Republicans...'assault the English language'...

[Igel]

3. People--esp. politicians--learn how to use language for implicit solidarity.

Thatcher was working class. She learned RP to be perceived as middle class.

Blair was middle class. He struggled to master lower-class varieties so as to disguise his origins.

Buckley was from Boston, which the writer thinks of as "mid-Atlantic." That used to be called "New England" before New York City became part of the South, and the pinebarrens the Deep South. (After all, Georgia had pine trees, NJ has pine trees, NJ = Georgia).

Obama grew up in HI. He was raised by white people. He spent a lot of time overseas. And yet he spoke AAEV, and when he spoke he could go back and forth effortlessly, by audience, between different varieties. Listen to his speech, and you know what his audience is without needing a recording. Now it's tinged with southern black preacher a la King, now he sounds Harvard-educated, now he sounds like he's just an average white joe and now he sounds like he was raised in Compton.

"But it's so obviously juvenile" is hardly the point. Many took the "bait." It's just noticeable when (a) you're not trained to focus on language variation or (b) you're focused on content and not form or (c) you don't look for things to be critical of. (b) and (c) tend to co-occur, but they're not the same thing.