Letters to the Editor
-
Gore's Accent
I don't care if Gore was raised on the moon surrounded by interplanetary linguists in tights, this is who his parents were:
Al Gore, Sr was born on December 26, 1907, in the mountain community of Granville, and moved to the Carthage area (that would be Tennessee, not Tunisia) when he was 2. He received an early education in the one-room Possum Hollow school and later became a teacher in the one-room school himself.
Pauline Gore was born Pauline LaFon in Palmersville, Tenn., and spent her childhood in Jackson, Tenn., before enrolling at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She was one of the first southern women to practice law.
These were his parents, whom I presume spent a great deal of time with Al as he was growing up, talking to him. It would be freakin' weird as hell if he didn't end up sounding somewhat like his parents. Please note that his parents were not from California or New York or Paris, France. He also spent time in Tennessee as a child surrounded, one can safely presume, by people from Tennessee. This "put-on Tennessee accent" smear against Gore springs from the tiresome prejudices and ignorances of non-Southerners who can't tell the difference between an educated southern accent and the Beverly Hillbillies.