Common Denominator of Evangelists?

On the boob tube the other night, they had the rise and fall of Jimmy Swaggert, one of the most famous of the current TV Millionaire Evangelists busily scamming people out of cash.

I noticed only one major fact through the entire program and, after rooting around in my memory, the same fact showed up for as long as radio and TV evangelists have been annoying everyone, at least that I can remember.

Why is it that everyone involved in these things, including most of the listeners have this Midwestern, southern-type drawl straight out of Hicksville USA or Texas? I mean it. Everyone interviewed for the program, and my back was to the screen as I was working, sounded White, southern, and like members of the moral ‘majority’!! I could just picture thin lips, big hair, pinched mouths, protruding chins, thin or plump faces, 50’s or 60s style glasses, and faces marked more by scowls than smiles in the women. In the men I could just picture close set eyes, big style political hair – graying, of course, square faces, either rail thin or portly bodies, and either jowlly, good-ol’-boy faces or sunken cheeked, hollow eyed, skull faced, sun burnt fellows with big ears, short hair, a too firm sort of fanatical look wearing high waters and leather shoes.

Skinny or fat women with skirts far below the knees, wearing dresses designed in the 50s and made out of patterned material my Grandmother liked, and everyone looking judgmental as heck.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed this overriding stereotype, especially in the voice?

You have an interesting imagination for associating appearance to voice.

However, you are probably correct as to the accent or dialect. The overwhelming majority of people in the Bible Belt live in the section of the country with the Middle Dialect American English. It has two major components, a more Northerly and a more Southerly, but both are recognizable by their (related) twang. There are people with a truly Southern drawl involved with televangelism, either as purveyors or as audience, but they do not make up the significant bulk of the population.

One reason that these people sound “Southern” is that producers of first radio, then movies, and finally TV in the U.S. showed a decided preference for the Northern dialect (be raised with it or train for it, but if you wanted to be broadcast, you had to use it) and the Middle dialect was relegated in many people’s minds to “the South” (although the accent extends up through much of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and, with the major migration of Kentuckians and West Virginians to the Rust Belt for manufacturing jobs during and after WWII, it has many speakers in Northern Ohio and Michigan, among other places).