Joe Bidens Obama moment...

[sagehen]

I've got no brief for Bidens; he strikes me as a total windsock, but it
never occurred to me to attach all this rather sinister subtext to "clean."
I just thought he meant BO had no scandals on his record. He does seem to
have a pretty severe case of hoof-in-mouth, judging from all the other
instances people are citing.  I'm surprised Bidens  survived that whopper
about his life story that he served up in (what?) '88.
AM
^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Cut & Run? ***** You bet!
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^


>At 4:06 PM -0500 2/7/07, William Salmon wrote:
>>I think part of the hubbub over Biden's "clean" comment might be related
>>to the fact that he has made others that could be interpreted as
>>insensitive, such as the Indian-American/Dunkin Donuts comment:
>>
>>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIT3jUrNTX0
>>
>
>Very nice clip.  Surprised he didn't attempt to
>imitate the accent of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon,
>proprietor of the Springfield, DE Kwik-E-Mart.
>
>LH
>
>>
>>Quoting Brenda Lester <alphatwin2002 at YAHOO.COM>:
>>
>>>I'm from Georgia, and a common compliment there is, "He looks good,
>>>smells good." That means he "cleans up real good," which is also a
>>>compliment. These are regional expressions, and southern people know
>>>that.  I'm sure Biden did not mean clean, as in not dirty. A better
>>>word would be polished or refined.  And this "white way"--what
>>>happened to standard English? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a very
>>>eloquent, articulate speaker. I never heard any debate on his
>>>speeches being white-speak.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Dennis Baron <debaron at UIUC.EDU> wrote:
>>>  There's a new post on the Web of Language --
>>>
>>>Joe Biden’s Obama moment, or, I love it when you talk white to me.
>>>When Joe Biden characterized Barack Obama to the New York Observer as
>>>“the first mainstream African-American who is articulate,” he
>>>revealed the kind of linguistic prejudice that too often passes for
>>>acceptable in white America. Biden made this remark about his Senate
>>>colleague in an interview in which he disparaged his other rivals for
>>>the Democratic presidential nomination as having a position on Iraq
>>>that is “nothing but disaster” (Hillary Clinton) and not knowing
>>>“what the heck he’s talking about” (John Edwards). Calling Obama
>>>well-spoken as well as “bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”
>>>didn’t seem so bad in comparison. But it was the Obama moment, not
>>>the other insults, that threatened to derail Biden’s candidacy,
>>>because it revealed an insensitivity both subtler and in some ways
>>>more pernicious than Virginia Senator George Allen’s use of macaca,
>>>an overt slur which contributed to Allen’s defeat in the last
>>>election. ... Sen. Biden and many other mainstream Americans all too
>>>frequently assume as well that the right way is the white way....
>>>
>>>Read the rest at the Web of Language
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>DB
>>>
>>>
>>>Dennis Baron
>>>Professor of English and Linguistics
>>>Department of English
>>>University of Illinois
>>>608 S. Wright St.
>>>Urbana, IL 61801
>>>
>>>office: 217-244-0568
>>>fax: 217-333-4321
>>>
>>>www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron
>>>
>>>read the Web of Language:
>>>www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>>>
>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>---------------------------------
>>>The fish are biting.
>>>Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing.
>>>
>>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>~Will Salmon
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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