Shots in the Dark

Great moments in presidential debates…..

Who knew that Sarah Palin’s accent was eliciting so much commentary? I didn’t, until I tried to find out what the hell was going on with my blog yesterday (165 comments and counting on that “More Palin-Bashing” post). But do a Google search for “Palin and accent” and you turn up pages and pages of commentary.

One conclusion I come to: Palin’s accent provokes strong responses, and is, frankly, polarizing. One suspects linguistic appeal (or lack thereof) was not something John McCain considered when he made his near-spontaneous choice of Palin to run with him.

Here’s Politico’s take:

…supporters were gaga over the governor’s nonpareil pitch, which they saw as one key to her outside-the-Beltway appeal.

“We really haven’t heard this kind of accent before,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “This is an original voice that doesn’t sound like Washington, doesn’t sound like an insider, doesn’t sound at all like what we have.”

And on the other hand:

Anna Bosch, a linguistics professor at the University of Kentucky, added that “you don’t hear the rounded, mellifluous tones of a Katharine Hepburn. Palin’s voice quality is a little bit — I hate to say — abrasive. It is kind of shrill.”

Here’s something I would throw out there: Unlike many accents—French, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, some southern—nobody really seems to like this one unless they share it or unless their political sympathies lie with Sarah Palin and John McCain. Palin’s accent is more like a German one—it just strikes many ears as unappealing.

I’m not entirely sure that’s true—thinking out loud here—but it’s something to ponder.

Thirty years ago, in the seventh inning of the 163rd game, a pretty good shortstop named Bucky Dent swung at a Mike Torrez fastball and lifted it gently over the left-field wall in Fenway Park. And thus, baseball history was made, and would be chronicled by many great writers—here’s Hal Habib, who interviewed me, writing on the game in the Palm Beach Post— and also yours truly, in my book, The Greatest Game. (Available on Amazon for a ridiculously low price.)

Well, baseball has changed a lot since. Here’s a remarkable fact I realized the other day, as I was preparing a talk on the book. In 1972, George Steinbrenner and partners bought the Yankees from CBS for $10 million. Of that sum, Steinbrenner’s investment was $833,000. 

Next year, four season tickets behind home plate at the new Yankee Stadium will cost $810,000.

In other words, George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for roughly the cost of four season tickets today. 

Remarkable.

In other bizarre events, the Red Sox have won two World Series, and at the moment are a better team than the Yankees. The universe has turned upside down. 

There have been many great baseball games since 10.2.78, but still, I don’t think there’s been one quite as dramatic, or filled with subplots, or reflective of a great rivalry. Happy anniversary, Mr. Dent. 

Well! As you can see (if the post hasn’t been bumped off the screen yet), my take on Sarah Palin’s accent has received more comments than this blog has ever gotten—by a longshot. About 150 as of this writing.

Took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on, but thanks to Beecham, who pointed out that Slate has a piece on Sarah Palin’s accent, now I know. My post was linked to by Slate—not entirely accurately.

The Slate writer said,

Since Sarah Palin was selected as the Republican candidate for vice president, many people have made comments about her unusual speech, comparing it to accents heard in the movie Fargo, in the states of Wisconsin and Idaho, and in Canada. Some have even attributed her manner of speaking to her supposed stupidity. But Palin actually has an Alaskan accent…

That “supposed stupidity” part is the link to my post. But in fact, I explicitly said that I don’t think Sarah Palin is stupid—I just said that I think her accent makes her sound stupid. A big difference.

Here’s what Slate concluded:

Reaction to Palin’s speech has been highly varied. Some people dislike it, finding it harsh or grating; others regard it as charming or authentic. These are common responses to a distinctive accent. Depending on the context, such an accent can make a person seem stupid or uneducated or, conversely, honest and folksily trustworthy—often at the same time. Some people exploit this for effect, emphasizing and de-emphasizing dialect features to prompt a particular reaction. Linguists call this code-switching. In this Palin interview with Katie Couric, you can hear her enunciating her -ings and her yous more clearly in responses where she appeared to have a ready answer, and returning to her more natural -in’ and ya when she seemed stumped, which suggests that Palin may have been deliberately attempting to minimize her dialect features for that audience.

In other words, evidence for both sides.

Meantime, welcome to all these new posters. You may never come back, but if you do, that’s terrific. Please feel free to contribute your comments anytime. Okay, not necessarily if you’re going to write that liberals are “dumb shits,” or make implicit racist threats against Obama. Otherwise, I welcome differences of opinion here, and value your thoughts. Whatever accent you think, speak or write them in.

“It’s been a hell of a ride.”

—Paul Newman to his friend, the writer A. E. Hotchner, just days before his death.

For more on the accent debate, have a listen to this March ‘07 NPR program on the “hierarchy of accents,” featuring interviews with Michigan State University linguist Dennis Preston and Connecticut accent expert David Alan Stern.

Preston says that New York City and the South are “at the bottom of the prestige hierarchy,” which is to say, how people perceive the relative prestige of your accent. He also argues that American regional accents are much more defined, diverse and distinctive than they were 100-150 years ago. (Interesting!)

One thing Stern says is that, while American marketers used to like using British accents to sell products, they now prefer Australian accents. With that in mind, I wonder how Sarah Palin’s accent fares among American marketers (which is, after all, what political candidates are).

The participants also talk about evidence that we are sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex who have accents that are different from ours, and that this is a Darwinian evolutionary mechanism whose function is to prevent inbreeding. (Quite a cool idea, that.)

All of those sticking up for Sarah Palin’s accent are welcome to address this……

Take a look at this interview he did yesterday with the editors of the Des Moines Register. Particularly interesting, I think, is his defense of the “comprehensive sex education” ad. McCain either sincerely believes what he says, in which case he’s loopy, or he’s just flat-out lying, in which case…well, you know.
(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan)

Why Jewish kids should nag their grandparents to vote for Obama.

Or, Sarah Silverman really is sort of a genius, isn’t she?
(Thanks to the friend who pointed me to this.)

Apparently I gave Sarah Palin too much credit; watched on video, her remark about having heard Joe Biden’s speeches since she was “in, like, second grade” is clearly sarcastic (I thought it was a boast) and a knock on Biden’s Washington-insider status and, I guess, age. Juvenile but fair enough, I suppose. Though how she can do this given her running mate’s age….

Let us hope so. Tonight Boston begins its playoff run in a series against the hilariously-named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Will they lose? There’s a good shot. Ace Josh Beckett is hurt, and so is third baseman Mike Lowell. True, the Sox usually seem to have the Angels’ number. But this could be the LAAoA’s year. (They did win the most games of any team in baseball. Then again, they play in baseball’s worst division.)

I haven’t written much about baseball lately because of being vaguely depressed about the Yankees and because there’s a lot I want to say but haven’t had the time.

Quick thoughts:

—terrific that Mike Mussina won his 20th.

—terrific that the Yanks took two out of three at Fenway.

—unbelievably terrific that the Mets choked again and blew their season on its final day.

—very mixed feelings about the new Yankee Stadium.