The Wake

I watched the first vice-presidential debate with a pair of Democrats (please note the difference between Democrats and Liberals; I’m quite fond of one, but annoyed by the other) and - of course - they mocked Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s accent throughout the proceedings. Every time
she said one of her Wisconsin-by-way-of-Alaska O’s they would giggle and repeat the sound. Every time she used a folksy phrase, my apartment was filled with titters. This is a problem.

Though politicians’ accents have been discussed for a very long time, the one that is clearest in my mind - and probably yours - is Mr. George W. Bush’s. His reputation as a bad speaker is on the verge of becoming legendary and mostly for good reason: he has said a lot of very, very stupid things around
cameras. However, this idea of W. as a bad speaker is consistently laced with mean-spirited rhetoric regarding, not the things he says, but the way he says them; not his tone, but his accent. Due to spatial constraints, I’m not going to attempt a comprehensive analysis of Bush’s accent, nor am I going to attempt to explain what dialects are and why they have nothing to do with a person’s intelligence. I’d just like to quickly talk about the word nuclear.

If you have been awake in America at any point in the past eight years you’ve probably heard somebody make fun of the President for pronouncing nuclear wrong. This is not just something that goes on in people’s homes and in college classrooms, but something that is done in high-profile media,
even in media outlets which are supposed to be concerned with actual news. The issue is that W. does not use the standard pronunciation of the word nuclear (nukli??) and instead says nuke-you-ler (nukj?l??). The idea of said criticism is that this usage implies President Bush’s stupidity.

Well let me tell you something: I, too, say nuke-you-ler. I mean, if I’m feeling self-conscious or trying to speak properly, I say the word “correctly,” but if I’m just talking without thinking about it, I say nuke-you-ler. And it’s not because I’m stupid, nor is it because I don’t understand physics. It’s because I’m from fucking Nebraska.

So please, please, next time you hear Sarah Palin talk, don’t make fun of her accent. Make fun of the fact that she says things like, “The terrorists hate our freedom.” Because we can’t let ourselves get distracted by meaningless bullshit this election. It’s serious, and there are serious things which are
much more important than accents. For example, did you know Hustler is making a porno called Nailin’ Palin?