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Working Families Vote 2008

Conservatives Hate That Obama Pronounces Words Correctly

Posted by Staff, Think Progress at 5:02 PM on October 8, 2008.


Gen. David Petraeus also pronounces Pakistan with a soft "a," are they saying he's exotic, academic, and annoying too?
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Also in PEEK

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Conservatives are in a tizzy over the way Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) pronounced "Pakistan" during last night's debate:

- "When Obama says Pock-i-stahn I have an uncontrollable urge to read the New Yorker and find some Chardonnay. Fortunately I have an old copy of NR and a Coors Light to snap me back to reality. Seriously though -- no one in flyover country says Pock-i-stahn. It's annoying." [E-mail posted by Kathryn Jean Lopez]

- "Re Senator Obama's ostentatiously exotic pronunciation of Pakistan, one thing I like about Sarah Palin is the way she says 'Eye-raq'." [Mark Steyn]

- "Most overwrought pronunciation of the night: The academic way that Obama says 'Pakistan,' with a soft 'a' - reminscent of a 1980s 'Saturday Night Live' sketch in which newscasters over-pronounced 'Managua, Nicaragua.'" [Philadelphia Daily News]

- "Drinking Game: A shot every time the candidates pronounce 'Pakistan' or 'Taliban' in an annoying way?" [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Even the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder liveblogged yesterday, "Noticing that Obama says Pahk-istan and McCain says Pack-istan." However, Gen. David Petraeus also pronounces Pakistan with a soft "a," the same as Obama:

Is Petraeus also exotic, academic, and annoying?

Digg It!

Update: A. Serwer at TAPPED writes: "To pronounce something correctly is to be 'ostentatiously exotic,' while pronouncing something incorrectly is raised to the level of something like a presidential qualification. Meanwhile, there are thousands of Americans of Pakistani descent who are themselves 'ostentatiously exotic' by virtue of their names (and it would be elitist of them to expect anyone to pronounce them correctly) and ancestry."


Return to PEEK  » Post Tools: email EMAIL print PRINT 23 COMMENTS PERMALINK
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Post by Steve Benen. January 6, 2009.		 Fox News Claims 'Magic Negro' Text Was 'Inadvertently Cleared for Air'
Fox New has a history of allowing racially-charged language aimed at Obama and his family to make it on air and then claiming it was simply a mistake
Post by Matt Corley. January 3, 2009.
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Liberal Bias
[Report this comment]
Posted by: pdxjoe on Oct 8, 2008 5:14 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
See, even the correct pronunciation of words has a liberal bias.

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» RE: Liberal Bias Posted by: Xynyx
To quote/paraphrase Obama further...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: hurricane hugo on Oct 8, 2008 11:05 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"It's like these people pride themselves on being ignorant."

jdfu!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Mighty elitist description.
[Report this comment]
Posted by: chuckjs on Oct 9, 2008 2:41 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"ostentatiously exotic" Couldn't have used much larger ELITIST words to describe Obamas english!

More hypocrisy!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

I noticed this!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: 2crazykids on Oct 9, 2008 2:54 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
And as someone with an "exotic" first name I truly appreciate someone with the KNOWLEDGE and the RESPECT to pronounce names correctly. I cringe every time I hear Amuricans discuss topics for which they cannot even pronounce. It makes us all look like dumbshits. We are NOT all dumbshits!

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» RE: I noticed this! Posted by: Vik
and i thought it was simply being courteous...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: eviltwit on Oct 9, 2008 4:09 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
to pronounce things correctly - idiotic complaints - btw. if i hear Iraq pronounced EYEraq one more time, i'm going to scream

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Chill
[Report this comment]
Posted by: PJT on Oct 9, 2008 4:41 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is nothing to go nucular about.

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» Spelling, PJT, spelling ! Posted by: zipper696
» RE: Chill Posted by: SteveO
God forbid an educated presidential candidate
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Frank J. Burris on Oct 9, 2008 4:41 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I embarrassed myself several years ago, pronouncing Iraq eye-rack, when an Iranian co-worker expalined how to actually say it. I for one am glad when someone corrects improper pronunciation, grammar, etc. There's no excuse for going around sounding like George W. Bush.

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Speaks to...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Michel on Oct 9, 2008 5:37 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
conservative preconceived notions about black folks.....

It's ridiculous..especialy with incredibly important...world-changing stuff going on. If he were white this would not even have entered their minds....

One word..
STUPID

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» No... Posted by: kimbari
» RE: No... Posted by: Michel
Loving it!
[Report this comment]
Posted by: PakiBoy on Oct 9, 2008 6:08 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Is it any wonder that America's high-tech and life-sciences sector is run by foreigners?

Is it any wonder that start-ups in the leading technologies and emerging sciences are getting outsourced to India, China, Eastern Europe?

After 8 years of Cheney and his sidekick the Village Idiot from Texas, America has offered a senile fool and his VP choice Sarah Palin.

Loving it!

Please select McCain-Palin!

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A THOUGHT ABOUT LIGHTENING UP
[Report this comment]
Posted by: VZEQICVA on Oct 9, 2008 7:55 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Obama is a gentleman and a scholar no question about it. But what if he came out on a stage, waited for the crowd to quiet down, flashed his big smile, winked, and said, "are we gonna' win? Yes, you betcha'. People would laugh for a week and the Republicans would have something else to bitch about. It's not as though Palin can come close to sounding like Obama. But then she plays to a different crown. ANNA

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Pronounciation of foreign names
[Report this comment]
Posted by: CJC on Oct 9, 2008 8:29 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The American preference for pronouncing foreign names with what I would call a flat 'a' as in cat is common. I have friends from Pendleton Oregon who were with me in the Peace Corps in Turkey. When they returned home their families chided them for taking on airs for pronouncing the capital city Ankara as Ahnkara. They had to persuade and educate their family that they were pronouncing the name as it is pronounced in Turkey. And that the city where they lived in Turkey, Antakya, was Ahntahkyah.

Perfectly ordinary English words like car and palm and park use 'ah', except maybe in parts of Boston where park is pronounced like pack but aunt is ahnt, and in much of New England where many ordinary folks say tomahto (but never potahto.)

Palin is paylin but I haven't heard public complaints about how to say Barack Obama's name as Barahk Obahmah.

So Pakistan as Pockiston or packistan, what does it matter? Same goes for Afghanistan. Even I who think of myself as fussy usually say packistan even though I know better.

But I always say irahk and irahn and would no more say eyerack than I would say eyetaly for Italy.

It's part of our fundamental American anti-intellectualism to criticize others for having and displaying knowledge that we ourselves lack.

Conservatives hate Obama because he's smart and able and seems to beating the pants off their candidate. Any more than Palin's unfitness for the vice presidency is evidenced by her dropping her 'g's the conservative objection to Obama has nothing to do with how he speaks but with what he says.

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petey
[Report this comment]
Posted by: petey0571 on Oct 9, 2008 12:34 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I have to say it's a relief to finally have a candidate that even knows how to pronounce the word "nuclear" (hint: it's not "nukyaler").

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The NR and Coors "Lite"
[Report this comment]
Posted by: blackie4aces on Oct 9, 2008 1:02 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Coors Lite is for pussies, you macho conservative namby pamby. Furthermore, my lefty friends and myself lean to Rye Whiskey, not Chardonnay. You need something strong to stomach the shit the neocons and right-wing loonies coame up with on a daily basis.

Satan's Neutral Corner
satansneutralcorner@yahoo.com

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One More Thing
[Report this comment]
Posted by: blackie4aces on Oct 9, 2008 1:27 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"Re Senator Obama's ostentatiously exotic pronunciation of Pakistan, one thing I like about Sarah Palin is the way she says 'Eye-raq'." [Mark Steyn]

Evidently, being a clueless idiot is not ostentatious, but being correct and knowledgeable is? Except that being a clueless idiot, particularly if it is done on purpose, or continued in the face of potential enlightenment, is quite exactly ostentatious and markedly arrogant. It sends the message, "I can afford to be a fool because I am a rich and powerful fool and have no respect for learning, for language, or for anyone else. What the fuck are you gonna' do about it?" I remember Drill Sergeants in the army who purposely mispronounced certain indiviual's names in order to humiliate them, to demonstrate that they weren't even worth the small effort of pronouncing their names correctly; that they were nothing in the face of power.

So we have this asshole, Mark Steyn, basking in the glow of Sarah Palin's arrogant ignorance-a neocon heart to be warmed for sure.

Satan's Neutral Corner
satansneutralcorner@yahoo.com

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The Power of Unreason
[Report this comment]
Posted by: brummie on Oct 13, 2008 3:17 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
During the past eight years, anti-rationalism of every sort has become the defining strategy of right-wing American politics. Near the end of the 2004 campaign, Ron Suskind of the NY Times reported a chilling conversation with a Bush aide who told him that the press belonged to the "reality-based community" of Americans who "believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality." But, he added, "that's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too. We're history's actors� and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

This distinction between history's actors and those who are fit only to study the results not only expresses a general contempt for learning but also denigrates anyone who requires evidence, rather than emotion and faith, to justify public policy. An exchange during the VP debate between Palin and Biden captures this mindset. Biden had spoken about the Bush administration's deregulation of financial institutions as a major factor in the nation's economic woes. Palin replied, "Say it ain"t so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backward. Now doggone it, let"s look ahead and tell Americans what we plan to do for them in the future."
-------------------------------------------
Full article - The Power of Unreason

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