clarence thomas' dialect

[Wilson Gray]

Amen, sister! What's unfortunate is that he seems to be a very nice
guy. He's hard to dislike on a personal basis. I like to be able to
hate the thinker as well as the thought. :-) Several years ago, a
black-oriented magazine "joned with" him by referring to him as "the
lawn jockey of the Republican right." It cracked me up at the time.
Now that I've seen him (on TV as a spectator at a football game) in
his unofficial manner, I *almost* feel sorry that he had to endure
that "jone."

-Wilson

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Amy West <medievalist at W-STS.COM>
>
> Subject:      Re: clarence thomas' dialect
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  Thank you, Wilson! My gut reaction was that it's a BS excuse but I
>  haven't got the linguistic chops to support that. Rather I would
>  suggest taking a look at how many opinions he's *written*: very, very
>  few. If it were a matter of hesitation in the spoken language, I
>  think we would see a difference between the amount of speech in oral
>  arguments and the written opinions, but we don't. The opinion of many
>  of my legal friends is that both the lack of questions and written
>  opinions are due to him riding on Scalia's coattails. The deeper
>  reason is he's just unqualified for the position.
>
>  ---Amy West
>
>  >Date:    Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:12:46 -0500
>  >From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>
> >Subject: Re: clarence thomas' dialect
>  >
>  >That claim is unreal, and I ain't going for it. Thomas speaks
>  >standardly far better than, i.e., Jesse Jackson or Saint Louis's own
>  >Cedric the Entertainer, who have no trouble opening their mouths. And
>  >mastering standard is no huge undertaking
>
>
>
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