"And I did my little audition and they said can you do it more southern? And I'm like, are you shitting me?"

"It's like, you got to be shitting me. I said, well, what you have to understand is I actually did just get off the turnip truck from back there and this is how you talk.... And it was like, oh, I, I see what they're getting at. Yeah. So they wanted the Foghorn Leghorn — you know, now, ovah heah, what we have is — and... I grew up down there. I never heard that.... There are a lot of performances over the years where people who are not from the South played the part that actually used that accent. And they win Academy Awards and stuff. And I'm like, wow. So anyway, I didn't get this part. And the guy who got the part literally sounded like he was in the Bronx, but he was doing that thing, you know, I thought, wow, this is gonna be tough out here...."

Said Billy Bob Thornton, talking to Joe Rogan about the Southern accent.

Scroll back to 25:35 if you want to hear Joe link the Southern drawl to hookworm infection. I didn't think I'd hear Joe talking about "dewormers" again, but he does. 

"I hope they don’t do all these protests because I’ll be raging. I want him welcomed. I like Big Donald."

Said Irene Wright, 66, "a retired council worker from Glasgow," quoted in "Turnberry locals on Trump: We love ‘Big Donald’ and his $50 tips/Donald Trump will stop by his Scottish golf courses on a ‘private visit’ this weekend. Despite the protests, many Ayrshire residents are happy to see him" (London Times).

Trump bought the Turnberry golf course and hotel in 2014, saving it from what one local described as the threat of “rack and ruin.” Most locals know a family or friend who is employed by the resort.

Tam Cuthill, 63, from Kirkoswald, worked as a greenkeeper at Turnberry for 38 years.... “It’s one of them ones, it’s 50/50, you either love or hate him,” he said.... “I never found anything wrong with him as such.... He certainly didn’t commit to saying anything bad or anything like that, he’s more likely to shake your hand.”

Charming turns of phrase. I'd go to Scotland to hear more of them but I'm imagining not understanding a word they say. I wonder how much of Trump's interesting speech idiosyncrasies have to do with Scotland, the place of his mother's birth.

"Just a heads-up."

Liberal woman informs everyone that she won't be dating white men anymore.

Groundbreaking information.pic.twitter.com/2lC5Kqm0Qb

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) March 29, 2025

Ridiculous on so many levels, but I'm just going to highlight the exaggerated enunciation — "as a WHiTTTTe woman."

It made me think of this TikTok video criticizing Rachel Zegler ("Snow White") for over-enunciating:

"But it is all the relentless smiling, the desperate upbeatness of this high-spec, lavish production, that jars."

"At least I suspect it will with a more cynical British audience. Americans may feel differently. Meghan must have had face-ache with all that grinning. It is a world where people use superlatives about a cherry tomato and in Californian accents say, 'That’s so funny!' but then don’t actually laugh from their bellies. There is no authentic humour. Meghan says we aren’t 'in pursuit of perfection … we are in the pursuit of joy' — and yet we all know she told Oprah Winfrey that Kate made her cry over a difference of opinion about flower girl dresses. This is a series that entreats you to fill every moment of life 'with wonder'...."

Writes Carol Midgley, in "With Love, Meghan review — smug, syrupy and endlessly spoofable/The new Netflix series from Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is full of immaculately tasteful domestic tips from Montecito and relentless smiling, but it is a performative kind of joy" (London Times).

We could do a little dollop of yogurt as our clouds.

About that Nebraska accent.

There is truth in the observation that tariffs and immigration hurt agriculture but FFS there is absolutely no one in the state of Nebraska who has this accent, so I suggest consulting a professional dialog coach before filming your next Tik Tok https://t.co/92deSWanCZ

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) March 5, 2025

"You have a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent. The only problem is I can’t understand a word you’re saying."

“You have a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent. The only problem is I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Maybe the funniest Trump quote of all time. Instant classic.

pic.twitter.com/OMWCb8s7iI

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 5, 2025

I see that Matt Walsh comments: "Maybe the funniest Trump quote of all time. Instant classic." 

I don't think it's funny at all. It's truly awkward when you are on public display in a position where you are under pressure to respond to a person who speaks in a way that you can't understand. I've been in that situation more than once. It's difficult! I probably said something like "I'm terribly sorry, but I couldn't understand you," which led to a repetition and an embarrassing struggle. Trump avoided the problem of spending time on a repetition, and he was quite gentle and gracious. The female reporter wanted to talk about the plight of women in Afghanistan, and that's not a topic for comedy. It also wasn't the topic of that press briefing, so it was good that he didn't veer into the problems of countries other than Israel and its adversaries.

"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....

"Michael Cohen’s voice sounded truly bizarre in that podcast clip celebrating Trump's indictment on March 30 last year. "

"Giddy, high-pitched, and he was speaking so fast that if you didn’t know better you’d think the tape had been artificially sped up. It also offered jurors a completely different version of the Cohen they are seeing on the witness stand, where he has remained calm and deliberate with every word. [Trump's lawyer] Todd Blanche plays a second clip of Michael Cohen from his podcast, in which he says he hopes 'that this man ends up in prison,' and 'revenge is a dish best served cold,' and 'you better believe I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family.' Cohen's New York accent — he is from the Five Towns, on Long Island — is very pronounced in the podcast clips...."

From the NYT live coverage of the Trump trial. Here's a free-access link.

This gets my rarely used "revenge" tag.

I delved into the topic most deeply back in July 2011, here. Quoting Wikipedia:

"He advised 12 presidents — more than a quarter of those who have held the office — from John F. Kennedy to Joseph R. Biden Jr."

With a scholar’s understanding of diplomatic history, a German-Jewish refugee’s drive to succeed in his adopted land, a deep well of insecurity and a lifelong Bavarian accent that sometimes added an indecipherable element to his pronouncements, he transformed almost every global relationship he touched.... He was the only American to deal with every Chinese leader from Mao to Xi Jinping. In July, at age 100, he met Mr. Xi and other Chinese leaders in Beijing, where he was treated like visiting royalty even as relations with Washington had turned adversarial. He drew the Soviet Union into a dialogue that became known as détente, leading to the first major nuclear arms control treaties between the two nations. With his shuttle diplomacy, he edged Moscow out of its standing as a major power in the Middle East, but failed to broker a broader peace in that region. Over years of meetings in Paris, he negotiated the peace accords that ended the American involvement in the Vietnam War, an achievement for which he shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize...."

Writes David Sanger, in "Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped Nation’s Cold War History/The most powerful secretary of state of the postwar era, he was both celebrated and reviled. His complicated legacy still resonates in relations with China, Russia and the Middle East" (NYT).

With an eye fixed on the great power rivalry, he was often willing to be crudely Machiavellian, especially when dealing with smaller nations that he often regarded as pawns in the greater battle. 

A boy thinks he might be in trouble, arrives at a plausible defense and delivers it in the most delightful regional accent on the face of the earth.

It's TikTok, so I'm putting it after the jump.

Hilaria Baldwin evokes empathy — think of her 7 children.

Hilaria Baldwin is stressed pic.twitter.com/Q3cWwsyjSH

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) January 21, 2023

But why is she still speaking with a Spanish accent? See "Hilaria Baldwin’s Spanish accent and suspect origin story, explained/Hilaria Baldwin, a.k.a. Hillary Hayward-Thomas Baldwin, has come under fire for allegedly fibbing a Spanish accent" (Vox, 2020). 

And, fron July 2021: "Hilaria Baldwin Now Claims She's Culturally 'Fluid' After Spanish Heritage Scandal/Alec Baldwin's wife, who was accused of pretending to be from Spain, suggested her critics are denying her right to belong'" (HuffPo)("When you are multi, it can feel hard to belong"/"We need to normalize the fact that we are all unique ― our culture, languages, sexual orientations, religions, political beliefs are ALLOWED TO BE FLUID").

"Maybe [Evan Peters] decided to watch my show to counterbalance the heaviness of playing Jeffrey Dahmer, and something stuck."

Said Joe Pera, quoted in "A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH JOE PERA ABOUT NETFLIX’S ‘DAHMER’/What does the mild-mannered comedian think about being compared with the Evan Peters version of the serial killer?" (Gawker).

That was published last month. I ran across it because I was looking for things about Joe Pera, whose show we've been catching up on, watching and rewatching, these last couple weeks. I was not looking for anything about Jeffrey Dahmer, and I'm not watching that series, even if it's supposed to be good.

Joe doesn't want to watch it either:

Are you watching the Queen's funeral?

It's live. I'm sure you can find it. I'm seeing video embedded at the top of the front page of the NYT. 

Is it topping other news that should be more significant, such as whatever our President may have said in his "60 Minutes" interview last night?

I'm going to say no — subject to your laughter — as I see that the top story on the right side of the front page of the NYT is "Life Is Hazardous for City Raptors. These Women Offer Hope. Injured birds of prey have a fighting chance to recover, thanks to the volunteers at Owl Moon Raptor Center in Boyds, Md."

"Boyds" — that's how you say "birds" in New York.

I'm distracted by sudden cheering and raucous applause. It's the Queen's funeral video. The throng alongside the road is jubilant as the hearse drives off. I'm going to assume that means they loved the Queen and not that it's any sort of ding-dong-the-witch-is-dead response. But when did cheering a hearse become appropriate? 

I've got 10 TikToks for you tonight. A nice round number. Let me know what you like best. I'm predicting #6.

1. Irish guys doing American accents to talk about the 4th of July.

2. The real deal behind this Bali beach.

3. A very charming rendition of "Gymnopedie."

4. The hottest birds.

5. A Kamala impression.

6. The meticulous restoration of an ox-tongue iron.

7. A porcupine tail hairbrush.

8. Sandy Dennis laughs and screams.

9. A puzzling Zillow listing.

10. "POV: you're at a diy house show." (This is a whole page of "duets," so click around. The first one, in the upper left corner is the original, and then others have added their interaction with him in a split screen.)

Here are my TikTok selections of the day. 8 of them. Let me know what you like best.

1. A demonstration of skill.

2. Sister Monica — an Episcopal nun — describes her mother's Southernisms.

3. He's got a message for architects.

4. The paradise that was high school in the 80s.

5. When a Gen Z person is kidnapped.

6. "If you're not in medicine: Try reading this...."

7. A straight man who just wants to wear high heels and a skirt.

8. "Hey, bear. It's okay."

In which I curate TikTok so you don't have to scroll. Tell me which of today's 10 filmlets delight you.

1. In the 90s, you had to wear a thong.

2. Asking Irish people to do an American accent.

3. Present day celebrities who look uncannily like somebody in a photo from the distant past.

4. Things he's apologized to his wife for.

5. An actor and scholar of acting explains what's so wrong about Amber Heard's testimony.

6. A clear aerial view of Rich Strike's impossible Derby win.

7. The alien welcomes you to space.

8. A man in his 20s with "the social life of a pensioner."

9. Trainspotting in Miami.

10. The insufferable vocal fry of indie films.

Unlike Libs of TikTok, I select things from TikTok just to delight and amuse.

1. A little boy has learned to stop and smell the flowers.

2. Learning to speak with an American accent.

3. Just a really good looking sheep.

4. That trout can't believe it took the bait against... so tedious.

5. Can a schnauzer distinguish the "go" command from "o," "g," and "goat"?

6. Birds get mad.

7. The menu at the Amadeus Café has musical notation on it that some people can sing.

8. French is funny when literally translated.

9. Ingenious cabinetry.

"Tom Nelson, a longtime union advocate, is running for the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s Senate seat as a genuine populist, not the phony kind with a Harvard degree who affects an accent."

Writes Jennifer Rubin in "Wisconsin’s Tom Nelson reminds Democrats how populists should sound" (WaPo). 

Who's she talking about — "the phony kind with a Harvard degree who affects an accent"? Russ Feingold??! (He went to Harvard, but he's really from Wisconsin, not faking an accent.)

I've been living in Wisconsin since 1984, and I don't know which politicians have affected the accent. But maybe Rubin isn't talking about Wisconsin. She's acting like she's talking about Wisconsin though, so — speaking of phony — I'm expecting her to talk about Wisconsin.

Who, exactly, is being impugned? Someone is terribly fake, apparently, but who? We're not told who this fake-accent Harvard person might be, but we are told the name of someone Nelson views as a role model: William Proxmire, who "popularized the Golden Fleece award to highlight wasteful government spending."

From the comments over there:

"He was raised in almost Dickensian circumstances in tiny Searchlight, Nev.: His home had no indoor plumbing, his father was an alcoholic miner who eventually died by suicide..."

"... and his mother helped the family survive by taking in laundry from local brothels.... [H]e wielded an irreverent sense of humor, but could be brusque, often not even saying goodbye to colleagues at the end of a phone call.... He deemed President George W. Bush 'a loser' while addressing a group of high school juniors in Nevada in 2005, mused about the body odor of Washington’s tourists a few years later and, when Mr. Obama first ran for president, in 2008, said the country’s first Black president could be elected because he spoke 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.'... It was Mr. Reid who saw Mr. Obama’s potential for a successful run at the White House when many Democrats were rallying behind Hillary Clinton.... [H]e sought to undermine Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy in 2012 by repeatedly, and without evidence, claiming that Mr. Romney had gone a decade without paying income tax. Mr. Reid was even more contemptuous of former President Donald J. Trump, calling him 'a racist' and 'sexual predator' who achieved prominence only because of the fortune he had inherited. Being born into wealth was, of course, alien to Mr. Reid. At the end of his career — after great financial and political success and raising five children, one of whom became an elected official in Las Vegas — he relished showing visitors his dusty hometown.... '[B]e proud of who you are, you can’t escape who you are,' Mr. Reid said in his Senate farewell speech, adding... 'Harry Reid, the guy from Searchlight.'"

From the NYT obituary for Harry Reid.

That podcast I keep recommending.

As you may have noticed, I'm a big fan of Andrew Hickey's podcast "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs." I discovered it around the first of this month. (I forget why, maybe Spotify pushed it.) And I've truly binged on it, getting all the way through the 133 episodes that are currently available. 

There are bonus episodes, most of which are available only to those who subscribe on Patreon, and I've done that, the first and only time I've subscribed to an individual on social media. I have some subscriptions, but only to things that begin with "New York": The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and The New York Review of Books. Wait there's one more: The Times (London). I have a couple subscriptions that were gifts: The Washington Post, Reason. But basically, I'm a subscriber to big media, not to social media. This one thing — "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" — is my exception. 

I've recommended the podcast a few times. Click the "Andrew Hickey" tag to read all the old posts. I love that there's a published transcript, making it super-bloggable. I have to resist over-blogging it, because there are so many interesting things in every episode.

But let me blog 2 things that stood out to me over the 133 episodes I've consumed. Maybe it's evidence of something wrong with me, but I am drawn to stories of the impoverished childhood of a person who goes on to be very successful. So here are 2: