Running a ‘campaign about nothing.’
In the words of George Tirebiter, “And you can believe me, because I never lie and I’m always right.” Saying stuff like that, it’s hard to be wrong. Of course, you’ve said nothing, but it sure sounds great.
Yeah, I know: she has actual positions on actual issues. Just barely. 
You guys go on ahead. I’m gonna wait for the bus, if you don’t mind.
and while we’re on the roll, can I comment about her vocal inflections? They’ve annoyed me since Bill’s days in the WH, you always know when she’s about to utter the 5 second sound bite because it’s all done in one breath with a strident vocalization, carefully enunciating every. single. word! (pause for applause)
damned annoying.
(edited to add parenthetical comment)
I don’t see how I could vote for her…I sure as hell hope she doesn’t get the nomination. She’s obviously the least inspiring of the bunch. Personally I’d rather have someone with some big plans than her. I want radical change far beyond correcting the mistakes of GWB. Yeah, maybe it’s risky, but dammit, we could take the risk now. Otherwise we’ll just slide further into mediocrity in everything we do.
It’s quite annoying that she’s the democratic front-runner. She has no charisma. But she’s got “experience!” Well, consider me non-plussed. I always though of her as a power-hungry person willing to sacrifice nearly any kind of personal beliefs for power.
That faux Southern accent in Alabama last week was just painful.
As was Obama’s constant use of “y’all.”
Agreed.
Sure, she’d be better than the fool we’ve got now. But every other candidate, on any side, would be, too.
In his defense, that’s an easy one to pick up and a hard one to put down.
Many blacks say “y’all” no matter where they live. Right there in Chicago is another conspicuous example — Oprah. She says it all the time.
I’m pretty apolitical, but if she has funky bass riffs play after every press conference, I’m voting for her.
I agree that she has a public image of being a consummate politician with absolutely no real convictions. But:
(a) how much of that is what we believe just because we’ve heard that so often from so many different sources? Isn’t that exactly what her enemies want us to believe?
and
(b) to the extent that that’s true, so what? Wasn’t Bill more or less the same way? And (barring getting hijacked due to his zipper issues) didn’t he generally do a damn good job as president?
Not that I necessarily support her over the other democrats right now, but I think she’s being dismissed in this thread a bit facilely.
I’m not black or southern and I’ve been known to say y’all from time to time, a habit I picked up from some rural Marylanders in my teens.
I’m aware of that. But the key to your argument is that she does it all the time. The reason i made my observation, as you surely must have realised, is that Obama’s use of the term struck me as unusual, for him.
I’ve heard a few Obama speeches over the past months, and snippets of even more on news reports and on shows like The Daily Show, and i can’t recall ever hearing him use it before. If you have some examples contradicting my experience, i’d be happy to change my opinion on the matter.
Not only that, but there are ways to say “y’all” without giving it an extended Southern drawl. Obama didn’t just use the term, he used it in an accent clearly different from the one he normally uses.
Absolutely, and in fact, in a language like English that has no good term for addressing people in the second person plural (vosotros, ustedes, etc.), a term like “y’all” can serve a real grammatical purpose in informal speech. When i was growing up in Australia, some people used “youse” in the same way. “Where are youse going?”
But, as i said, it’s not a usage i’d ever heard before from Obama, and the careful management of candidate image and self-presentation that goes into appearances like this make me doubt its authenticity. I have nothing in particular against Obama—i’ve defended him on these Boards—and he’s certainly not the first candidate to change his accent or his usage or something else about himself to appeal to a particular constituency. Doesn’t mean i have to like the practice, though.
Ummmm…Oprah is from Mississippi.
Senator Obama is from Illinois, is he not? I used to work in an all-night diner with a young lady from Chicago. The plural pronoun for the second person is “youse.”
This is how I will base my vote until two funky bass riffs run against each other.
No, he’s from Hawai’i. Not that we say y’all, or youse, either.
Well, I meant “currently.”
I think we’re all Bozos on this bus.
Fair enough. I was responding in the “Oprah’s from Mississippi” sense. His childhood speech wouldn’t have included anything but “you,” unless his Kansan kin used some other form. Do they say “y’all” in Kansas?
I grew up in New York with a mother from Tennessee and I’ve been know to use both “youse” and “y’all.” I also like to keep pointing out that Obama’s from Hawai’i. And it doesn’t bother me if he says “y’all” occasionally.