"As is the case for many people who grew up in the Deep South but have lived somewhere else for many years, the Southern accent I once had..."

"... has given way to the 'nowhere man' accent that I think of as generically American. But it comes roaring back when I visit my family in central Alabama, and even lingers for a few days after I have returned to Brooklyn. It’s also a little more pronounced after a martini (or two). No one gets offended when my Southern accent comes and goes. For Kamala Harris, it’s a different story. Figures on the political right, including JD Vance, Donald Trump and various conservative internet celebrities, have accused Ms. Harris of affecting a Southern accent on the campaign trail, and implied that it was a kind of deception. Ms. Harris, who is not from the South, wasn’t using a Southern accent, though. As John McWhorter has recently pointed out, what Ms. Harris was slipping into was Black English. There’s nothing unusual about her using Black English because to state the obvious (to everyone except Donald Trump, apparently) Ms. Harris is Black...."

Writes Elizabeth Spiers in "The Real Reason the Harris Twang Is Driving Republicans Crazy" (NYT)(free-access link, because she has a lot of other things to say and I'm not in the mood to summarize it).

And then there are the people who say she sounds drunk....

"I’m somewhat sympathetic to those who find protests uncomfortable. They’re always disruptive..."

"... as they’re supposed to be. And big loud crowds make me nervous now in a way that they didn’t when I was 22 and a big loud crowd was fun and meant I was at a club with oontz-oontz-oontz music and 73 of my closest friends. I now prefer political participation that is less hard on the knees. But I am exhilarated to see students using protest for exactly the reasons it’s protected by the First Amendment. It allows them to stand up for their values, invest in what’s happening in the world and hold decision makers accountable, even if it means putting themselves at risk. And most compellingly, it’s getting the attention of the president and other lawmakers who can effect change far beyond the walls of any university campus."

Writes Elizabeth Spiers in "What Hillary Clinton Got Wrong About Student Protesters" (NYT).

What did Hillary say that Spiers deemed wrong? She dismissed young people as ignorant of "the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country."

By the way, I had to look up "oontz-oontz-oontz music." I found this:

"It is often in the interests of adoptive parents and the adoption industry to imply that adoption is charity work..."

"... rather than something that benefits the adoptive parents as well. This perception of adoption as an act of altruism is exponentially more pronounced when Black kids are adopted by white parents. Mythologizing the role of those parents goes beyond just suggesting that adoptees are second-best choices to biological children. It implies that Black children need to be rescued by white people, and that makes white people feel good about doing it. This is often referred to as 'white savior syndrome,' which makes it sound like mild arrogance or a convenient delusion. I believe that’s too generous. The idea that Black children are automatically better off with nice white parents than their own biological parents is just white supremacy, which does not have to be produced by official hate groups to be insidious. It is often banal, and so commonplace that its ubiquitousness renders it just part of the background.... The Tuohys don’t regard themselves as racist... but the book and the film portray Mr. Oher in ways that serve to reinforce racist stereotypes.... ...Mr. Oher is referred to repeatedly as a 'freak of nature,' and... not mentally capable of understanding simple things. In the book, Mr. Oher is portrayed as literally not knowing what an ocean is...."

Writes Elizabeth Spiers, who was adopted, in "I Have a Pretty Good Idea Why Michael Oher Is Angry" (NYT).

By the way, do you know what the ocean is? The ocean. There's only one. Did you know?

"What exactly does [Elon Musk] believe can’t be said on [Twitter] right now?"

"It certainly doesn’t take long to find discredited race science, arguments that women are intellectually inferior, antisemitism, defenses of white supremacism and transphobic comments that remain on the platform even under current policy. It is easy to assume that the banned speech that Mr. Musk is standing up for is worse even than that. As the comedian Michael Che put it on 'Saturday Night Live,' the $44 billion deal shows 'how badly white guys want to use the N-word.' All of this is a moral and ethical case for keeping moderation policies in place...."

From "Let’s Be Clear About What It’s Like to Be Harassed on Twitter" by Elizabeth Spiers (NYT).

"It is easy to assume" a lot of things! It's also easy to splatter opinion columns with the idea that Musk is a racist, sexist pig and that to declare that you've made "a moral and ethical case" for censorship... and — paradoxically — that you're fighting misinformation.

It's interesting how much free speech the opponents of free of speech already have.

The death of Gawker.

Announced here, with prime blame laid on "the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel" and "his clandestine legal campaign against the company."

Ah, well. I remember Gawker from the Elizabeth Spiers days, that is, the year 2003. Loved it.

Where is she now? I had to look it up. Here Wikipedia page says she's editor of The New York Observer. You know what The New York Observer is? It's Jared Kusher's publication. But Wikipedia's page for The New York Observer says she was only editor 2011 to 2012. Is Spiers so unimportant that her Wikipedia page isn't updated in 4 years?!

Well, here's a little piece from this morning: "A eulogy for Gawker.com from its first editor, Elizabeth Spiers/Plus: What it’s like working for Donald Trump’s son-in-law":

Spiers recalled that Gawker.com started as a completely different sort of site from what it is today.

"There have been so many incarnations of Gawker," Spiers said. "If you read it when I was writing it, it wasn’t really negative — it was gleefully laughing at the notion that the entire world revolves around New York. The alter-ego voice I was using was a persona that had no self-awareness, and that was part of the fun of it."

I still don't know what she's doing now, and I don't know what she said about Kushner. The link goes to a podcast, and I haven't listened to it yet. I've only read the text. 

ADDED: The text does give Spiers new line of work: "founder the virtual reality agency The Insurrection."