Tuesday, July 28, 2009

And what sound does a Southerner make?

Maybe I'm no longer up on how Americans talk and think others talk, but this piece from the Columbus Dispatch with U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich is unsettling. Under "other tidbits from the session with the two-term Republican senator", we read this:
The GOP’s biggest problem? “We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they [sic] hell they got to do with Ohio?’”
They 'go errrr, errrr'? Time for a reader poll, methinks.

Image from here, of the senator cuddling with a Texan, not a Southerner, I guess.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

They're not cuddling; that's a Man Hug. errrr. errrrr.

Anonymous said...

I doubt the choice of mockery is based on any belief about how Southerners talk. It may have the form of a claim about speech, but the sense is no more specific than that southerners are an outgroup identifiable by their speech.

Mr. Verb said...

Really? Maybe the distinguished senator is just losing his cognitive abilities. Soon, he may be on the floor of the senate going 'errrr, errrr' himself.