Paul April 17th, 2011
In a stimulating essay (“The Sex Drive, Idling in Neutral”) in today’s New York Times, Meg Wolitzer says she cannot imagine women like Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor or the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice having sex. This led me to thoughts I shouldn’t have had, of other people of either gender whom I cannot imagine likewise having sex—e.g., Golda Meir and Lyndon B. Johnson (too wrinkly); Michele Bachmann and Joan Crawford (too arch)); Mr. Rogers and Justin Bieber (too chipper); Pee Wee Herman and Conan O’Brien (too many uncoordinated limbs); Alan Cumming and John Boehner (in spite of their names); Barbara Bush and Queen Mum (evidence to the contrary); and, thank God, Pope Benedict XVI and Mother Teresa. So, who’s on your list? Excluding me, of course.
Tags: Alan Cumming, Barbara Bush, Conan O'Brien, Condoleezza Rice, Golda Meir, Joan Crawford, John Boehner, Justin Bieber, Lyndon B. Johnson, Meg Wolitzer, Michele Bachmann, Mother Teresa, Mr. Rogers, Pee Wee Herman, Pope Benedict XVI, Queen Mum, Sonia Sotomayor
Paul August 29th, 2010
As though the national hysteria over the right of some non-Christians to congregate and worship in mosques in this freedom-loving country weren’t depressing enough, comes news that academic research shows how native speakers of English tend to distrust people who speak the language with a foreign accent.
Through the years, depending on which country America happens to be at war or at odds with, Hollywood movies have always characterized the enemy by giving them weird German/Russian/Chinese/Japanese accents. So how would we judge people like Henry Kissinger, Carmen Miranda, Desi Arnaz or Roman Polanski today? Ooops. Forget about Arnaz, a Latino who can continue to love Lucy, but probably not in Arizona. Or Polanski, who is now more American than he is Polish or French, but who continues to be demonized because he was attracted to a pubescent teenager, something our culture obviously does not encourage, even though we worship in the House of Cyrus and the Temple of Bieber.
As for myself, these days, whenever people ask me where I’m from, I no longer go to the trouble of telling them that I was born of Chinese parents in the Philippines, but that I have now lived nearly two-thirds of my life in these United States. I just smile inscrutably and tell them I’m from Kansas. However, even though I learned to speak English from the American Jesuits and the Irish Christian Brothers in the schools I attended in Manila, because I still speak the language with a little accent, thanks to “Why Don’t We Believe Non-Native Speakers? The Influence of Accent on Credibility,” the article published recently in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, I now know why no one in America ever believes anything I say.
Tags: Carmen Miranda, Desi Arnaz, Henry Kissinger, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Roman Polanski
