Thursday, March 23, 2006

RUSS FEINGOLD ON THE DAILY SHOW

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Last night John Stewart had Russ Feingold as his guest on The Daily Show. The audience liked his very moderate proposal a lot more than many of his colleagues in the U.S. Senate do. Stewart also showed a clip of John Boner (the new Tom DeLay) denouncing Feingold as an al-Qaida sympathizer. The audience booed Boner, of course. What I can't understand is why the entire mass media pronounces his name "Bay-ner," instead of the obvious way it should be pronounced that might cause him the derision his suggestions (minus the lobbying checks he's been caught handing out on the House floor) would normally cause. Anyway, John over at CROOKS AND LIARS has the clip up for anyone who went to sleep after the season premiere of SOUTH PARK.

6 Comments:

At 8:34 AM, Blogger KenInNY said...

With regard to the pronunciation of Congressman Boehner's family name, Rachel Maddow is also hot about the "obvious" way to pronounce "Boehner."

But obviousness is in the eye of the beholder. For the record:

(1) The "obvious" pronunciation for Boehner would be not "Boner" but something close to "Berner"--the normal pronunciation of the German vowel represented by an "o" with an umlaut, which is what "oe" stands for in words and names of German origin.

(2) My old colleague and pal Jim Oestreich, now a music critic at the New York Times, explained to me a zillion years ago when we first met that in the Midwest "oe" is pronounced "ay," making him--as a polka-bred Wisconsin boy--"AY-strike."

K

 
At 10:18 AM, Blogger DownWithTyranny said...

To me, he'll always be a Boner.

 
At 5:25 PM, Blogger KenInNY said...

Now that's something else again.

K

 
At 9:49 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Then why is Beohlert pronounced BO-lert (where the 1st syllable rhymes with "crow")?

 
At 5:56 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Twenty years ago, I served in Germany... and in southern Germany...the oe was sounded similar to a gutteral growl errr sound. Basically, the first vowel would become somewhat of a flat O or like a short u sound.....

and as to the poster about Oestreich.... it sounded like a flat oy in oyster with a guttural twist...

 
At 12:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you so much! Growing up on the East coast, the oe combination was always pronounced as long o. I always felt John Boehner was changing the dictionary by using the ay sound.

 

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