In an otherwise unremarked-upon political outrage that I picked up from the Drudge Report, here’s this. Christie Vilsack, Iowa’s first lady, apparently has been quite critical of the ways that African Americans, residents of Eastern PA and New Jersey, West Virginians, and Southerners speak. She’s no political lightweight: her endorsement of John Kerry is credited with helping him triumph in the Iowa caucauses, and she’s a primetime speaker at the Democratic convention this week.
Because I’m proud to be from South Jersey, I’m going to concentrate on those remarks. By way of backstory, about ten years ago she published a series of articles in an Iowa paper criticizing a number of regional dialects. From the Boston Herald:
Vilsack’s Aug. 24, 1994, column was particularly critical of dialects from other regions of the country. In addition to the knock on African-Americans, Vilsack knocked residents of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
“Later, on the boardwalk, I heard mothers calling to their children, `I’ll meet yoose here after the movie,’ ” she wrote. “The only way I can speak like residents of New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania is to let my jaw drop an inch and talk with my lips in an `O’ like a fish. I’d rather learn to speak Polish.”Say what? Iowa first lady slammed blacks, Easterners and Southerners as bad speakers
I challenge First Lady Vilsack to a public debate: let her repeat her venomous attack on the speech patterns of New Jerseyans at a forum in the Garden State. I suggest somewhere “down the shore.” From the sounds of it, I can guess that she was on the Ocean City Boardwalk, but I could be wrong.
As far as I’m concerned, this is an insult to everyone from Philly and South Jersey. “Let my jaw drop and talk with my lips in an O?” Why would anyone with any pretensions towards public life write anything like that about anyone?
If you have led such a sheltered life that you cannot understand English as spoken by people from other parts of the United States or from different backgrounds, maybe you shouldn’t write newspaper articles publicizing that. Just a thought.