Olio: Vowel Sounds Are The Horrible Mutated Amphibian Epidemic Of Our Mental Ecosystem Edition

• "This is the first we've heard of it."

--Mike "Choirboy" Pence, yesterday, responding to the question of a reporter who accompanied the cameraman who'd been taping him on the dais at some sort of Dr. King Was Actually A Conservative Day function or other. Pence was responding to a question about yesterday's announcement of a national Pence for President Petition Drive. We were reminded of nothing so much as the surprise Courtney Cox displayed when she was spontaneously selected to dance with Bruce Springsteen.

(He's going to consider it, humbly. Just in case you'd started holding your breath already.)

• Indianapolis Star*: Lugar votes party line less often these days.

Yeah, he's down from 91, as a freshman, to 84; at this rate he'll be an actual moderate in 2096.

If you'd like to know what's changed in the years since he was Nixon's Favorite Mayor, let's let one of the local Teabaggers whose impotent challenge Lugar might face in 2012's primaries give you the scoop:

Hoosier Patriots co-founder Greg Fettig, who is among those working to mount a primary challenge to Lugar in 2012, said it's specific votes Lugar has taken that concern him, not how often Lugar has voted with the party overall. Fettig, whose group is aligned with the tea party movement, cited Lugar's votes to ratify a nuclear weapons treaty, to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and to help some illegal immigrants who came here as children obtain a path to citizenship.

"I think he's been in Washington, D.C., too long," Fettig said. "When you've been inside the Beltway all those years, you get infected by the liberalism that's prevalent in Washington."

• I walked through the room where my Poor Wife had local teevee news playing four times this AM, and three times (story, twice, teaser once) heard the remote reporter tell me a victim was shot in the had.

Is this the same everywhere, now? Where does it even come from? It's not a regional accent. As far as I can tell it's nothing but a second-generation Clueless impression. It's like turning on your teevee and finding that everyone born between 1972 and 1985 is speaking Scouse.

It's not the speech itself, of course. Although I find it about as unpleasant as an American accent can get, I can't think of any set of circumstances which would require me to listen to, let alone care, how Young Urban Careerists talk in real life. It's the fact of its professional deployment that's troubling. It's coupled--inevitably--with an assault on the pore unfortunate -ing form which, apparently at random, turns the ending to ANG or EEEN as though the speaker had been subjected to electroshock therapy designed to eliminate the dropped G and wound up with a vocal tic and the attitude of the whipped dog. God, if it only ended there! instead of hitching that to the Incontinent Mono-stress/War on Schwa business which produces sentences like:

STU-DANTS are STUD-EE-EEEN for FI-NALLS.

before putting their hads down on their dasks, presumably. Except to this is added the Clueless Permanent Interrogative, so it comes out:

STU-DANTS are STUd-EE-EEEN? for FI-NALLS?

Which, first, I find damn near unlistenable, even if these people were imparting information I needed, which they aren't. It makes me wonder how they got through high school, let alone earning a major in Personality at some four-year college. When the Republican party stops hating teachers long enough to use this, and reality teevee, as evidence that public education is a dismal failure this blog will lurch rightward so fast you and your chaise lounge will be in the drink before you know what hit ya.

But there's more, for me, and maybe worse: name a profession that's more image conscious. I'm guessing that the lowliest cub reporter on local teevee is given his or her own image consultant at signing. I doubt there's a tie, or a hat, seen on-air that hasn't been vetted; I'd bet that 90% read at least one self-help book per month (and that 50% of those read nothing else). But the speech pattern isn't just wrong, or ersatz, it's mealy and benighted. It takes sides in the Great Anti-Intellectualism Debate in this country (assuming we're still having one, and it's not just a few of us yelling at the now-ex-girlfriend as she drives off for good) without admitting it does so. People who are paid to read English are no longer required to make a reasonable attempt to do so properly. How much less of an effort do they make to understand the shit they try to sound out? Who's going to say an administration should be honest, a legislature accurate, or a general forthright when he makes a tidy living for having substituted hair care for comprehension?

• At some point over the weekend I caught the locals teasing their upcoming two-minutes-per-hour national and international news coverage:

"Coming up at Six, the Republican leadership is finding it difficult to deal with the enormous Federal deficit."

Which I guess is intended to convey "It's not as easy as they said it was," but which, in fact, conveys Just How Little You Fucks Pay Attention, and How Easy It Is For Right-wing Talking Points To Dominate Your Coverage.

Did we do some sort of Dallas shower scene and erase all memories of the Bush administration earlier this season?

• I spent a couple hours yesterday moving A/V equipment around, and when I turned the system on to see if everything was connected right, Rachel Ray was on the box. She was telling her audience of unfettered manics what she was going to make For the Holiday, which I took to be Dr. King Day, as rerunning last year's Valentines Day program would have been a bit slovenly. And she's going from 0-60 in about 2.8 seconds on this, except it's teevee, and it's Rachel Ray, so she's going from 90-9000.

I was operating a different remote at the time; I couldn't just shut her off. And she screams something like "I going to do…MY Famous…MEXICAN MEATLOAF!!! or something, and the crowd goes nuts. Again, assuming that's possible.

I'm not sure what the "dish" was, exactly, but "Mexican" was definitely appended to it. This is not actually my point; I suppose someone at the production meeting had enough sense to 86 the Soul Food idea. Or maybe Jennifer Hudson cancelled. It wasn't the weird juxtaposition, it was the lunatic fucking screaming that got me. Honestly, if we'd been at Thanksgiving dinner at my inlaws', and I'd heard someone yell, "I'm making…MY Famous…CAJUN CASSEROLE!" I'd have turned to my Poor Wife and said, "Just think; six years ago doctors said Austin would never achieve articulate speech!"

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* In recognition that the Star has made an actual attempt to clean up its comments section, we're going to quit calling it the Racist Beacon. It's still a poorly-written, evidently unedited right-wing screedfest and panting Republican demirep suitable for lining birdcages, but then, we don't expect miracles.