A conclave of fools, knaves and ethics dunces on a CNN panel illustrated how Democrats and the news media are going to try to elect Kamala Harris: keep the conversation entirely on vilifying her opposition and concentrating on irrelevant trivia…like how to pronounce her name.
It serves CNN’s purposes to feature the worst and the dimmest of Republicans whenever possible: this time its choice was Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina. She’s on my list of 25 most embarrassing members of Congress. Mace either set out to troll professional race-baiter Vanderbilt University professor Michael Eric Dyson by intentionally mispronouncing Kamala Harris’s first name or got confused; first she said the name correctly (with the accent on the first syllable), then reversed herself and said it the way that apparently drives the woke crazy, with the accent on the second syllable. (I sometimes forget which is the right way myself—luckily I’m usually typing her name rather than saying it). Democratic strategist Keith Boykin corrected her, and Mace defiantly said, “I will say Kamala’s name any way that I want to.”
Ethics point #1: THAT rang a bell. My father for some reason was terrible about pronouncing certain words and names wrong—especially the names of Greek foods, which drove my mother nuts—and if I or anyone else corrected him, his response was “I don’t care. I’ll pronounce it any way I want to.” My father had a deep-rooted tendency to resent and defy authority. He didn’t like anyone telling him what to do, think or say. I inherited that tendency, which has served me well in life depending on how you define “well.” It’s not unethical. It is a bit arrogant and gratuitously obnoxious, but the attitude is frequently invaluable.
Mace’s response set off the panel like a bomb: you would have thought she called Harris one of those slurs the news media will write about without having the guts to say or print. “If I purposely mispronounced your name, that would probably not be appropriate,” said Boykin. I wonder if Boykin ever told any Democrats it wasn’t appropriate to call Donald Trump “Drumpf” (Trump’s family name before it was changed), as John Oliver and other comics and many of my Facebook friends did routinely as a way to denigrate the previous President. It was and is done because these anti-Trump zealots thought this would irritate him, just as Trump himself comes up with juvenile names for his opponents. Previous Presidents have been called “Tricky Dick,” “Bubba,” “Shrub” and worse: I’d say in the panoply of the fruits of the name game in politics, putting the accent in the wrong place is about as mild as one can get.
Ethics point #2: Mispronouncing a name demonstrates antipathy and disrespect. It is not unethical to disrespect someone whom one believes warrants disrespect.
At this point Prof. Dyson, who has made a good living and has achieved much inexplicable fame calling white people and the United States itself racist, again demonstrated his species as a one-trick pony by saying, “This congresswoman is a wonderful human being. But when you disrespect Kamala Harris by saying you will call her whatever you want, I know you don’t intend it to be that way, that’s the history and legacy of white disregard for the humanity of Black people.”
Ethics point #3. What an asshole. Dyson begins with obvious sarcasm (he doesn’t think Mace is a wonderful human being) then slips into CRT jargon to accuse Mace and every other white person past and present of being Klansmen at heart. This is, of course, unfair, but again, that’s the Democratic strategy for electing sort-of black KA-mala, just as it was the strategy for electing Barack Obama in 2008. If you don’t like her, respect her and want her to be a “historic” President, you must be a racist and that’s all there is to it. The strategy is intrinsically disrespectful to about 70% of the country, and undeniably insults them because of their race. And Dyson is freaking out over a misplaced accent.
Mace then responded with the line that made this story suddenly newsworthy: “You’re calling me a racist now?”
Ethics Point #4: That’s exactly what he did. Dyson is the racist.
Then everyone started talking at once and shouting various pronunciations of Harris’s name at each other, sounding a bit like the dueling crowd in “Fiddler on the Roof” in the musical’s opening number, when they chime in over an old argument about whether one resident of the village delivered a mule to another who had thought he had purchased a horse. “Horse!” “Mule!” “Horse!” “Mule!”
“KAmala!” “KaMAla!” “KAmala!” “KaMAla!” Tomato! Tomahto! CNN mission was accomplished: nobody watching this ridiculous segment learned anything about what kind of President Kamala Harris will be, and that’s what CNN and the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct will try to stretch out until November by any means necessary.
Dyson again weighed in with his usual race-baiting scholarly garbage, saying, “I just said you weren’t a racist! No, you don’t have to intend racism to accomplish it. Your disrespect of Kamala Harris is part and parcel of a tradition….You’re a white woman disrespecting a Black woman.”
Ethics Point 5: A pure racist statement! Mace’s race is irrelevant and Harris’s race is irrelevant. Mace demonstrated her disrespect for Harris, and, most appropriately, her disrespect for the biased, partisan hacks surrounding her by deliberately trolling them and making them show exactly how infantile and silly they are.
Unfortunately, Nancy Mace is not the brightest light on the metaphorical Christmas tree, so her retorts were essentially of the “nyah, nyah, nyah!” variety. If she had the mind and facility with logic and rhetoric that being in Congress requires, she should have said…
“I don’t respect Kamala Harris, and I mispronounce her name to make that clear. I don’t respect her for many reasons, none of which have to do with her race. Shall I give you the list? Her dishonesty, her lack of integrity, her lifetime pattern of achieving positions of power and influence by connections rather than ability, her demonstrated deficits in clear speech and thinking, her hypocrisy, her cowardice, in refusing to subject herself to a rigorous interview by more neutral journalists than CNN can supply, her failure in every assignment the Biden administration gave her, her willingness in 2020 to be chosen as an explicit DEI Vice-Presidential candidate, and her willingness now to be anointed as a Presidential nominee without being selected according to the democratic traditions and processes of her party, her flagrant flip-flopping in her positions according to what polls tell her, her own pattern of accusing anyone who doesn’t support her of being racist and sexist…oh, there is so much more. I don’t respect Kamala Harris because she isn’t respectable. It has nothing to do with her race.”
I don’t respect Rep. Mace because she doesn’t have the wit, presence of mind and rhetorical skills to say that, or its equivalent. But it is what she should have said.
Ethics Alarms 
Dang. I read the bold paragraph at the end of the post above thinking it’s what Mace said! Dang!
It is mindboggling how in just a few weeks Harris has gone from the idiotic catastrophe of a failed vice president who had to be kept out of the public eye and was the reason Joe had to be kept in the race because Harris was intolerably worse to the second coming of Obama and the most qualified presidential candidate in history. Do any of these Dem hacks really, truly think they can get away with this?
I am so tired of listening to this name pronunciation “racism” crap. As if the only names ever mispronounced are “non-white” names. I am (mostly) white, I have a “white” name, and people mispronounce it so consistently that I made a conscious decision at age 12 to stop caring how people pronounce it. When I say people mispronounce my name, I’m not talking about emphasizing the wrong syllables, I’m talking about mind boggling inventiveness of epic pronunciation errors. People add extra syllables, incorrect vowels (sometimes many incorrect vowels) and consonants that don’t ever appear in my name in places that don’t even make any sense. Guess what? It doesn’t matter. I answer to any sound pattern that I can reasonably deduce as meaning someone is talking to me and I go right on having a perfectly nice day.
There are only two scenarios in which I even bother to correct people: 1) someone incorrectly corrects a third person on how to pronounce my name (because, really?) or 2) my name has been so incredibly butchered that I really cannot figure out if someone is talking to me or not (This mostly happens with non-American coworkers, and it’s really just for clarification purposes. I don’t want to just start answering questions if people weren’t asking me in the first place. Actually, I don’t correct them, I just ask if they are talking to me.)
People don’t generally incorrectly pronounce other people’s names on purpose. It’s a waste of energy to crusade on the correct pronunciation of a difficult to pronounce name. You can make it your life long mission to Karen everyone into saying your name right, or you can accomplish things in life. I pick option 2.
My dad was Bob and my brother was John. It’s uncanny how often I’m called either of those by people who knew neither of them.
If Harris had any self-esteem or an even microscopic sense of humor, she’d have “You Can Call Me Al” at campaign events.
And our last name is pronounced one way by the family and two or three other ways by everyone else. C’est la vie.
People can say my last name but they cannot spell it. Even if I spell it for them. They hear what they expect to hear, and their brain seems to skip right on past the actual spelling I give them and just sub in the spelling they expect. Sadly, I use my name as my email address, so this is often a pain. Computers are picky about spelling.
People have called me “John” my whole life, and it isn’t my name. I have a client who still calls me John (that’s his name) even though I’ve told him it is and always has been Jack. I’m not offended. Of course, he does pay his invoices on time…
The greatest client I had was a retired family dentist. He’d been a non-commissioned B-17 chief pilot in World War Two as a really young guy. Flew his thirty-five missions. Went to college and dental school on the GI Bill. Was involved in a real estate sale he could have gotten out of and made more money on a deal with another buyer, but his wife would have had to be deposed and testify as to her joinder in the contract or lack thereof. We worked the case for a while, but eventually, he called it off and sold to the first buyer because he didn’t want his wife stressed by the proceedings.
He’d get my bill in the mail, jump in his car, drive down to our office and present the bill and his check to the receptionist. Every month. But that aside, he was just a great human being. Humble and just a joy to be around. And so appreciative. Not something you see very often doing legal work.
Many of the people mispronouncing my name are professional coworkers, but the real fun comes in in places I’m a customer. Starbucks asks you your name so they can call you to come get your drink when they are done making it. The telephone game of wrong pronunciation always has me jumping through hoops to see if the drink on offer is mine or not. Pharmacy orders are also fun. Who doesn’t want to play a game of “are the pills mine or a random stranger’s “? Waiting rooms are always good for a game of “are they talking to me or not”?! But when you spin the wheel of correcting pronunciation, a whole bunch of well meaning strangers get caught in the Karen crossfire. I don’t see any reason to assume ill intentions when simple miscommunication is probably the culprit.
Many people simply cannot hear the difference in syllables. People speaking English as a second language are probably coming from languages that don’t have the syllables in my name. There are learning disabilities which cause even native English speakers not to be able to hear the difference between certain letters. I know because my sister has that disability. She was diagnosed as a senior in high school and spent many frustrating hours screaming that there was no difference between the “b” sound and the “d” sound, amongst other things, while using software that was supposed to correct the issue. There are hearing disabilities, speech impediments, and dyslexia to contend with. The list of understandable reasons for not hearing or saying my name wrong is excusable.
Racism has nothing to do with it. People are different, they have different brains and different hearing abilities. Why proceed through life assuming that everyone around you is an asshole? They got it wrong. That is it. Who cares? It wasn’t personal 99% of the time.
Ah, but if you attribute the problem to racism, then you gain such enticing power over the unfortunates who can’t process the proper pronunciation. It’s irresistible.
FROM YOUR HOST: I’m leaving the shell of “A Friend’s” unauthorized comment up because it got two legitimate replies from ethical commenters before I was able to SPAM it. It is impressive how AF has pursued the all-time record for most comments after being banned: he lapped the competition, which I’m pretty sure is the legendary Chris, about 20 bootleg comments ago. It’s unethical, sure, but you have to admire persistence.(I don’t, but you do, or somebody. Maybe.)
Anyway, this is all my fault: I was away for a few hours doing an ethics talk-back after a play performance. Sorry.
Jack
to save Jack some ink. Ethics is involved how? Also, go write your own blog or submit your essay, nothing says entitled like telling a free blog to be relevant, in your opinion.
oh, wait. “Bite me” pretty much covers it.
“oh, wait. ‘Bite me’ pretty much covers it.” (bolds/italics mine)
Heh!
PWS
I have a list of a couple of Kamala Harris actions that I feel disqualify her from high office. The one that is probably able to get the most reaction out of people is her illegal use of slave labor. Slave labor is permissible currently as punishment for a crime (prison labor). By forcing people to work as prison laborers (slaves) past their sentences, she was making use of illegal slave labor. Should someone with a history of using illegal slave labor for projects be president of the US? would be one of my first questions to people trying to decide on a president. I think it is important because we have such a problem with the government infringing on the rights of US citizens. I think someone who plays fast and loose with ‘personal freedom’ is a problem.
I have a two-syllable Anglicized Irish last name that is surprisingly difficult to pronounce.
It does not help that there are two “national” figures that have that name and they pronounce it differently. And, people have offered at least three other ways to pronounce it over the years. When I was in college, a Jewish student said my pronunciation was “just wrong.” The second syllable just bugged her.
Why? Well, maybe because, apparently, my last name is very similar to a Jewish/Yiddish word that, presumably is pronounced differently. It has also been mistaken for a German name, an Arabic name and, most amusingly, a Hmong name.
I am long past being offended by mispronunciations (if ever I was offended). I will correct people if they ask (Judges often ask, presumably as a matter of respect for the people who appear before them). Or, if someone asks, “are you Mr. So-and-So?” I will respond, “Sew-and-Sew, yes,” as a courtesy. I was recently dealing with a prosecutor who wanted to make sure she was pronouncing it correctly, so I gave her a very simple way to make sense of my name and you could almost see the light bulb going off in her head.
Meh. What’s in a name, anyway?
-Jut