I was listening to one of the talk radio shows today and while I laughed myself silly listening to the callers, I was also more than a little disturbed. The callers were from here in the Boise area and the topic was the attempted bombing of the airliner from Amsterdam going to Detroit. I want to know why so many of these callers have very stereotypical southern accents and drawls that would make a Texan proud. To me the majority of these folks sound like undereducated illiterate hicks. Several of them had some rather good ideas but I was having such a hard time with the drawl that I couldn't hear their point. My grandfather came from Norway to the United States in the early 1900's and only learned English after he arrived in North Dakota. Grandpa John never spoke with an accent and laughed at those that did saying it was really just laziness on their part. Grandpa was in fact very offended by the typical depiction of Norwegians as having the Sven and Ollie accents. Like my grandfather I tend to believe that these accents and drawls that drive me crazy are more affectations and laziness than anything else.
The other thing that bothered me about these callers were the demands for very draconian solutions. The scariest of these was the older gentleman that thought we should use nuclear weapons on countries like Yemen and Afghanistan for harboring terrorists. Many callers thought the problem is the government always with the statement " when has government ever done anything right". They of course never can tell you what it is the government has done wrong but it is a article of faith with these folks. Then they want the military put in charge of homeland security but the last time I looked the military was part of that government. Between the accents and the hare-brained ideas I'm sure glad to be living in Idaho.
Lost in Translation
13 years ago
