Reply #22: Interest.

[Igel]

But there's a confound. Ok, there are a few confounds.

1. Obama's being described and sold in the last two years. Edwards is known, and needs no selling, and little describing.

2. You'd need to make sure that you're not getting the same person reported in numerous sources. 50 hits from one editorial printed in 20 papers and quoted in 30 more is still one token.

3. And even if you did that, you'd just be comparing two people.

But I think you're right, in a sense. I don't know that 'articulateness' needs to be said for everybody, but black candidates come with two possible drawbacks even in non-racist discourse. First, people are predisposed to be against them, so even trivial virtues need to be highlighted (highlighting trivialities for other reasons can be, but need not be, a left-handed or condescending compliment). Second, many traditional African-Americans do not speak standard English well enough to be considered articulate by norms based on other than their own speech communities, nor do they speak a dialect that is accepted as compatible with being educated by the majority of Americans; this is as true of AAEV as it is of some other southern and Appalachian dialects, and no number of descriptive grammatical works showing consistency and systematicity will change that social judgment. Then there's an unrelated reason--the political discourse today spurns Bushisms, and pointing out any non-Bush characteristic is deemed the thing to do.