Uh — seriously, what the hell is going on here?
It looks like George Will is apparently under the impression that it’s perfectly fine to go all Henry Higgins on Donna Brazile in front of the entire country.
It’s as though he just couldn’t help himself, and had to make sure that the rest of us could understand the poor, simple (cough!black!cough!) lady from Louisiana.
What an asshole.



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Will is uppity crust.
Well, then, George needs to go back to “Miss Manners School of Courtesy”, doesn’t he? Very rude, George. Go to your room.
George Will who slept his way to the top –well the midlevel of mediocrity
I’d like to ax George Will to go to hell.
I understood her perfectly. To bad GWB didn’t give him a job to assist him with his pronunciation and vocal bullary.
does that make any difference?
I don’t think he was correcting her, just confirming that he had heard her correctly. Will might be a little hard of hearing, it happens to us old folks. Still, it was slightly rude for him to speak when if he had listened a couple moments the context would have made it clear.
One of my favorite visions is a hook coming down during the Stephanopolis bullary and snatching that toupe thingy from Will’s head.
There are lots of bad rugs among the punditry. Sam Donaldson’s is in a league of it’s own.
It’s possible to clarify what someone meant by using the word in one’s next question – So, you think that rural voters etc etc. This works on television/radio as well as in situations involving people who speak a different language, I used it in my Russian interviews.
Too bad he hasn’t learned how to seek clarification without looking ridiculous. This is professional?
I don’t get it. It sounded like she said RURAL voters. And he corrected her by saying it was RURAL voters.
Huh?
Agreed, there are also some doozies in congress.
you just give him slack because he’s from Urbana
Will also scowled and grumped and pointedly refused to look at her while she was speaking, a la McCain during the debates with That One.
Wikipedia says he was born in the steaming metropolis of Champaign… a suburb of Urbana.
Actually, I’d forgotten he was from around here.
I had to go back a couple of times on the DVR this morning to make sure I heard it right.
Yep, that’s what he did.
Asshole.
It would be fun to have Will interview Palin. He’d never get beyong the first response.
Don’t drop your “g”s, take them pass/fail.
Of course he would. They don’t point out the errors of their spawn.
He’s not used to be around southerners, as are most northerners. Donna was making the case that rural southerners may go with Obama.
Given the money he makes, you’d think he *could* buy a decent rung.
What a dick
He’s just a pompous snob. I’ve known and dealt with people like this my entire adult life. They are particularly rife in many university liberal arts departments around country.
I am surprised that George Will has a job, really, as so many Americans hate snobs more than ignorant frat boys.
I’ve got hearing difficulties – but sans hearing aids, I had no trouble understanding her. None. So… are we seeing the right, faced with defeat by black man, wanting to re-establish a pecking order where whites lord it over blacks?
Personally, I think guys should play the hand they’re dealt. Then again, I have hair.:)
He would have had a field day with me, too, TheraP. I always say Salmon by pronouncing the ‘L’ and other little linguistic peculiarities. xD
PS. I don’t do NOOkulAR , like Palin, though. However, I don’t hold that against either her or Bush. I hold their utter lack of sense and compassion against them.
He may have just misunderstood her. It sounded a little like “royal” instead of “rural.” He might have just wanted to make sure he knew to what she was referring, and nothing worse.
Hate to keep playing devil’s advocate but the broadcast audio doesn’t indicate how well they can hear each other in the studio. Also, I don’t know if they all wear an earpiece, or just the host. Additionally, being hard of hearing, you know that it is easier to understand words when the person speaking is directly facing you.
It *would* be a drastic change to see all the rug-wearers on TV suddening defrocked, as it were. *g*
Wow — two BTs — back to back!! New one upstairs.
Without a(n) hair apparent (gasp)?
will is an idiot committed to proving he’s not. this just makes him look more idiotic and reveals his inner asshole. i’m sure none of us would mock or correct someone’s pronunciation in public like that, right?
if that were the case, wouldn’t this kind of thing have happened previously? i’ll give it another couple of listens out of respect for your judgement – but that’s not how it sounded to me on first listen.
It’s kinda like imaginin’ someone nakid, ain’t it? *G*
Admittedly, my hearing is less than perfect, but it doesn’t sound to me as if she mispronounced the word at all, hence there was nothing to correct. For some reason, the second time she says it sounds a little odd to me, although that’s neither hear nor there.
Will reminds me of a friend who, upon getting a job as hostess of a chi-chi restaurant, very quickly assumed the attitudes of the people she served. She was snottier-than-thou within a month.
I try not to, generally. I don’t particularly have any hangups regarding human anatomy but most people look better with clothes on. I asked my doctor once if I should disrobe and she replied, “HELL no!” -g
Funnily enough, I did a Google search to see if Will had ever corrected Bush on his pronounciation of “nuclear” (or on any other Bushism), and came up with nothing. And I’ve yet to see him ding McCain for his repeated references to “Warshington”.
Interesting, how Will can’t see the multiple boards sticking out of white Republican eyes, but purports to see a speck in the eye of a prominent black female Democrat.
i’ve listened a couple more times. brazile doesn’t pronounce the second “r” – i hear “ruwal.” so it does sound to me as though will is correcting her.
actually what bothers me more is how much we’ve mocked the way bush or palin speak, so to complain about will now seems hypocritical. hence my first comment above.
It is how people from southern LA speak. I cannot say the word mirror normally.
mira.
People from southern LA are not normal, thank Jeebus.
I was born in what was Mercy Hospital, you know, the one that ate my old house at 1308 University! I knew numbnuts went to Uni High but wasn’t really sure which side of the Alma Mater her was from.
But Bush and Palin are exaggeratin’ their speechifin’ to connect with the bumkins. Donna Brazile is using an authentic accent.
Will is pompous and arrogant but doesn’t typically disrespect his fellow panelists, so I’m inclined to maintain that he was seeking clarification.
I think motive and setting are relevant to your second point. Brazile’s pronunciation reflects a regional dialect, nobody questions her intelligence or intellect, including Will (IMO). Bush and Palin’s butchering of the language seems to reflect a willful ignorance (or pandering to the willfully ignorant) on their part.
you know this for a fact?
I was also born at Mercy. I suspect Will was too, so technically he would have been born on the Urbana side of Wright St..
Meant to say “intelligence or education.” Less redundant that way.
She said it correctly. I heard it as rural. I generally regard him as incredibly “tight”. It was unnecessary and weird.
It would be verrrry interesting to see him interview Palin. After a few “also’s” his head would explode (toupee included).
actually, i’m pretty sure people here have done exactly that (she was, after all, gore’s campaign manager).
I know that Bush is not from Texas but from Conn. I have heard Palin speak on the teevee from when she was a sports caster. Sounds different. I know that Donna Brazile is from Kenner, LA right outside of New Orleans. Her accent sounds about right to me. Accents can change from street to street in New Orleans. I used to be able to tell if you were white, black, protestant, catholic, middle class, working class, Irish, Italian etc by your speech. This is just one of the many things that was lost in Katrina.
Oh, now – George was just “clarifying.”
I totally understood her – what’s the fucking problem?
The problem is she is black. Similar to Buchanan telling a black woman to shutup about six months ago.
oh, i know bush was faking it – i lived in tx when he was gov. i’m just not so sure that brazile isn’t faking it also.
You might be blessed with better hearing than your elders, for the time being.
While conceding that he should have waited, some of us suspect he merely wished to confirm that he had heard her correctly. He’s still an arrogant jerk, just not guilty of correcting his fellow panelist.
If anything Brazile’s accent has been modified by being in Washington. New Orleans accents are strange. A combo (sometimes) of Philly and deep south. Plenty of people sound like The Fonz but the speech is slowed down. More lanquid.
Not all southerners are black.
Reminds me of a knock-knock joke I heard around 50 years ago from one of my sister’s friends:
“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
(loudly) “(bleep)!”
Pause . . .
“Okay, (bleep) who?”
(even louder, and condescendingly) “(bleep) WHOM? (bleep) WHOM?”
Not all southerners have accents.
New Orleans, by the way, is not in the south. Not really.
Not the parts the tourists go to, anyway. I spent a week in New Orleans once and the only person I met with a southern accent was visiting from Kentucky.
i’m not arguing with you that it sounds authentic (i defer to you on that one), only that i don’t know that it is actually authentic.
Actually, as a native Kentuckian, the accent is more often a Pennsyltucky accent or mid-western than a true southern accent
got ya.
True, I had a friend from Alabama whose speech I would consider more southern. The lower portion of Indiana and Kentucky have a distinctive flavor, though. I spent a couple days in Louisville and it took me a week to stop saying “y’all.”
I think you hit it exactly. We’ll be seeing more of this, no doubt, but its real effect will be to make the right-wing idiot sound like, well, a right-wing idiot. Marginalizing themselves so you don’t have to bother!
That’s exactly what I heard.
I’m sorry, I’m not a George Will fan but it sounded to me like he was just asking for a clarification to make certain he heard her correctly (as someone not attuned to Nola accent) and it looks as though that’s the way she took it as well. She was switching topics (slightly from early voting to rural voting) – I think you sometimes see (hear) things that aren’t there.
Look, I found this to be a schadenfreudaliscious treat. This is what impotent rage looks like from a chickenhawk. Expect varying degrees for the next 96 months minimum. I am especially looking forward to the bleating of Doughy Pantload!
George W., despite fans like the usually more discriminating Scott Horton, generally hopes to make others look ridiculous. Rudely correcting what he considers non-standard English is a peculiar neocon code, one familiar to admirers of the bon mots of Mary McCarthy or the less obviously acidic Nancy Mitford.
Speakers of what’s perceived as non-standard English, whether from Brooklyn or Harlem, Anchorage or Charlotte, Liverpool or Lisson Grove, are poor, foreign, other, uppity abusers of English and the welfare system, no matter how many degrees they have or the professional heights they’ve scaled. It’s a legacies pat on the back to himself and his mates that they’re made men and the doors are closed.
I hope Tavis Smiley’s people give Georgie a call and “a” invitation to come onto his show. Let him try the same thing in less assured surroundings. Humpty-Dumpty, meat Wall.
You can reasonably assume that anybody who claims that others are voting for Obama solely because of his race (as Will did with Colin Powell) is himself picking his presidential candidate entirely on the basis of race.
There should be a word for these people . . .
I think there is a word….
Old southern american english:
New southern american english:
Yat:
Creole:
Bigot in a sheet?
Will has always been a pompous patrician of wealth and priviledge and will always be.