More Than Dialect

If Obama speaks and no one is listening, what does he sound like?

The ‘bombshell’ video released on The Daily Caller showcasing then-Senator Obama’s propensity to change his cadence to impress his audience is revealing on many levels.

How does a man who was born in Hawaii, raised in large part in Indonesia, returns to Hawaii and then proceeds to acquire an ivy league education manage to obtain a southern accent?

The video clearly shows Obama speaking in a dialect and cadence that is patently different from what he sounds like just days later when speaking to media. But a southern preacher’s tone isn’t the only dialect we should question.

According to Obama’s own book, his mother woke him at 4:00 am each day to teach him English before he went to school in Indonesia. (NYT) He spent his formative years, from age 7 to nearly 5th grade in Indonesia. Does he also have an Indonesian accent? If not, why not? If so, why haven’t we heard it?

After receiving his highly elite education at Punahou, the private boarding school in Hawaii, from 5th grade through high school graduation, why doesn’t Obama have a distinctly Hawaiian accent? Is there one?

Finally, after living in Boston while at Harvard, why haven’t we heard him drop a few “r’s” every once in a while? He obviously has a habit of picking up accents to mirror his audience.

The truth seems blatantly obvious. The president is more an actor than he is a leader and will tell his audience what they want to hear. He’ll say it in an accent to which they can relate in order to gain applause. His lies are beginning to bury him. The question now becomes, “will any of this affect the November 6th election?” We’ll know in 33 days.