Dropping dem g's.

You all know by now that I can chase the big R with the best of em. But not everything calls for a racism alert. Take for instance this latest story concerning his O ness:

The Associated Press’s report on President Barack’s Obama’s Saturday speech to the Congressional Black Caucus drew scrutiny from a prominent journalist for foregoing journalistic practices that normally dictate that quotes should be cleaned up by writers and editors.

“Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do,” AP’s Mark Smith quoted the president as saying to the CBC.

MSNBC’s “Up w/ Chris Hayes” dove into the issue Sunday, and journalist and MSNBC contributor Karen Hunter took issue with the literal transcription used, rather than ironing out the president’s slangy pronunciations.

“I think it’s inherently racist to do something like that,” Hunter said, to the protests of New Republic writer John McWhorter, who argued the AP report was more accurate than other outlets that cleaned the quotes up.
To that Hunter said, “for them to do that in a publication, you know what it is … I teach a journalism class and I tell my students to fix people’s grammar because you don’t want them to sound ignorant.”

Smith said he normally cleans up quotes but in this case thought the president made a point of “dropping Gs.” He told Mediaite “I believe I was respecting his intent in this.”

A standards and production editor told Yahoo! that though the AP Stylebook cautions against using spellings that depict informal pronunciations, in the CBC story the reporter (Smith) thought it “appropriate to convey a particular touch that President Obama appeared to be intentionally making use of.

The headlines for the AP story differed depending on which publication was using the story, it seems some editors were aware of the brewing controversy. The Washington Times cleaned up the quote and went with “Obama to blacks: ‘Stop complaining’ and fight,” though the story still contained the dropped g’s. The Huffington Post chose Smith’s phrasing: “Obama tells blacks to 'stop complainin' and fight.” [Story] 

Sorry, my racism censors aren't picking up anything.  I respect Ms. Hunter, but the president was the one leaving off his g's. She should be blaming the president not the journalist who reported what he said.

So stop the presses; I agree with John McWhorter on this one.

I get what his O ness was doing. My daddy actually taught homiletics to theology students. But Honestly, I never liked politicians who use a particular type of cadence or dialect to fit in with a different audience. I suppose that they all do it, but it doesn't make it right. O does it all the time when he is speaking to his cousins. It's as if he is at a Sunday morning revival meeting and he is the preacher making an altar call. I guess everyone wants to sound like Martin. The thing is,though,brother Martin actually was a preacher.

Finally, I see that Andy Rooney is leaving 60 Minutes after all these years. Folks, let's be honest with ourselves; the miserable old coot should have left 20 years ago.