Kathleen Parker in today's Chronicle...
...In Selma, Ala., last weekend at the "Bloody Sunday" commemoration, Hillary auditioned for a dual role — not just Southerner, but Southern preacher in the style of a Martin Luther King Jr.
That dry rustling you hear is the sound of millions of people cringing.
It was clear that Hillary was trying to imitate the oratorical style of her black predecessors to the pulpit — something no white person should ever attempt. But what she must have imagined sounded like passion was to mere mortals the screech of an angry woman.
Her audience, nevertheless, was polite and affirming (Southerners are like that), even as she turned on the worst fake accent since Kevin Costner played Robin Hood.
Shouting the words from a gospel hymn, Clinton was so off-key that anyone tuning in would have assumed it was a joke — a parody of a politician speaking in native tongues, Granny Clampett auditioning on American Idol.
"I DON'T FEEL NO WAYS TIRED," she said with the robotic twang of a computer generated Southerner. "I COME TOO FARRRR FRUM WHERE I STARTED FRUM. NOBODY TOLD ME THAT THE ROAD WOULD BE EASY."
Somewhere deep in the brains of every man listening was a little lizard shouting: Somebody hit the mute button, for God's sake, hit the mute!
In politics, we're not supposed to talk about style over substance, especially when it comes to women. But no male politician would get away with what Hillary pulled in Selma. Moreover, speaking style is not irrelevant to leadership, as Americans have noted the past six years.
...What was Clinton thinking when she hijacked a gospel hymn and effectively mocked her audience? Her speech exposed not just an incompetent ear, but disrespect for the people gathered....
Parker wasn't kidding about the lizard and the mute button. I heard the clip of this on the Walton and Johnson show earlier this week and I just couldn't help but think this had to be some sort of joke, or that someone took a tape recording into some kind of top-secret invitation-only Democratic gathering...but apparently it wasn't, and worse than that, the audience seemed to be eating it up. I just have to ask what the reaction would have been had George W. Bush been the one standing up there trying to ape that oratorical style. My money says he would have been roundly condemned by the audience and the national media jackals alike, and for good reason. Had it been any other speaker, it would have been spun nine ways to Sunday that the speaker was making fun of the audience. Speaking of the audience, I also have to wonder if any of them thought they were being made fun of; after all, it's been said that the Southerner is pretty much the last demographic in America that it still remains politically correct to ridicule.
But I guess it's ok since Hillary's a Democrat and spent time in the South. Sigh...
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