Hillary Fakes Southern Accent At Black Church

Wednesday, March 7: Check out MM’s funny take-off on Hillary’s faux pas.

Update IV (3/5 @ 8:15 p.m.): I typically avoid tits-for-tats, but since I blogged about this, I’d better follow through.

A liberal blogger at The Horse’s Mouth blogged what he no doubt considers a “Gotcha” post. He writes:

As you can see, this clip makes it sound like Hillary is adopting not just this drawl, but this language and this down-home grammar, as her own. The righties have been waving this around to prove what a phony Hillary is. This audio was promoted by, among others, PowerlineBlog, Free Republic, Instapundit, and Fox News, which linked to it under the headline, “Will the real Hillary please speak up?”

But as always, a simple fact-check shows this latest wingnut preoccupation to be highly dishonest. The audio clip Drudge linked to cherry-picked that quote and removed it completely from its context, which would have shown that Hillary wasn’t adopting this accent or grammar or language as her own at all.

Rather, it turns out that Hillary was actually quoting the hymn lyrics of someone else – while clearly and very openly imitating (not very well, it turns out) the cadences she thought the lyrics would traditionally have been delivered in. There was nothing phony about it at all.

The emphasis is his own. That’s the “Gotcha!” quote. That’s not a revelation. I noted earlier that Hillary was quoting from a song that used to be sung quite a lot in black churches, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.” The blogger at The Horse’s Mouth apparently just discovered this fact. Unlike him, I didn’t need to do a Google search on it…or however he found out.

According to the blogger, right wing bloggers were wrong to call out Hillary because she was simply quoting a song “while clearly and very openly imitating…the cadences she thought the lyrics would traditionally have been delivered in.” BS. I said Hillary was a condescending phony this morning, and she’s still a condescending phony.

I grew up in a black church and visited numerous black churches all my life, and I’ve never heard a choir sing that song the way Hillary drawled it. However, whether she was quoting a song or not, it doesn’t change the fact that she sounded like a pandering idiot. I listened to more audio at Hot Air, where she’s not quoting the song but still affecting a bad southern accent. This is how I responded to the post on the liberal blog (pardon the spelling and grammar errors):

Who cares whether she quoted lyrics – which I recognized and noted on my blog earlier today because [that] song has been sung in black churches for years. I’ve never heard anyone in a black church sing that song in a southern drawl, and I grew up in the south in a black church. The issue is that Hillary affected a bad southern drawl in a black churches (sic), not which song she may or may not have been quoting.

I can’t speak for other “right wingers,” but everything I wrote on my blog still stands.

This is why I avoid “blog swarm” blogging. I used to thrive on it. But as I said, since I joined this one, I wanted to set the record straight on my end. The fact that Hillary was quoting a song doesn’t negate the condescending, phony, and bad southern accent or the political preaching in a black church. But who really cares? As long as her constituents aren’t offended…

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*** Hillary “Miss Scarlett” Clinton photo below, via Mike’s Noise*** By the way, Hillary was quoting from a “Negro” spiritual titled “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.”

White liberals can be such condescending phonies.

During one of his failed presidential bids, Al Gore was heard “preaching” at an NAACP event, affecting a weird growling cadence that obviously was supposed to be an imitation of a black preaching style. It was stupid, and so was he. Gore and everybody clapping for him sounded like fools.

Now Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing. The audio below apparently was recorded at a black church. Click “Play” and listen to Hillary’s condescending and phony (not to mention awful) southern drawl, one that probably would be more appropriate (or at least sound less stupid) at a southern white church than a black one, actually. Take note of the idiots clapping.

Preach it, Hillary, preach on!

This sort of thing is supremely embarrassing and irritating to me. What is it with black churches and condescending white liberals? A match made in “heaven.”

(Audio source: iFilm)

Update: I found a link to an ABC video. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “preached” in black churches in Selma, Alabama. There’s only a snippet of audio from each speech, but Obama obviously changed his speech patterns for the black church audience. It would be funny if it weren’t so silly. (More here and here)

Allah at Hot Air (with more “southern” Hillary audio – sickening!) notes a couple of inconsistencies in Obama’s “sermon.” Obama claims that a JFK-sponsored airlift in Africa brought his father to the U.S. and that events in Selma brought together his black father and white mother. Two problems with that: JFK took office two years after Obama Sr. came to the U.S., and Obama Jr. was born four years before the Selma event he referenced.

Others blogging: Sister Toldjah, Right Voices, AA Political Pundit…

Unrelated Update II: This is one reason why I don’t post pics of my niece and nephews. That, and the fact that their parents would kill me.

Commenter Radish (emphasis added):

I’d like to see how they sound in front of other groups–Asians, Latinos, Arabs. Do they bust out a fake British accent to “build rapport” with English-speaking Indian immigrants, or speed up when talking to the Chinese? Or is this behavior confined to blacks and retired Iowa farmers?

In a laugh-out-loud post, ommenter Dan notes (emphasis added):

It was interesting to me to hear Obama say “dollars” when he spoke in Des Moines, but “dollas” (as in “I don’t care how poor you are, you got five dollas.”) in Cleveland…I never realized the linguistic gulf between two states (Iowa and Ohio) likely to be confused for one another.

Can people please just talk like themselves for a change?

I miss the days of “Jhengis Khan.” The one thing that Kerry did, no matter what, was drone consistently. I’m afraid we’ve taken a step back.

Commenter Greg writes (emphasis added):

It’s one thing to pick up on the local dialect when you spend a significant amount of time in a part of the country. When I visit family in Michigan I pick up on the dialect very quickly because I’ve been there so many times. (Think the movie Fargo eh?) But to affect an accent because of your audience is sheer folly.

Update III: Check out Hillary “Miss Scarlett” Clinton:

Related posts:

• Bill’s Hill’s Shill Causes Chills
• Kerry Likes Blacks in Churches But Not In His Inner Circle
• John Kerry and James 2
• John Kerry and Jeremiah
• Bill Clinton and the White Liberal Bloggers