December 28, 2020

I feel lured into talking about Hilaria Baldwin, but what do I want to say? What did I say about Rachel Dolezal... and is this the same... or worse... or better?

I thought I could get away with dropping this one seemingly juicy sentence from The Washington Examiner....
But while, say, the New York Times decided that Hilaria's cosplaying as a Latina stereotype was off-limits — even as they wrote growing profiles of her as well, including uncritically her "slight Spanish accent" — the paper of record has celebrated children having their college admissions revoked for a video of them singing the N-word along to a song when they were 15 as a "reckoning." 
I found that because it has Rachel Dolezal in the headline ("Alec Baldwin's wife became Hollywood's Rachel Dolezal because of our sniveling, bootlicking press"). 

But come on — "they wrote growing profiles." Presumably, that should be "glowing profiles," Hilaria Baldwin has posted many selfies where she's standing sideways to display her pregnant belly. But no, that's not something the NYT can write. Here's the glowing profile in the Times, from back in 2014: "Hilaria Baldwin Holds Her Center" ("Her voice betrays a slight Spanish accent, remains of a childhood split between Boston and Spain").

I wonder how many people are faking accents... and why (and when) we feel a person acquires a pleasing air about them because of that. Oh! Just by chance, last night I watched an episode of "Friends" where the Friends were extremely irritated by a woman who'd acquired a fake English accent:

 

Interestingly enough, that's the episode with blackface...
...

That episode — "The One With Ross's Tan" — has more thematic unity than I originally thought!

Well, clearly, blackface is a very specific problem that has been isolated, and everyone has been warned about it, so violations are harshly judged. The same is true of the "n-word," though the presence of lots of recorded music with the word creates confusion for young people who might not understand that this is the ONE thing you don't sing along with. 

But accents... accents are different. You can do fake accents... can't you? I've seen people pick up a New York accent or a Southern accent... to try to fit in or to be thought well of. Many actors do accents and get special acclaim. Meryl Streep, etc. etc.

So must Hilaria Baldwin be denounced because she's doing what she's doing while being a highly privileged person? Or are accents different from skin darkening? 

ADDED: As for the article where the NYT "celebrated children having their college admissions revoked for a video of them singing the N-word along to a song when they were 15 as a 'reckoning,'" here it is: "A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning/A white high school student withdrew from her chosen college after a three-second video caused an uproar online. The classmate who shared it publicly has no regrets." Excerpt:

Since the racial reckoning of [last] summer, many white teenagers, when posting dance videos to social media, no longer sing along with the slur in rap songs. Instead, they raise a finger to pursed lips. “Small things like that really do make a difference,” Mr. Galligan said.
Galligan is the high school student who posted the video and, according to the NYT, has no regrets. 
“I wanted to get her where she would understand the severity of that word,” Mr. Galligan, 18, whose mother is Black and father is white, said of the classmate who uttered the slur, Mimi Groves. He tucked the video away, deciding to post it publicly when the time was right.

He decided the time was right a month [???] later, during the George Floyd protests, when Groves posted on Instagram to say "protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something"  in support of Black Lives Matter. By this time, Groves had chosen her college, the University of Tennessee, and — reacting to "hundreds of emails and phone calls from outraged alumni, students and the public" — the university pressured her into withdrawing. Groves's case isn't unique, we're told. There are "at least a dozen cases" like this.

Ms. Groves said the video began as a private Snapchat message to a friend. “At the time, I didn’t understand the severity of the word, or the history and context behind it because I was so young,” she said in a recent interview, adding that the slur was in “all the songs we listened to, and I’m not using that as an excuse.” 

ALSO: I wrote "a month later" but I'm now questioning my reading of the article, which isn't clear about the timing. Twice, it uses the phrase "last school year" to refer to when Galligan got hold of the video that he "tucked... away" for future use. But I see a highly rated comment over there that says: 

I guess I’m the only one bothered by the fact that Galligan purposely waited for years to release this video, with the express purpose of destroying her college chances. This goes far beyond wanting to “educate” her — this is vindictive and chilling behavior.

And I'd like to say that if I were raising a child today, I would intervene the first time I heard the child play a song that had the "n-word" in it, and I would tell the child clearly that I never want to hear that word and that he should never say that. If I were in a public place with my child where a song with that word played, I would immediately talk to my child about it and say it is wrong. If I were in a restaurant where the word was played, I would never go back there again (or if it was a place I really liked, I might talk to them about it and see if they apologize and promise never to do that again). Really, I do not see how we can go on with songs like that played around young people.  

205 comments:

1 – 200 of 205   Newer›   Newest»
Unknown said...

Hillary Clinton, March 2007: " 'I don't feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don't believe He brought me this far."

Yeah, well, okay then.

David Begley said...

In some reviews of “Wild Mountain Thyme” there is some crazy and vigorous complaints about the Irish accents. The male lead is from Ireland!

daskol said...

The lengths this poor woman had to go to dissociate herself from a loser like Crooked Hillary.

mezzrow said...

Am I cruel to find this hilarious?

Lincolntf said...

As a Bostonian (actually a Worcesterite) I have long been a bemused student of actors' attempts at a legit sounding Boston/New England accent. This SNL bit covers it pretty well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLwbzGyC6t4

Neall said...

Americans are so in love with the British accent that I’m convinced there are some fake Brits conning some easy marks....

alanc709 said...

Liberals can do no wrong, of course. It's your bias that finds fault with this.

jeremyabrams said...

If changing your accent is off-limits, how can changing your announced gender be culturally permissible? Can't you identify as of Spanish origin, in the same way that you identify as your non-biological gender?

Iman said...

It’s a leftwing disease, suffered by sad people.

But the fact it’s that d-bag Alec Baldwin’s wife is very amusing.

Temujin said...

Some people pick up accents from being around others for a period of time who speak that way. For instance, I lived in New Hampshire for a bit earlier in my life and I started to take on that New England/New Hampshire affect to some of my speaking. I find that I do that naturally when I'm in a certain area for awhile. It happened again later, when I moved to the Southeast where I've been now for years. I don't sound like a native Georgian (I'm now in Florida), but I no longer sound like the guy from the Midwest.

And even when I lived in the Midwest, people would often ask me if I'm from New York- and I never got that. It happened to me many times in my life- years ago. My version of a Michigan accent apparently sounded New Yorkish to some people.

Anyway- none of that was due to a false affectation to make some sort of point which I do not get. I don't understand someone parading around as something they're not. How disappointed they must be in who they actually are! And I suspect there is a LOT of it that goes on.

Bruce Hayden said...

Hilaria is mostly off limits because of who she is married to. Her husband is such a progressive icon, that he was featured in “Team America, World Police”. I can’t watch him without mispronouncing his name, as the NORK dictator did, in the film, as Awek Balwin. This is little different from giving the VA Gov a pass for wearing blackface in college. Of course, NYT’s outrage is situational. They are leftists. Nothing more needs to be said.

Tina Trent said...

Since when are people from Mallorca, Spain not white?

AlbertAnonymous said...

I love how the headline simply refers to her as “Alec Baldwin’s wife”...

I thought that was misogynistic? Cant keep this stuff straight.

Retail Lawyer said...

Ann said "The same is true of the "n-word," though the presence of lots of recorded music with the word creates confusion for young people who might not understand that this is the ONE thing you don't sing along with."

I think you can sing along with the "n-word" if you are a certain race.

WK said...

Accents are a spectrum. Hilaria is accent fluid. Likely feels more Spanish some days than others.

Leo said...

I'm old enough to remember when Madonna suddenly became pseudo-british.

Dean1 said...

Hilarious ... regardless of how she refers to herself

Fernandinande said...

Well, clearly, blackface is a very specific problem

No, it's not actually a problem.

that has been isolated, and everyone has been warned about it, so violations are harshly judged. The same is true of the "n-word,"

One must not blaspheme against the sacred blacks. Sick stuff.

though the presence of lots of recorded music with the word creates confusion for young people who might not understand that this is the ONE thing you don't sing along with.

Unless the "young people" are black, in which case can sing and say whatever they want.

Shouting Thomas said...

People should play at being whatever they want to be, if that’s what they want to do.

Fernandinande said...

Latina stereotype ... "slight Spanish accent"

"Latinks" doesn't include Spain.

mikee said...

How about we just use the good old fashioned always useful condemnation, "She's a witch, burn her!" Seems apropos for leftist virtue signalling via condemnation of others.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Since when are people from Mallorca, Spain not white?”

The better question is when are people whose ancestors came to the Boston area before the Revolutionary War not White? It very much appears that her parents RETIRED to Spain, but she was raised around Boston, where her parents spent their careers, and she prepped as “Hillary”.

tcrosse said...

Even as a native-born American, sometimes I like to affect British spelling. Is this the same as affecting an accent? Humour me.

Kate said...

What would Henry Higgins say?

Rory said...

I affected a trace of an Irish accent my first couple months in college. I can't recall why - if it was intended to get girls it didn't work. I eventually stopped and again, can't recall why.

I never tried to reflect the speech of the places I was living, but those online accent locators always place me in Central Pennsylvania, right in the middle of the areas where I was raised, schooled, careered

Sally327 said...

It's more than just a fluctuating accent. She's done other things as well to create the impression that she's a more exotic version of herself. Hilaria not Hilary, born in Mallorca, not born in Boston, moved to USA to go to college when she was 19, not grew up in Boston and went to prep school there.

I think some of this may have come out of her relationship with Alec Baldwin, the famous actor/celebrity who inhabits a world of make-believe but with access to and familiarity with lots of exotic seeming real people. I think a lot of these wives of the celebrity class must feel a great deal of pressure to measure up to Amal Clooney.

J. Farmer said...

The Examiner article is a good example of how confused our language is around race and ethnicity. Baldwin was never claiming to be a "Latina," a person of Latin American origin, but a Spaniard. The reason the term Latino has a racial dimension is because Latins tend to have mixed European, Amerindian, and African ancestry.

Temujin said...

tcrosse:
Colour me humoured.

stlcdr said...

tcrosse said...
Even as a native-born American, ...

12/28/20, 8:11 AM

If you miss of the '-born' part, you will be burned at the stake.

Lucien said...

Tina Trent: didn’t you know Rafa Nadal is a Tennis Player Of Color?

Kevin said...

Imagine if it were Melania.

Shouldn’t that be the standard to which the left must be held?

rhhardin said...

She liked José Jiminez.

chuck said...

I found myself drawling when visiting my cousins in southern Indiana. No one was more surprised than me.

Rory said...

"I like to affect British spelling"

The great old baseball player Tris Speaker is slowly being changed from "The Gray Eagle" to "The Grey Eagle."

MikeR said...

I remember people attacking Hillary Clinton for this back in the day. But it's pretty common. Some of us have a good ear and can imitate accents without thinking about it too much. It's easy to automatically sound like the people around us.
It was actually very helpful in my Russian class; I had a good accent without trying hard and my teacher liked me.
Anyhow, since you're listening, I had a very good friend Yaakov who had come from USSR/Ukraine. He was from one of the very few Orthodox Jewish families left in Kiev. So he told us that the local shochet (ritual slaughterer) used to do shechitah on chickens in the bus stop, because they needed secrecy or they would get in big trouble.
None of us could understand it. We asked him a few times: Where? - Bus stop - Why? Because no one could find out.
After a long time, we all suddenly realized that he was saying, bathtub.

robother said...

Don't they have assistant producers whose sole responsibility is thematic unity?

jaydub said...

The thing for which I will never forgive Hilaria is bearing Balwin's children. The world would be a so much better place if the Baldwin line were allowed to die out.

robother said...

My French teacher listened in on my machine, and said that I had a perfect Midi accent. (Subsequently learned that was not a compliment.)

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

No. Next question.

BudBrown said...

I grew up in a well to do area in Tampa in the 50s and the n-Word was a wash out the mouth with soap word. I cant remember how that worked since you weren't suppose to know the words, how in the heck were you suppose to know not to say them yet. I cant remember any adults using the word. We kids sure did and it got used a lot. This one relative tho he used it off and on.
The kids, we'd all stop and stare and wait for something that never happened. This guy wasn't from Tampa, he was from up north and had been phi betta kappa at one Ivy and had a law degree from another Ivy. Maybe he thought he was fitting in. He was into diversity and inclusion. I'm sitting next to him at some dinner, must have been 84 cause Mondale came up and the relative makes a Minnesota Swede crack that I wish I could recall the gist of. I kept thinking dont laugh, dont laugh, then dont fall off the chair not laughing.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

I had a childhood friend, David Seiler. His father moved the family from Pasadena, CA back to Tennessee because Pasadena was integrating the schools with cross-town busing. This was junior high school so we were about 11 or 12. He had a Tennessee accent the next time I saw him.

Darkisland said...

It's all bullshit. Not to say that we should not mock her mercilessly but it is still bullshit.

If she wants to claim to be hispanic, Spanish, Latin or even Martian, good on her.

When a person with a dick claims to be a woman and a person with a vagina claims to be a man we are supposed to accept that with a straight face.

That means anyone can be anything they want to be and WE CANNOT QUESTION IT!!!

Fuck these people who question her self identification. You go, girl. Be what you want, no matter how bizarre.

Rachael Dolezal has more justification for claiming she is black (very little) than Bruce Jenner has for claiming he is a woman (none at all)

Live and let live, I say. Their body, their choice.

John Henry

Gahrie said...

The Left is telling us that White priveledge exists, but behave like White discrimination exists. (psst... that's because it does)

West Texas Intermediate Crude said...

The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low.

daskol said...

I remember when cosplay was a kids’ game, or something a little pervy for adults trying to add a little low grade kink. I get that Hilaria is sexier than Hillary, but why do we have to be a part of their sex games.

J. Farmer said...

@BudBrown:

I grew up in Tampa as well. I can still remember old timers referring to Sulphur Springs as "n***** town." The younger, more progressive set preferred "colored town."

Darkisland said...

Blogger Neall said...

Americans are so in love with the British accent

But which one is the real question. There are dozens, some of them mutually incomprehensible until relatively recently.

One woman, 17 British Accents

https://youtu.be/FyyT2jmVPAk

Spanish, even just in Spain but especially around the world, is far more diverse.


John Henry

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I like this opening statement

The fading celebrity trophy life ranks as one of the easiest jobs of modern life: refresh your fillers enough that the Daily Mail can never describe you as "tired-looking" in a supposedly candid shot staged outside, pop out just enough children that your trainer and your plastic surgeon can nip you back into a size two, and develop just enough of a rapport with your mindless friends that they'll buy whatever FitTea or slave-labor made swimsuit you're paid to tag in your inexplicably popular Instagram posts.

Darkisland said...

Blogger Bruce Hayden said...

The better question is when are people whose ancestors came to the Boston area before the Revolutionary War not White?

You mean like Crispus Attucks descendants?

Consulting The Book of Knowledge informs me that in 1720 there were 2,000 blacks in Boston. Are their descendants now white?

John Henry

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Althouse: "...this one seemingly juicy sentence...."

...at 66 words long illustrates the poor quality of newspaper writing.


Lexington Green said...

I enjoyed her yoga videos. I don’t do yoga, I just liked watching her do it. Is that so wrong?

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Blogger BudBrown said... I grew up in a well to do area in Tampa in the 50s and the n-Word was a wash out the mouth with soap word.

In the 50's my family moved to Mississipi (somewhere) for their work. In 1st grade I had a black teacher. My parents were really concerned about the issues of segregation and prejudice and really didn't want my brother and I to absorb that stuff.

They asked me if I like Miss Whatsername. I said.. yes. She is really nice.

Then had I have heard anyone say anything bad about her. No.

Did I hear them say Nword. Yes. (Parents are appalled.) Do I know that that means??

Oh yes. It is those short pants that come to your knees like ...in a story I had just read.

I thought that Nword was Knickers.

We moved shortly after this.

Anyone want to hear my "Colored Fountain in the Park" story ?

Tina Trent said...

The question is off. It isn’t whether skin darkening or affecting an accent are different activities; it’s how hard can the left push to persecute whites to the point of destruction, as they did this weekend with a national feature story about some half-black total-asshole kid who outed a classmate for imitating black rapper speech in a five second video she had made years earlier, resulting in the teen girl losing a scholarship and education she’d pursued with years of work and discipline.

It’s about creating a society where the superior race may casually destroy the inferior race and be celebrated by powerful people for doing it.

It’s horrifying; it isn’t about celebrities or episodes of Friends, and it isn’t cause for casual conversation: it is the iron fist of fascist race superiority descending on the right of many to merely exist. Shall we keep chattering about it, or perhaps expect socially powerful and financially comfortable people to live by some modicum of principle by actually doing something about it?

How long do you think half or so of the people here will even be permitted access to the internet?

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

Althouse: "Well, clearly, blackface is a very specific problem that has been isolated, and everyone has been warned about it, so violations are harshly judged. The same is true of the "n-word,"

Yet we routinely see people with black faces casually using the "n-word" in conversation.

Tom T. said...

The interesting question is, why now? This has all apparently been an open secret for a long time. Why are the Baldwins being made into a target of outrage only now?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

An old neighbor of mine, who moved away with her family a few years ago - she was from the South. She voted for democrats and would tell me of the dumb things GWB or Sarah Palin would say. She thought Sarah Palin actually said "I can see Russian from my house." I also recall another made-up quote found on SNL - that she bought wholesale as something GWB actually said.

Anyway - she was a stone cold racist. She would utter the N*-word and *other* blacks all the time. It perplexed me.

Darkisland said...

Blogger J. Farmer said...

Baldwin was never claiming to be a "Latina," a person of Latin American origin, but a Spaniard.

Here we go again. A week or two back we had an extended discussion of Latinx, Latin, Hispanic.

I thought the general consensus was that people of Spain and Portugal were Latino because they spoke a Language with Latin roots.

Although people from from Romania, Italy and France were NOT Latino even though they spoke a Latin rooted language.

I don't remember where, or even if, you came down on this J Farmer so don't take the above as directed at you.

As for "hispanic" if anyone has a claim to hispanic, it is Spaniards. Much more so than the other mostly mixed race, often very little Spanish, people who are lumped under the hispanic banner.

John Henry

Dust Bunny Queen said...

There is a big difference between living in an area and absorbing that accent because everyone around you talks that way. This is a natural occurrence and happens without thought.

When visiting with my relatives from the South...it is easy to slip back into that cadence. I used to be very socially close to many in the immigrant Irish community in San Fransisco and slipped into pronouncing some words with an Irish lilt. It just happens.

It is a totally different thing to purposely put on a fake accent...as Hillary Clinton...to pretend to be someone you aren't. It is fake, deceptive and condescending.

Two different things.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Hillary Thomas was born to American parents in Boston and spent most of her life in Massachusetts until she successfully social-climbed her way to Baldwin's side.
Since then, she decided to rewrite her origin story as a Majorca-born Latina, renaming herself "Hilaria" Baldwin, adopting a Spanish accent and affectation so serious she pretended not to know the English word for cucumber on a show, and repeatedly claimed to be Spanish herself. In the sheer boredom of our coronavirus Christmastime, some random Twitter users pieced together the sheer insanity of Baldwin's inconsistent accent and story.


Hilaria? that is HILARIOUS.

Alec Baldwin's wife is a freaking phony white as marshmallow fluff Masshole - a fake. a fraud. a phony.

She fits right in with corrupt evil Debra Messing-Severed bloody head leftwing HIllarywoodlanders.

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

English has Latin roots via its French and Latin words. Why doesn't that make English Latino? We've all been Latino and didn't know it!

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Hilaria Baldwin went on the #momtruths podcast in April 2020 and said she didn’t move to the US until she was 19 to go to NYU"


Except - Hillary - "Hilaria" was born in Massachusetts - to white parents.

Ken B said...

It’s all about who has to step aside and avert their eyes. The left want a caste system.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Things are not just one thing. Hunt to feed your family, hunt to kill bambi.
We judge Baldwin as though she is trying to get away with something, like a college drop out enhancing her resume.
Hillary Baldwin is not a college drop out enhancing her resume. She came from wealth and privilege long before she met Alec Baldwin. It's kind of a game people like that play, their is no "real" person underneath to betray. If a woman can literally hire another woman to bear her children, how can it be wrong to falsely claim to be born in Spain? What difference does it make?
I saw some rock documentary that claimed that Joan Jett (then named Joan Larkin) was an unremarkable suburban high school girl back in the mid 70s. She purposely developed the bad-girl "Joan Jett" persona and could put it on & take it off like a sweater. Is that very different than what Hilaria Baldwin has done? Life is just a performance, more intensely so for some people than it is for others.

Kevin said...

Alec Baldwin's wife is a freaking phony white as marshmallow fluff Masshole - a fake. a fraud. a phony.

If we had the original SNL, they'd have Alec host and make him do a skit about it.

But we don't.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Ann's first link to the Washington examiner piece is a RTWT.

Want to wear blackface? If you're a celebrity like Jimmy Kimmel, you can wear it on national television to pantomime an actual black person and get away with it. If you're a governor like Democrat Ralph Northam, you can even survive not being sure if you wore a full minstrel get-up or a Klan hood. But if you're a random nobody at a party wearing blackface in the misguided attempt to make anti-racist social commentary, the Washington Post will publish an entire expose about it that results in you losing your job.

Want to use the N-word? If you're a multimillionaire celebrity like Alec Baldwin, you can just tweet it out and keep your gig lampooning the president on Saturday Night Live. Be a foolish child singing the word along with song lyrics in a private Snapchat video, and the Grey Lady will consider it a newsworthy reckoning when you lose your spot at college many years later when a bitter narc sends an outrage mob your way.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Alec Baldwin Won't Apologize For Using The N Word

Keeps gig mocking Trump on Saturday Night Democrat

J. Farmer said...

@Darkisland:

I thought the general consensus was that people of Spain and Portugal were Latino because they spoke a Language with Latin roots.

I don't remember where, or even if, you came down on this J Farmer so don't take the above as directed at you.


The thing to remember is that "Latino" is a designation that is pretty much only used in North America to refer to people from Latin America as contrasted to Anglo-America (US & Canada). "Hispanic" just means related to Spain and thus as you noted wouldn't describe French or Portuguese speaking populations of Latin America.

Spiros said...

The New York Times is cyber bullying teenagers and trashing children's privacy rights. What the hell?

Bob Smith said...

“I feel lured into talking about etc etc. Why? You are just giving this parasite the attention she wants.

Rusty said...

I'm told I have a "Chicago" accent. Over by dare.

Darkisland said...

Speaking of blackface, is it OK for a black Dominican (native of Dominican Republic, of fairly pure African heritage) to appear in blackface to make a comedic point in Spanish?


https://youtu.be/l963sNQhLCg?t=154

Merengue your hearts out, Chillun.

John Henry

Marc said...

I'm reminded of the term 'Afro-Saxon' which used to describe Black celebrities who adopted slight British accents. Jessye Norman and the late Rev. Peter Gomes were deeply great people and easily forgiven for this humorous affect which somehow seemed to give them a more commanding aura.

J. Farmer said...

@Mike of Snoqualmie:

English has Latin roots via its French and Latin words. Why doesn't that make English Latino? We've all been Latino and didn't know it!

English does not really have "Latin roots." It has Germanic roots but a lot of Latinate lexical influence. The Latin influence on English, especially in the context of the Norman Conquest, is called superstratum. That is, it is imposed from the top down instead of forming from the bottom up. Despite having a majority Romance vocabulary, English grammatical and phonology is derived from Proto-Germanic.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If the corrupt elite liar left decide to destroy you - see Covington kids - they will.

But please, don't call the corrupt liar left a pack of fascist Nazi Brownshirts.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Let's see if I understand this correctly:

She adopted a fake accent to create a lie about herself: the belief that she was of a privileged racial group ("Hispanic") rather than a member of hte evil and inferior racial group ("white").

She is evil because she tried to raise illegitimately herself from the muck she was born into (the evil white class).

To the racist Nazis of the Left, this is a horrible crime. Except, she's a member of the Elect by virtue of being married to Alex Baldwin, so they want to pretend it didn't really happen.

Do I have this correct?

Greg The Class Traitor said...

So, let's see if I have this other story correct:

Some young entitled scumbag born of the most superior race ("blacks") got upset because people from the inferior racial group ("whites") were singing along with a song that was only allowed to the members of the superior race, and saved evidence of their racial uppityness to destroy their lives years later.

Being a truly Nazi propaganda organ, the NYT is now celebrating this action of putting his racial inferiors in their place.

Would that sum things up? Have I missed anything?

J. Farmer said...

@DarkIsland:

Speaking of blackface, is it OK for a black Dominican (native of Dominican Republic, of fairly pure African heritage) to appear in blackface to make a comedic point in Spanish?

The more common occurrence is "white face," the use of skin whitening treatments like those Sammy Sosa used.

Even among Latin America's racially hybridized population, a racial caste system has developed along skin color lines, with lighter Latinos at the top, darker at the bottom, and the various mulattos and mestizos in between. Skin tone is just a proxy for racial ancestry. Dominicans on average are about half European, 40% African, and 10% indigenous. Haitians are almost entirely African in their ancestry. Whereas, Jamaicans are more likely to have European or East Asian ancestry.

If the hypothesis that race has biological meaning is true, then it is unsurprising that Haiti is so far behind every other country in the Western Hemisphere. Also, it is unsurprising that African-Americans, a hybrid of African and European ancestry, outperform sub-Saharan Africans.

Robt C said...

I was born in Michigan, raised in SoCal. When I was an adult I moved to Manhattan Beach, where I lived druing the '80s and '90s. One night a few years ago I was in a bar in England and started chatting it up with a British couple. She said she could tell where I was from by my accent (which I didn't think I had, of course). So I said "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
And she immediately said, "Manhattan Beach."

Darndest thing ever.

Aggie said...

What did anyone expect? They're in the acting business. The magic of technology brings their screen personae to life, then we give them credit for skill and depth they don't possess. And being human, they interpret misplaced adoration as a sign of their infallibility. Phonies, one and all.

BothSidesNow said...

On fake accents, there is a hilarious Ellen Degenaras (I know, seems like an oxymoron) show from years ago when Ellen had her sitcom. Ellen plays an administrative assistant type in Hollywood who is assigned to take care of Emma Thompson who is visiting Hollywood from England for a few days. Emma Thompson turns out to be a drunk, and one night, Ellen visits Emma in her hotel room as Emma gets drunker and drunker. As she drinks, Emma's English accent starts to fade, and gradually becomes a strong Midwest accent. Ellen notices, and finally asks Emma what is going on. Emma breaks down and tearfully admits she is from a small town in Ohio, got pregnant in her senior year in high school, and was shipped off to an aunt in England, the rest being history! Emma Thompson is a great comedic actress.

Bob Boyd said...

Hilaria probably saw that beer commercial with The Most Interesting Man In The World, and thought to herself, hmmm...I could do that.

Chick said...

I ain't no ways tired

J. Farmer said...

@Aggie:

Phonies, one and all.

Maybe. But how do we differentiate a phony self from a genuine self? What makes someone's behavior or personality "authentic"? Perhaps Andrew Silverstein was the phony self, and Andrew Dice Clay the real self. Maybe "The Diceman" was just a way that Silverstein found to be his true self.

Nobody's identity is really developed internally and then presented to others. Our identity is formed in relation to other people.

"I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am." -Charles Cooley

Darkisland said...

Blogger J. Farmer said...

The more common occurrence is "white face," the use of skin whitening treatments like those Sammy Sosa used.

Not sure I would call it "white face" since it is not done as a racial caricature but I take your point.

In Puerto Rico we have all skin tones and all sorts of racial mixes ranging from pure African black to pure European white and every shade in between.

Back in the 70s there used to be more overt discrimination against blacks. Not like in the US where one is either black or white but more on a sliding scale where the darker you were the less well you tended to do economically.

We also had women cooing over babies with the traditional "que bonita/how cute" and so on but also comments about "que blanca" (How white [she is]) or "Mejorando la raza" (Improving the race) if the baby was lighter skinned than the parents.

Never as bad as some other South American countries, like Cuba, but it did exist.

John Henry

Mary Beth said...

Snapchats are supposed to be temporary. I have as much, actually more, of a problem of Jimmy Galligan saving a video for three years as I do with her saying a word she shouldn't have.

Snapchat marketed on the idea that what you sent was temporary. They have some responsibility here for misleading their users. Jimmy Galligan saved the video for three years. Why not complain about it at the time? Saving it and using it when it could be the most damaging, instead of immediately when saying something could be most instructive, is creepy and hints at a mentality that is based on hatefulness.

If the word can't be said, ban it from all songs played on the radio. Ban it from all songs played on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and all other sources. We've already seen how easy it is for internet-based companies to ban speech they don't like. This should be very easy for them.

I'm Full of Soup said...

DBQ at 9:08AM - your little kid story is hilarious!

Bilwick said...

"I remember people attacking Hillary Clinton for this back in the day. But it's pretty common. Some of us have a good ear and can imitate accents without thinking about it too much. It's easy to automatically sound like the people around us."

And we all know how much time Queen Cacklepants spends in the ghetto.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

related:

They Were Relentless’: How I Learned Respect for Our Communist Media

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Tom T. said...
The interesting question is, why now? This has all apparently been an open secret for a long time. Why are the Baldwins being made into a target of outrage only now?

The Dems appear to have successfully stolen the election from Trump, so her husband is no longer "needed" on SNL

So it's now safe to burn the witch

Omaha1 said...

I grew up in various places in the midwest, as the child of a career military father. None of those places ever really gave me an "accent" although Montana was kind of rural. But still when I am around my brother-in-law who was raised in Tennessee, I find myself echoing his accent after a couple of hours.

A weird thing that I notice at the bar where we shoot pool with our multi-cultural friends (black, Cambodian, Native American), young white women play rap music on the jukebox that contains the "n-word" to great excess. Are they allowed to sing along with those songs? I don't like this kind of music and I find a lot of the lyrics very offensive (sexist etc.).

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

DBQ uttered the "K" word...
I'm telling!

lgv said...

AA shouldn't focus on the act/pretense, but rather the purpose and intent of pretense. Dolezal was far worse, because it was a scam used to further her personal ambitions. She got a job because of it, a job she would never have gotten without the deceit. I still don't know how white boy Sean King is still getting away with his scam. Oh, he says his mom had an affair.

Hilary's scam is mostly PR. It's closer to Elizabeth Warren's claims, although one could argue that Warren only got her gig because of her minority status, ergo worse.

If Baldwin were getting something other than undue PR and empathy, then it would be different. Does she get special treatment, rights, money, for being "hispanic"? Not likely, especially since she claims "European" Hispanic. Yes, there is now a distinction within the Hispanic population per a Hispanic friend whose daughter just enrolled in college. It's like the "White Hispanic" tag.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Mary Beth said...
If the word can't be said, ban it from all songs played on the radio. Ban it from all songs played on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and all other sources. We've already seen how easy it is for internet-based companies to ban speech they don't like. This should be very easy for them.

Ah, Mary, you miss the point.

To have a racial caste system you have to have things that members of hte superior "race" can do, that their inferiors can not do.

The whole point of this exercise was to "put the whitey in her place". She was saying a word that HER "race" isn't allowed. That is why she must be punished. She was being pity, acting above herself

Jupiter said...

I know we're supposed to think it doesn't matter, and all this Identity-think is wrong -- Say it, kids; "We're all in this together!".

But if I am not mistaken, the pact we made, to all be in this together, has now been revoked. Democracy is over, and the Constitution is a dead letter. A country has been stolen. And that doesn't mean the country has new owners. It means the country has NO owners. It's like the McGuffin in a caper movie. It's a hot property. It belongs to whoever can get their hands on it. Of course, to keep it, you have to kill everyone on the other teams. So, which team you're on is very important just now. Especially with ammo so expensive.

J. Farmer said...

@Darkisland:

In Puerto Rico we have all skin tones and all sorts of racial mixes ranging from pure African black to pure European white and every shade in between.

Back in the 70s there used to be more overt discrimination against blacks. Not like in the US where one is either black or white but more on a sliding scale where the darker you were the less well you tended to do economically.


I was just being tongue-in-cheek by saying "white face." Puerto Rico is most certainly a hybrid race, with the average Puerto Rican having about 2/3 European ancestry, almost exclusively through Andalusia and the Canary Islands. Interestingly, African admixture in Puerto Rico has an east-west gradient in that it is stronger on the eastern side of the island and weaker on the western half.

The big difference in how Anglos and Spaniards handled race was in their attitude towards "miscegenation," itself a consequence of the differences in Spanish and British colonialism. Spanish colonists were more likely to be single men and thus intermarry with the indigenous population, whereas British colonists more often consisted of an entire family.

But even with intermarriage and the muddying of racial waters, the effects of race are still evident with people of primarily European ancestry dominating those of primarily indigenous or African ancestry.

MayBee said...

Althouse- the NYT kid waited a couple years to post the N-word video, not a couple of months.

Michael K said...

Rusty said... [hush]​[hide comment]
I'm told I have a "Chicago" accent. Over by dare.


I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in the mid-50s to go to college. I was immediately accused of having a "Chicago accent" which of course I did. What was interesting to me was that there was a distinct "California accent" that sounded a bit like the "Valley Girl" parody a few years later. Maybe it was a southern California accent as I don't recall hearing it from the Bay Area. When I returned to Chicago the following summer, the Chicago accent was very noticeable to me.

I think the accents have faded since then although Boston and southern accents are still noticeable. I think TV has a lot to do with fading regional accents.

5M - Eckstine said...

Let kids use their imagination. Apply a little bit less black and white to them.

I'll imitate anyone unconsciously. I have no idea why. Accents, stutters, jokes, mannerisms, mumbles.

When learning Spanish I liked to watch South American TV. I probably had a gaucho accent. Not every word spoken is a nefarious deed.

Its the shallow people that get upset over this stuff. Lost their imaginations somewhere.

William said...

It's an affectation, and she got caught out. I like to pretend to be virtuous and tolerant so I won't condemn her for it. She's an extremely good looking woman. Many here do not understand the pressures and constraints that good looking women have to endure. We should be more tolerant of wealthy, good looking women in their efforts to find an identity acceptable to a world that does not welcome their presence......Give her credit. It's an offbeat and original affectation.

MayBee said...

Hillaria is hilarious for adopting a Spanish accent. Someone on Twitter found a clip of her on the Today Show doing the "how you say....cucumber?" bit during a cooking segment. Embarrassing!


But J Farmer is right. How weird that adopting a Spanish accent would be considered racist, when adopting a French or Italian accent would not. All three closely related latin based languages! It's of course because we see Mexicans and Puerto Ricans as poor and downtrodden, and don't know how to classify them by themselves without seeming racist that way.

Michael K said...

Back in the 70s there used to be more overt discrimination against blacks. Not like in the US where one is either black or white but more on a sliding scale where the darker you were the less well you tended to do economically.

I am interested in whether anyone else has noticed the strong discrimination among blacks toward those darker? What might be related is a tendency for darker blacks to be more conservative. Two examples are Clarence Thomas and Allen West. The hatred directed at these two by the left has a component of racial status, I believe.

Gahrie said...

We live in a world in which non-White people all over the world spend billions of dollars to lighten their skin and straighten their hair; while at the same time living in a world in which White people all over the world spend billions of dollars to darken their skin and curl their hair.

Jupiter said...

"The classmate who shared it publicly has no regrets."

Sounds like an action item to me.

J. Farmer said...

@Hammond X. Gritzkofe:

Yet we routinely see people with black faces casually using the "n-word" in conversation.

This is an area white people need to give up on. Not only is it okay that use of the word is restricted to specific ethnics, it is a very normal phenomenon. Adopting a term of abuse as your own is a very effective strategy. You see this with words like Yankee, impressionist, redneck, Tory. Gay people use the word "fag" in a similar manner.

It's basically part of the same dynamic in which it's okay if I talk badly about my family members, but it's not okay if other people do.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Jupiter said...
"The classmate who shared it publicly has no regrets."
Sounds like an action item to me.


Yep. This kind of thing will only stop when "canceling" someone becomes a 9mm action item

J. Farmer said...

@Gahrie:

We live in a world in which non-White people all over the world spend billions of dollars to lighten their skin and straighten their hair; while at the same time living in a world in which White people all over the world spend billions of dollars to darken their skin and curl their hair.

I am extremely light-skinned and am always amused at the differing reactions it invokes in Florida versus Thailand. It's the old agrarian vs industrial split. Dark skin connotes agricultural work and thus low-class status. Once most people start working indoors, dark skin connotes sunbathing and leisure time.

No need for silly post-colonial theories to explain it. Now, blepharoplasty to remove epicanthic folds or nose jobs for a more prominent bridge are a different story. In South Korea, the relative size of the appearance of the eyes is a huge beauty marker. Having small eyes can be tantamount to being unattractive.

Fernandinande said...

Groves posted on Instagram to say "protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something" in support of Black Lives Matter.

I just lost most of my sympathy for her.

the university pressured her into withdrawing.

I just lost the rest of my sympathy for her.

Mary Beth said...

Ah, Mary, you miss the point.

Well, Gr, you missed half my name.

MayBee said...

I think we should all be concerned that we are living in a world where:

1- a biracial teenager will hold on for years to a clip of another young teenager using a slur
2- will use that clip to try to destroy her to teach her a lesson
3- a university will see that clip and pressure the student to not attend that university
4- will find a journalist at a world renown newspaper to write about the incident favorably
5- the tattling teen will feel satisfied with his actions

This is all East Germany stuff. It's not good. It's really really not good.

NCMoss said...

I changed my iphone computer voice from American to British female; the former sounded as if she was scolding me when navigating. The latter was more demure.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

J Farmer....I am extremely light-skinned and am always amused at the differing reactions it invokes in Florida versus Thailand. It's the old agrarian vs industrial split.

Right. Now do Cracker and Red Neck.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I like the line from Bullworth.
something like.. "I think we should all fuck until we are all the same color."

Mr Wibble said...

Someone on the twats made the comment that Jimmy is a sociopath, and it's a suckers bet that he has revenge porn stashed away, if not his then stuff that's been sent to him. He's a predator and I wouldn't be surprised if we one day see his name in a news article alongside either the phrase "premeditated" or "false police report."

J. Farmer said...

Michael K:

I am interested in whether anyone else has noticed the strong discrimination among blacks toward those darker? What might be related is a tendency for darker blacks to be more conservative. Two examples are Clarence Thomas and Allen West. The hatred directed at these two by the left has a component of racial status, I believe.

I think this is undoubtedly true. It goes back to the "house negro" versus "field negro" distinction. Not only was there resentment over the different working conditions and status but over what was seen as capitulation and collaboration with the master. This is also partly the origin of colorism since the lighter-skinned offspring of white owners and black slaves were more likely to work in the homes. Mixed-race people in New Orleans during the time of French colonialism are also an example.

In the 20th century, blacks often divided themselves along color lines with the infamous "brown paper bag test." All-black clubs would typically reject as members those whose skin was darker. Among black women this also appears in the form of hair texture standards. Long, straight answer is considered a sign of high status and thus there is constant speculation over whether someone's hair is natural or weave.

J. Farmer said...

@Dust Bunny Queen:

Right. Now do Cracker and Red Neck.

I did already ;)

I could add Whig, suffragette, Jew, and much fresher in everyone's mind: deplorable.

victoria said...

I think it's pretty funny that anyone would even care about someone who doesn't even show up on my radar as a person who i would actually care about. Seriously? There are more important things in this world to actually be worried about.

Vicki from Pasadena

Joe Smith said...

I have picture of me in Bermuda for our honeymoon, and I am darker than Schwimmer...looks like a tan Italian to me.

Tired of the racial bullshit.

Until skin whiteners and hair straighteners are banned, everybody can fuck off.

"I think we should all fuck until we are all the same color."

I have always thought that this would be a good solution, but no more redheads with freckles makes it a no go for me...

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

@J. Farmer

"Lighten up, Francis!" This whole story of Hilaria is a piece of trash. So what if she wants to pretend to be Hispanic?

Of course English derives from Germanic languages plus all the Norman Conquest French. The combination of those two roots resulted in a language without words being male, female or neuter. Plus multiple words for the same thing: French words for high social status and Germanic words for low social status.

French, Italian and Spanish languages are the evolved versions of Latin due to the barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire. If Spanish is a Latin language, so is French and especially Italian. And since English has many loan words from French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, English could also be considered a Latin language. It's all nonsense. People getting upset with Hilaria faking an accent just have too much time on their hands. They should start doing something productive, like making little rocks out of big rocks. Or digging holes than filling them in again.

MayBee said...

The comments about the girl being asked to withdraw first from UT cheerleading squad and then from the university itself are also troubling.
They echo what I've heard about young men being kicked out of university when accused of sexual assault:

Your life isn't ruined just because you lost your place at a college.

It's so incredibly vindictive and life-ruin-y to think this way. We need to pull our kids back from the brink. Maybe your life isn't ruined in a "well you aren't dead" kind of way, but it is really a terrible price to pay.

n.n said...

Diversity breeds adversity. Don't exercise liberal license to indulge color judgments. That said, another report from the Twilight fringe, pulled out of a black hole... whore h/t NAACP. Such a "burden". #HateLovesAbortion

Roger Sweeny said...

If the n-word is really so bad, it would be banned from the airwaves. Where is George Carlin when we need him?

J. Farmer said...

@Mike of Snoqualmie:

It's all nonsense. People getting upset with Hilaria faking an accent just have too much time on their hands.

I definitely agree with that. That this is a controversy at all is absurd.

And since English has many loan words from French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, English could also be considered a Latin language.

No, it couldn't. Language families are defined by common descent, not by vocabulary. Vietnamese has a lot of French loanwords, but Vietnamese is not a French language and does not have French roots.

"Lighten up, Francis!"

Everybody calls me Psycho. Any of you guys call me Francis, and I'll kill you.

Joe Smith said...

"Since when are people from Mallorca, Spain not white?"

She smiled because I did not understand...

Michael said...

The little half black boy who outed the girl and compelled U of Tennessee to revoke her admission is a very very vile piece of shit. A horrible person. The only person worse is the UT asshole who pushed her out. We live in very sick times ruled by sick people.

RigelDog said...

During our Summer of Endless Violence, I saw at least two separate videos where white Antifa types screamed at other white people who I guess were Nazis or something, calling them The N Word repeatedly. And my little brain thought, "Why is this OK? How can this be woke?"

I have never in my life thought about another human being as an N-word, was never tempted to call anyone that, and even though I grew up in the 60's and 70's in mostly-white Pennsylvania environments, rarely heard anyone else use the N-word. It was jarring and low-class even then.

I'm just glad that our kids are old enough that they missed the trend of having a social media presence at a young age. Our son has a heart of gold but sometimes lacked common sense in wanting to do some daredevil things when he was an adolescent. I could imagine he might have thought he could joke around with his black friends and if he said something "wrong" by today's standards in that context, at least it hasn't been captured for posterity.

Iman said...

A woman Awec married came from Majorca Spain
She lies because she has low self-esteem
She then fit right in with other leftists uh-huh
What rises to teh top ain't always cream

Chris Lopes said...

"I thought the general consensus was that people of Spain and Portugal were Latino because they spoke a Language with Latin roots."

Sim!

Joe Smith said...

I can still remember old timers referring to Sulphur Springs as "n***** town."

Don't even get me started on what my grandparents called Brazil nuts : )

Michael said...

I would like to hear Hilarious be interviewed in Spanish. The language she supposedly speaks much of the time. In watching her and listening to her excuses I think we can conclude she is quite stupid.

narciso said...

first of all no who is hispanic would use hilaria as a name, second she married alec baldwin,I enjoyed his demise at the end of fall out,

Iman said...

Guilty pleasures, narciso?

Iman said...

She's a pinche gringa!

RMc said...

Awek Balwin

Everybody sing!

I was sent from planet Gyron to conquer the Earth
I had a terrific plan, I thought it would work
Tried to get the earthlings all to kill each other, you see
But it all went wrong and now I must decree

You are worthless, Alec Baldwin
You are worthless, Alec Baldwin
You failed in every way and now my stock in you has fallen
Your career is stallin’ and you’re worthless, Alec Baldwin
That’s why I blew your head off
And your children are all bawlin'

Planet Gyron is inhabited with Zypods like me
But also with Balmacks who are giant bees
The Zypods and the Balmacks are at constant war
So we wanted a new home and that’s what Earth was for

But you are worthless, Alec Baldwin
You are worthless, Alec Baldwin
You f**ked up my whole plan
And now Gyron is smeared with Balmack Pollen

Your garbage needs some haulin’
And you’re worthless, Alec Baldwin
Now I must return home a failure
I’m afraid the pit of Kryrock is callin'

Joe Smith said...

The interesting question that nobody is asking:

Does she speak Spanish fluently? Does she speak it at all?

I remember when the dumber-than-dirt Julian Castro was trying for 'Hispanic' street cred, but didn't speak fluent Spanish.

He sounded like a third-grader earnestly repeating, ¿Donde esta la biblioteca?

If Hilaria doesn't speak Spanish, then the accent is obviously affected, and she should be mocked because of it.

narciso said...

heck yeah, it's too bad he didn't buy it in the departed, he was sullivans supervisor who didn't realize he was a bulger mole,

narciso said...

no es espanola de ninguna manera, her parents moved there, you know it's a little like with josh brolin, you buy he can be an evil jackalope like thanos or lieutenant trupo, because he is a nasty sob, in real life,

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

I'm betting that all of these "cancel culture" hooligans, especially the dirty little white kids who compose antifa, never got a spanking for misbehaving. A spanking for trying to intimidate someone because they are not "diverse" enough is what these brats need. A dozen swats should do it. Pain can be a great teacher and these kids have been sorely miseducated.

Iman said...

He sounded like a third-grader earnestly repeating, ¿Donde esta la biblioteca?

albondigas! no me digas!

Birches said...

I think a lot of you guys don't realize just how pervasive the N word is among young black kids in school.

And how parents don't usually hear the music their kids are listening to because it's all on headphones. Forbidden music and words are all the more desirable for teenagers interested in being a bit edgy.

I am reminded of the time that two of my older kids discovered what the f word was. They were young enough that stupid and shut up were still naughty words at our house. And so they decided that F was just like that. They would whisper it to each other back and forth and giggle. Realizing that this all could get out of hand quickly, I sat the kids down and explained that the f word was much more serious than stupid and shut up. The way that I was able to convince them was by asking if they ever heard me or their dad say it. It worked.

If you want to convince people a word is bad, the word cannot be uttered by anyone. Otherwise, it will end up like cussing: kids will do it when their parents or the offended are not around.

Joe Smith said...

"If you want to convince people a word is bad, the word cannot be uttered by anyone."

The point is, it can't be uttered by white folks.

It's not the word...black people don't care about the word because they use it themselves...all the time.

It's about power.

STFU cracker.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

More on Alec Baldwins fake Spanish wife:

"Despite the former dancer clarifying that she was born in Massachusetts, her management's online biography states that she was born on the Spanish island of Mallorca. "

So she's a liar.

"In a podcast interview from April, Baldwin states she did not move to the United States until she was 19 when she attended New York University.
Several individuals claiming to have gone to high school with the former dancer in Boston, took to social media to dispute her previous account.
"I went to high school with her," wrote one person. "She was perfectly nice and serious about ballroom dancing. Her name was indeed Hillary Hayward-Thomas and she did not have her current accent." "

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Her husband took to his own Instagram to defend his wife saying, that the claims were "ridiculous and to "consider the source." "


Ah - Alex sounds a lot like Joe Biden here. It's all lies!

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

(Alec)

Skippy Tisdale said...

I'm curious. Is Elliot Page now restricted to playing transgendered folks?

Michael said...

Deal? I will pay you $500 for every rap song you can produce that doesn’t have the word that can’t be spoken by white people. But you pay me $100for every one I find that does. Motherfucker and Ho are different games.

Birches said...

That's my point Joe. As long as people are saying it, it will still be said.

Michael said...

Dick Gregory, a real hero of free speech, wrote a book with the forbidden word as the title. You can find it on Amazon by searching Dick Gregory. Not found in title search.

Freeman Hunt said...

If she likes the way she sounds when she talks like that, what do I care? Let her talk however she wants. I've never heard her speak. Maybe it sounds nice.

J. Farmer said...

@Joe Henry:

Don't even get me started on what my grandparents called Brazil nuts : )

The enterolobium cyclocarpum is a flowering tree native to tropical areas in the Americas that produce black, ear-shaped seedpods. In Florida these were commonly referred to as "n***** ears." Similarly, the game "ding dong ditch" or "run and ring" was most often called "n***** knocking."

The mentality was basically that you had "black people" and you had "n******" and it was behavior that differentiated them. Chris Rock got famous doing a routine on this distinction during his Bring the Pain HBO comedy special in 1996.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

The five-star hotel I used to work at had a fancy restaurant. When we first opened the story went around about a waiter who was asked where his interesting accent originated. "I'm from Sweden" he replied. The guest then rattled off a few phrases in Swedish, leaving the waiter dumfounded. He confessed he'd been told if he had an accent he'd get better tips.

J. Farmer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Smith said...



"n***** toes."

Close, but no cigar...

And my grandparents were born and raised in San Francisco...

5M - Eckstine said...

Can't we assume with 100 percent certainty that every white woman under 30 with any sense of fashion has used the N word? Shouldn't woke culture ban them all from University unless they can prove other wise?


But actually we should want a boundary line. Where a little bit of racism is ok. Chappelle and Rogan need to get together and set the trend. And its really just a power game people play to try and get something.

Biff said...

Just remember, folks: "code switching" is perfectly acceptable when AOC does it. I think Hilaria's main problem was marrying a white man. Had she married an equally famous Hispanic man, it would have been written off as routine, every day code switching.

To be fair, I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with code switching, assuming you have legitimate associations with both "codes." I have no knowledge of whether that is the case with Hilaria Baldwin, but it seems plausible. Personally, I quickly fall into my native Jersey Italian vernacular when I'm "back home," and that can be jarring to companions who only know me from my New England environs. It's when folks go down the road of Hillary Clinton's "don't feel no ways tired" that one is at great risk of being perceived as inauthentic or manipulative.

PS. For the record, I generally agree with McWhorter's thoughts in the article I linked above, no matter how much I may disagree with almost anything else AOC does.

tcrosse said...

I used to hang out with some middle class blacks at UW in the 60s. They would speak of not being exactly rich, but N****r Rich. A few of them ended up being rich anyway.

J. Farmer said...

@Joe Smith:

Close, but no cigar...

And my grandparents were born and raised in San Francisco...


Well aware of the phrase. I was just adding a few more examples ;)

In the mid-70s, there was a movie of the week called Get Christie Love! starring the black actress Teresa Graves as a police detective that was eventually made into a TV series. It was a riff on the blaxploitation movies that were popular around the time. In the beginning, she's posing undercover as a hooker. The potential john asks for a price, and she says $100. He rebuffs the amount, and as she walks away he calls her a "n*****" Without missing a beat, Graves spins in a 180, continues walking backwards, and retorts "n***** lover!"

William said...

Americans like to pretend that they're unpretentious. It's what makes us special. Pretentious? Moi?.....Myself, I'm just a regular guy, but my grandparents were Russian nobility who had to flee their estates after the revolution. Sometimes I speak with a mild Russian accent. It's not a pretense. It just happens. You can take the Romanovs out of Russia, but you can't take Russia out of the Romanovs. I've always wanted to have a ballerina as a mistress, but no luck so far.

Youcef H-B said...

Yoga for Beginners: Top ten basic exercises you can do with ease.
The best tourist places in USA
How to get a job
Jobs make you rich

MD Greene said...

What surprised me most was learning that she had a booking agent.

Balfegor said...

I was born in Texas and occasionally do a Texas accent when people express surprise (now that we are all working from home I am thinking about keeping my cowboy hat close at hand so I can put it on at the inappropriate moment). I think when I was very young I had a somewhat organic Texan accent (albeit shaded with Korean, from my mother, and probably Spanish, from my babysitter), but it's completely gone now, other than maybe some dialect words and some vowels (although my vowels are all over the place in general). It's basically just a stage accent when I try to do a Texan accent today.

Re: tcrosse:

Even as a native-born American, sometimes I like to affect British spelling. Is this the same as affecting an accent? Humour me.

I almost always use UK spellings, but in my case that's a matter of pure contrariness. When I was young I learned spelling from the books I read. Those books were lopsidedly British, so those are the spellings I used. I got marked down for that on spelling test in elementary school, I think, and was so irritated that I have continued to use British spellings ever since. I occasionally use obsolete spellings on purpose now, both in the same spirit of contrariness, but also because they're often amusing (e.g. "gaol", which as a child I always read as gah-ohl).

Balfegor said...

Re: Biff:

On the code switching thing, it sounds like she's fluent in Spanish, so she may actually spend a lot of time with Spanish speakers and in Spanish language environments. If she's pretended she's actually Hispanic, okay, that would be a bit silly, but she's not necessarily putting on an accent.

Michael said...

I remember the leftie radio station in the Bay Area where the broadcasters always affected a Spanish accent when using the word Sandinista. They never adopted a German accent when saying Berlin or a Hamburg. Or a French accent for Paris. Solidarity. I still laugh.

stevew said...

I just can't get past her name to think about the severity of her offense.

NMObjectivist said...

On the young white girl singing the N-word along to a song --

If a white person is punished in some way, fired or kicked out of college, for using the N-word in the same way that some Black entertainers do almost continuously, isn’t there a civil rights claim by the white person for racial discrimination? The two people are treated differently for the same behavior on account of their race.

I recently watched the movie Shaft (2019) with Samuel L. Jackson. The N-word was used constantly. As in, "you M-F N-word” over and over. And to great hilarity.









narciso said...

if she were more upscale, she'd be a agatha christie character,

Lewis Wetzel said...

Blogger Fernandinande said...

Groves posted on Instagram to say "protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something" in support of Black Lives Matter.

I just lost most of my sympathy for her.

the university pressured her into withdrawing.

I just lost the rest of my sympathy for her.


I suppose she thought that "forgiveness" was part of woke ideology.
People tend to assume that Christian values are not Christian, but simple common sense, just part of what it means to be civilized. Not so.
Honor conflicts with forgiveness in the pre and post Christian world.

Tina Trent said...

Early black settlements near Tampa Bay congregated around Sulphur Springs and in the “Alaska” named streets in town because the socialist utopian intentional communities such as Zephryhills, Ruskin, and, further south, Estero banned blacks from living in them, and the Cubans weren’t keen on them in Ybor City. Once Fabian socialism receded, legal municipal restrictions were lifted. Go figure. Plus there were other underclasses to mock in Gibtown and Dade City.

But that was a long, long time ago. The last fifty years have been an unrelenting orgy of violence by minorities against other minorities and non-minorities. That’s why the Department of Justice quietly trains police and prosecutors to vigilantly seek out white people using slurs to charge with hate while giving serial killers with huge body counts a pass. Woke justice. Hell, you can literally carve (non-homophobic) sexist pejoratives into the desecrated bodies of your victims and it ain’t hate speech, but quoting rappers while white earns a teen girl public humiliation in the national paper of record.

This isn’t exactly sustainable.

Joe Smith said...

"I remember the leftie radio station in the Bay Area where the broadcasters always affected a Spanish accent when using the word Sandinista. They never adopted a German accent when saying Berlin or a Hamburg. Or a French accent for Paris. Solidarity. I still laugh."

Probably KPFA...but every liberal nationwide is guilty of the same thing.

My favorite was 'Nica-ra-wa.'

'Pak-E-Staahn' is also a favorite, along with ISIL and the classic 'Corpsemen.'

tcrosse said...

It's always Chee-lay but never Coo-bah or Meh-hee-co.

J. Farmer said...

I find it interesting when American pronunciations of foreign words attempt to be closer to the original language rather than the Anglo pronunciation. Lasagna and paella come to mind.

Joe Smith said...

"Lasagna and paella come to mind."

Or those dang quesadillas...

: )

TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...

I wonder what else the not Spanish wife of Awek Bawin fakes.

And perhaps her deep, fake tan is used to cover up the bruises from the man to whom she is married, who admittedly has anger and control issues.

Surprised our hostess hasn't put a feminist spin on this yet.

Pookie Number 2 said...

Blogger Fernandinande said...

Groves posted on Instagram to say "protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something" in support of Black Lives Matter.

I just lost most of my sympathy for her.


I dunno. She’s still just a kid responding to viciousness. She’s allowed a panicked response or two.

stevew said...

I prefer Venezia, Firenze, Roma, Genova, Cinque Terra and so on in Italy. The English versions do not evoke the same sort of romance and song of the names.

Oso Negro said...

Never sang a Stephen Foster song as a kid?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Joe Smith,

When I was in England (late 80s), the BBC was comically different. They were meticulous with French and Italian names, but when it came to (say) Nicaragua, it was "nee-ca-rog-you-a." They didn't get the "ua" sound at all; "jaguar" was "jag-you-are." But then Spanish generally got the same treatment; Don Juan was "Don Jew-on," Don Quixote (I swear) "Don Kwik-sote." Byron might be responsible for the first, but that doesn't explain the second.

stevew, I agree, except that "Leghorn" is such a funny replacement for Livorno.

tcrosse,

It's always Chee-lay but never Coo-bah or Meh-hee-co.

True dat, and mysterious. There's one person on NPR (or maybe it's KALW, which I stopped listening to some months ago for OPB), who insists on Spanish pronunciation for CA place names of Spanish origin, which is a lot of them; you'd listen to him speak a sentence about San Francisco and the city name (but absolutely nothing else) would be in a meticulous Spanish accent. Then there's Maria Hinojosa, who reserves the same treatment only for her own name.

tcrosse said...

OTOH streusel is usually pronounced stroo-sel, but my Grandma pronounced it shtroy-zel. She made a lot of it.

gpm said...

>>I find it interesting when American pronunciations of foreign words attempt to be closer to the original language rather than the Anglo pronunciation. Lasagna and paella come to mind.

Not sure what the alternatives would be for those two. A grotesque spelling pronunciation for the first one? And I can't even figure out what the spelling pronunciation would be for the second. If you're going to have distinct American pronunciations shouldn't there be corresponding American spellings? And what should the American pronunciations/spellings be?

There's an Italian-oriented restaurant on the next block over from me, though I have to cross over into, shudder, fascistic-Brookline to get there). It is a second location of one originally in Rhode Island, which has a heavy Italian presence, relatively speaking to its small population. The restaurant isn't nearly as nice or authentic as the little one that used to be a couple blocks away where the chef was an Albanian immigrant who had worked in Florence/Firenze for some period of time. Just yesterday, I, per usual, ordered the BOWL-YUN-AY-ZAY, only to be given the BOWL-YUN-AYZ (they don't seem to do the same thing with the SAN JO-VAY-ZAY that should accompany the Bolognese). I don't know how the pronunciations run in Rhode Island, but at least I'm more consistent; if you're not going to try to approximate the Italian, why wouldn't it be BOWL-YUN-EASE?

And don't get me started on Bruschetta, where their pronunciation also differs from mine (but not from the Albanian guy's). This one bothers me especially, I think, because it is a classic illustration of how Italian spelling conventions differ from English ones. But nobody else in the country seems to agree with me about use of the Italian pronunciation on this one.

>>Don't even get me started on what my grandparents called Brazil nuts

OK. I was ready to say I had never heard my deceased mother (born in Chicago in 1914) use the now-forbidden word, but I think she may well have said it in that context. Though, in her defense, probably along the lines of what people used to call them.

I'm just shy of three years younger than Althouse. Grew up on the South Side of Chicago (Southwest, not Southeast like Michael K), in an area where racial tensions got quite strong in the 1960s (MLK led an open-housing march starting literally two blocks from our house). There's a lot more I could say on the subject of the use of the word back in the day, but I think I've said it before and won't repeat it here.

>>I prefer Venezia, Firenze, Roma, Genova, Cinque Terra and so on in Italy. The English versions do not evoke the same sort of romance and song of the names.

With you on some of those, but Firenze always makes me feel a bit pretentious. And I believe it's Cinque Terre (plural), not Cinque Terra.

--gpm

gpm said...

Actually, the restaurant is quite nice in its pandemic form, but comments otherwise stand.

--gpm

Josephbleau said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Josephbleau said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Josephbleau said...

"It's always Chee-lay but never Coo-bah or Meh-hee-co."

Of course the Aztec's would say Meh Shi' Ka. In the old days I liked NPR's Maria Hinojosa and Sylvia Poggioli (the Italian Latin.) But Sylvia sounded so sad on the radio I almost cried.

12/28/20, 6:53 PM Delete

RichardJohnson said...

Michael
I would like to hear Hilarious be interviewed in Spanish. The language she supposedly speaks much of the time. In watching her and listening to her excuses I think we can conclude she is quite stupid.

I am surprised that when she claimed to be from Spain during an interview, she never encountered an interviewer who knew Spanish and proceeded to ask her a question in Spanish.
The result could have been like the waiter in Tyrone Slothrop's comment, who faked a Swedish accent, who couldn't speak Swedish. I suspect that Hilarious actually does know some Spanish, but speaks it on the level and accent of a native English speaker in a high school Spanish II class. Someone who knows Spanish well could suss out a non-native speaker of the language.

ObeliskToucher said...

Wasn't "Hilaria" one of Phil Silvers' ladies in "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"? Joan Rivers' first movie role, I believe...

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Missed one: Friends - Ross' British Accent

RichardJohnson said...

"It's always Chee-lay but never Coo-bah or Meh-hee-co."


Back in the days of Sandalistas shilling for the Sandinistas, I was amused by Sandalistas, who usually knew about 2 dozen words of Spanish (enabling them to get the Sandinista guided tour with translator), talk about visiting Neek-ar-a-gua.


As a Spanish speaker who has worked in Latin America, I generally use the English pronunciation of Spanish language place names when speaking English. If I have heard the place name many more times in Spanish discourse than in English discourse, I might change over to Spanish pronunciation, it being more familiar to me that way. For example, I use the Spanish pronunciation (Bueno Sigh-rrays) for the capital of Argentina instead of Buenos Air-eez. Ditto Arequipa,Neuquén, Huarás, Oruro. But I use the English pronunciation of Argentina. Sometimes it's a tossup, such as for Maracaibo.

From encounters with some French Canadians in Spanish, I picked up pronouncing Kebec instead of the English Kwebec for Quebec. Mostly because it's easier and faster to pronounce.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

It's not the fake accent - it's the fake life she created.

ken in tx said...

When I was a kid, in Alabama, 1950s, my mother would not allow me to say the N word. I asked, "Why not, they say it to each other all the time?" She said, "Because we're better that they are. We don't talk like that." This is still what people think. They just can't say it anymore.

Narr said...

I can switch effortlessly between our regional B/black and W/white demotic speech, and fool ANYONE aurally.

But I had to eradicate the redneck accent that comes naturally when I had some notions of acting or radio-tv work in college. I can affect a nice Anglo-American semi-plummy authoritative academic delivery when I need to, too.

For many years, the campus library participated in the annual "Banned Books Week" that the ALA uses to hype itself as a defender of free speech (as if), and one feature was a day-long series of readings from "banned" ("challenged," or "censored") books--25 or 30 minutes per excerpt. One of my high points was from Huckleberry Finn, with as many n-words per minute as Twain could write and I could read-- all to the beaming approval of a library staff that was about 50% African-American women, and most of them church ladies.

I was that good.

Another year I did the Hemlock Society.

Narr
My German accent is just like Oma's

BudBrown said...

Now say Kissimmee.

Freeman Hunt said...

How is it possible to not like Alec Baldwin?

The Godfather said...

No college should reject an otherwise acceptable applicant because, at age 15, she sang along with some (Black) rapper who said "niggrah".

As I understand it, Black performers distinguish "niggrah" from the "N Word". It reminds me of the Southern girl I dated when I was in law school, who insisted that "niggrah" was just "Negro" with a southern accent. Give me a break.

Joe Smith said...

"And don't get me started on Bruschetta..."

Bru sket ah.

'CH' in Italian is pronounced as 'K.'

But I suspect you know that : )

Joe Smith said...

"Bru sket ah."

Or 'Bru skay tah' if you want to go full-on, old country dago.

But you'd better be at least part Italian or you'll seem pretentious...

Biff said...

gpm said..."...Rhode Island, which has a heavy Italian presence, relatively speaking to its small population. The restaurant isn't nearly as nice or authentic as the little one that used to be a couple blocks away where the chef was an Albanian immigrant who had worked in Florence/Firenze for some period of time. Just yesterday, I, per usual, ordered the BOWL-YUN-AY-ZAY, only to be given the BOWL-YUN-AYZ (they don't seem to do the same thing with the SAN JO-VAY-ZAY that should accompany the Bolognese). I don't know how the pronunciations run in Rhode Island, but at least I'm more consistent; if you're not going to try to approximate the Italian, why wouldn't it be BOWL-YUN-EASE?"

It sounds like you're running into the difference between "standard Italian" and the Napoletano language/dialect.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the great majority of immigrants from Italy to northern NJ, Connecticut (especially around New Haven), and Rhode Island came from southern Italy and spoke Napoletano or other southern dialects. (There was a bit more regional diversity among Italian immigrants to NYC and Boston proper, so the Napoletano influence in those cities isn't quite as strong.)

There can be strong pronunciation differences between Napoletano and standard Italian, as well as significant usage and grammatical differences. A lot of the "Italian" words you might hear on The Sopranos, like "gabbagool" instead of "capicola", "rigote" instead of "ricotta," and so on, are echoes of Napoletano. (Those were phonetic spellings of the Napoletano forms, not actual spellings.)

My grandparents were native Napoletano speakers. Unlike today's Italians, there was no expectation in their small farming community that they would learn standard Italian. They had difficulty understanding standard Italian speakers, and vice versa. With regard to your Albanian friend, my father also spoke Napoletano fluently, and he barely could communicate in Italian with a friend of mine who is a Dante scholar who speaks Italian with a Florentine accent. In an odd quirk of history, Napoletano is a dying language in Italy, yet it is kept alive across an ocean and across generations by individuals who often are unaware of their linguistic heritage.

Gahrie said...

But then Spanish generally got the same treatment; Don Juan was "Don Jew-on," Don Quixote (I swear) "Don Kwik-sote." Byron might be responsible for the first, but that doesn't explain the second.

How do pronounce the word quixotic?

Gahrie said...

I'm curious. Is Elliot Page now restricted to playing transgendered folks?

I posted this on Facebook a couple of days ago: "I denounce Elliot Page for taking a role that should have gone to a woman in Juno."

The SJW types are having a complete meltdown in my comments.

wildswan said...

So, thought exercise. Suppose we said, "You can't play a person from the suburbs in any movie, play, any kind of show, unless you are from the suburbs. And if you are from the suburbs, you have to play that kind of person." I mean, "suburban" is a now a basic identity like any other and should have the same cultural norms applied, right? Except "suburban", unlike all other identities today, is universal - transcending race, culture and national identity. Wherever you come from, we know who you are if you come from a suburb - China, Worcester Massachusetts, Addis Ababa, Ecuador - if it's suburb, you're the same. It's like airports. "Suburban girl" is so transcendent that those with that identity often try to hide in an other race or culture OR they try to deny any remaining distinctions such as sex, religion or personal identity embodied in a face. That's why suburbs are filled with Karens demanding face-obliterating masks but also with Hilarys wearing suburban-girl-obliterating identities, another kind of mask. (And the universities have a lot of suburban girls pretending to be urban girls but that's another story.) Suburban transcendentalism. Compare with New England Transcendentalism.

Lurker21 said...

If you have a last name like Hayward-Thomas and pronounce it with a Spanish accent does that make you Latino? I believe the standard used to be whether you were "Spanish-surnamed" and it's not that hard to make any name sound Spanish.

So many people who want to be the "Anti-Trump" -- Biden, Baldwin, Joe Scarborough, Stephen Colbert -- actually have very Trumpian personalities. Showbiz and politics mean putting on a show, being larger than life, creating and believing one's own legend, muscling one's way to the top. Our talking heads seem to think they are born again into purity and beauty because they oppose Trump, but the underlying similarities are hard to miss.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Gahrie: Right, "quixotic." I think adjectivalizing "Quixote" makes retaining the original pronunciation rather difficult. "Kee-jho-tic" it maybe should be, but isn't. But Cervantes wouldn't have used "quixotic," would he?

I denounce Elliot Page for taking a role that should have gone to a woman in Juno.

Brilliant! I can well imagine the melee in the comments.

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 205   Newer› Newest»