Howard Kurtz notes the laughable response of Christie Vilsack, wife of Governor Tim Vilsack of Iowa, to the surfacing of a column she wrote complaining of the way minorities and regional populations in America speak English. In her column, the Boston Herald noted that Mrs. Vilsack tore into African-Americans as hypocritical:
“I am fascinated at the way some African-Americans speak to each other in an English I struggle to understand, then switch to standard English when the situation requires,” Vilsack wrote in a 1994 column in the Mount Pleasant News, while her husband, Tom, was a state senator.
She also took “non-Midwesterners” to task for their slang and loose enunciation, complaining that well-meaning Southerners during the 1992 Olympics could not make themselves understood for all their “slurred speech”. So what did Mrs. Vilsack have to say for herself when confronted with her column?
Vilsack, who is slated to address the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, said in a statement that “these are attacks by people who want to divide us and not bring us together [emph. mine — CE].”
What? Making fun of the way people speak, and accusing African-Americans of speaking in a certain way to make themselves deliberately obtuse, brings people together? Only in the fourth grade, Mrs. Vilsack.
No wonder John Kerry picked John Edwards for his VP candidate rather than Tom Vilsack. One spousal embarrassment is more than enough, and Teresa paid good money to take that role in this election.