, because that's what fast food chains do.
Popeye's, like Church's, tends to place restaurants in black neighborhoods, where KFC targets white neighborhoods and Zaxby's targets the suburbs. That's based on what I see in the South -- I haven't done a comprehensive survey nationwide.
He's been immersed in Chicago's black community for most of his adult life. I know in my personal life, I deal with people from all over, and I adapt to the conversation -- I don't consider it pandering, and at times it's not even conscious.
The issue with Hillary isn't that she used the words -- she was quoting after all -- but that she adopted an accent that sounded forced. When I talk to Georgians, or New Yorkers, or Texans, or Californians, I don't try to sound like the person I'm talking to -- it's a more subtle matter of pacing and rhythm and word choice. Sounding like someone you're not is something that even good actors with a good dialect coach often can't achieve.
The most extreme example was when I went to Thailand. With few exceptions, the people I met who knew English didn't know it very well. So within a day or two, I fell into a sort of pidgin. It wasn't a conscious choice; it was just the best way to get the message across.
I know Obama wants the federal government to take over health care. But sometimes after someone gets elected, their actions are very different from what they had campaigned on. Several Supreme Court justices who were thought to be conservative turned out to be quite liberal. Obama’s economic advisor is from the University Of Chicago, so Obama could be full of surprises.
Yes, this website has a new look. It was hard to find the post button to start this thread!
Anyone who is from the University Of Chicago has been exposed to some pretty good ideas on economics. He might not agree with them. But at least he has been exposed to them.
Yes, he would make a fantastic private school pirncipal.
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