All this puzzlement was cleared up today when I heard a clip of Reverend Wright screeching his anti-American tirade. After all these months of listening to President Obama speak, and not having heard the Irreverent Wright tape since last fall, it occurs to me that Mr. Obama has copied the disturbed preacher’s oratory style. And now that I realize where he acquired those two bad speech habits, it also becomes clear that the content of his speeches worldwide is just as anti-American as what Wright said in church, just without the curse “God damn America”. Since the president has yet to say something about the greatness of the United States in public speeches, it seems that he has the same resentful, hateful sentiments as well as identical sibilants and pretentious “ihs’. That’s a miracle, since he “never heard” Rev. Wright curse America.
The Telltale Sibilant
I had been wondering why President Obama leaves the “y” off of words and substitutes a short “i” (he says “ih” instead of “ee”, as in “property”–which he pronounces as “propertih”). That’s very weird for someone who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia.I was also puzzled by his hissing “esses” at the ends of plural words and anything else that ends in an “s”. Sometimes he sounds like the snake in Jungle Book.
