taylor on safire on clinton

[Lynne Murphy]

>From Charles Taylor's farewell to Clinton in today's Salon.com:

"An esthetic Southerner like Jimmy Carter was acceptable as president. But a
gregarious one of obvious (and hidden) appetites just had to be Lil' Abner
playing dress-up. Here's William Safire a few weeks ago in the New York
Times Magazine, talking about what he'll miss most about Clinton: "The
Ozarkian's free-and-easy use of the American idiom." In other words, those
hicks may not know how to speak English, but they sure are cute when they
try. Imagine something similar being written about a black president. (And
try to imagine taking language instruction from a former Nixon
speechwriter.)"

M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
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