The hilarious dilemma of liberal patriotism, cont.

According to Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg writing in the New York Times, the first speaker at the Democratic National Convention will be none other than Michelle Obama, whose mission will be to start off a three day long introduction of her husband to the American people as an all-American man. The project is as plausible as the John Kerry convention in 2004, which was almost exclusively devoted to presenting the Democrats as … the party of military prowess! And which climaxed with Sen. Kerry—the man who first entered the public eye by accusing U.S. servicemen in Vietnam of non-existent, “Jenjis Khan”-type atrocities, and who had spent his entire political career reflexively whining about and sneering at the “arrogance” of American power—walking to the podium, giving a similacrum of a military salute, and saying, “Reporting for duty.” Talk about trying to put lipstick on a pig.

I don’t like the analogy, however, because I respect pigs.

The title of this entry references a squib of a piece by me several years ago at FrontPage Magazine.

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Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star Ledger writes:

Actually Kerry’s famous pronunciation of Genghis Khan was the correct one, or at least closer to correct than the common one. I learned that after his comment led me to contact Jack Weatherford, the Macalester College professor who is the author of “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,” which is a really fascinating and sympathetic look at the man who did so much of a better job of disbanging the Iraqi army than did George Bush.

“Genghis” is actually the Persian form of the name but in no translation does it begin with a hard “G.”

LA replies:

Most Americans people say “Jengis” (soft g followed by hard g), or sometimes “Gengis” (two hard g’s). No (regular) American had ever heard it pronounced the way Kerry did in his Congressional testimony, and it made him sound humorously effete. Not a big deal.

Actually it was one of Gengis Khan’s successors (Hulagu?) who destroyed Baghdad.

Paul Mulshine replies:

It was indeed Hulagu and he was a Christian, or at least his mom was. And he disbanded the Baghdad army by cutting their heads off. The funny part was that Kerry failed to realize how well that sort of thing works.

But Kerry was not off in the pronunciation, at least according to Weatherford, who is the expert. If pronouncing a word properly makes one sound effete, the fault is on the part of the listener.

LA replies:

I don’t entirely agree. When speaking our language, we are not bound by the correct pronunciation of a word in its own language, but by its standard pronunciation in our language. If an American appeared before a Congressional committee and said, “We need to improve our relations with France,” pronouncing “France” that he way it’s pronounced in French, he would sound silly and effete.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 18, 2008 01:21 PM | Send