Right. This is the phenomenon TorpedoTed was commenting upon.
No, but this is what I was talking about where speakers may conceptualize the sound in “tore” as “oh” instead of “aw”. (Some even pronounce it that way in some contexts; consider the process that turned “whore” into “ho”.) However, most Americans don’t actually pronounce “tore” using the same vowel as “coat”; consider the difference between “stow reed” and “storied”, if you can notice one in your own speech. Or, try imitating a generic non-rhotic British accent; they don’t pronounce the /r/ in “court”, but they don’t make it sound like “coat” either (neither the American nor British pronunciations of it). They use what is for them the “aw” vowel. For them, “court” and “caught” are homophonous.
The vowel in “tar” is generally the father-vowel, even among speakers who replace this sound with the bother-vowel in all other positions. The sound in “tore” is indeed the caught-sound (never the bother-sound), even among speakers who normally render all caught-sounds as bother-sounds. That is to say both mergers tend to be neutralized before R (though not in the Pittsburgh case where everything turns to the caught sound in all cases).
“tar” and “tore” aren’t the same anywhere. No one has claimed that.
What has been said is that the vowel in “tore” is the same as the vowel in “caught” for many speakers. Like I said, consider a generic British accent if necessary to see how this can be the case, in which “caught” and “court” are homophonous.
Haven’t lived in Illinois for a long time, but always laugh when Obama says, “tuh” instead of “to”, as in, “I went tuh the Senate tuh speak tuh the Senators…”
I also always feel the need to start a charity to send “r’s” to Massachusetts.
They seem to only drink in ba’s and drive ca’s, not fa from home.
But Californians? Hey, lived there and never heard what you seem to be hearing…there was Valley Girl speak for a few years, but other than that, never actually heard a “California accent”.
Isn’t the Chicago accent considered the “normal” accent for most newscasters on national broadcasts?
No, Chicago is one of the areas affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. This article claims the closest accents to Standard American English are found in a blob going from western Nebraska to eastern Illinois:
I grew up in rural northwest Ohio, and I think that that is close to Standard American English. (Note that rural northwest Ohio means something far enough from Toledo to not be a suburb of it, since Toledo is part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.) I think it’s more correct to say that no single place in the U.S. has all the characteristics of Standard American English.