Men of science, prepare your laboratories. Two Democrats who want to be President of the United States transform when they travel to the American south, enter churches and sermonize on electoral politics.
Speech of the afflicted takes on a distinct character. Rhoticisms are dropped, so the last syllable of words ending in "ar," "er" and "ore" become respectively "ah," "uh" and "oh." Senator Barack Obama exhibited this symptom and a second one, locution as if impersonating Jesse Jackson, when he named himself heir apparent to the civil rights movement. His first visit to Selma, Alabama was a homecoming, Obama said, "When people ask me whether I've been to Selma before" — last word rhyming with "Dafoe."
The senator did not talk like this before his return and accession to, presumably, King's throne. However, Obama's affectation convinced. Hillary Clinton's own adenoidal bray, suggesting Edward G. Robinson, did not. The title Clinton chose at Selma's First Baptist Church was "beneficiary," maybe the equivalent of a foreigner made duchess by marriage.
Another sign of an alteration is the suffusion of Biblical themes in one's language. Obama, in Selma on Sunday, invoked Moses fourteen times. In front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on the Friday preceding, to distant sons of the prophet, zero times.
Also strange is the reconstruction of time. The 1960s, and inequitable conditions before then, occupy both the past and the present. Obama retold the stories as if his life antedated them, even though he was, in as many words, consummation "of the movement." Progress, yes? Or progress, no? Will providential men forever be in need?
More, the style of remonstrance contradicts. Obama chided, "I don't know who taught them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was something white," and he omitted the "g" from "conjugating," at the very least. Why use adventitiously poor diction when rebuking the use of poor diction? Is it — because the uncouth or uneducated need to be understood, or respected, even while they remain in error? Should we sit down with the unresponsive student, settle on two plus two equals five, and then slowly work to four?
Preliminary diagnosis: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have visited a population suspended in caricature, and have contracted an acute, complacent vanity. No Americans to meet and court in Alabama, as such. Democratic executive aspirants are busy "gathering Negroes," evidently finding it quaint, practicing the near obscene.