The "Romney's Aide's Racist Comment" flap.

[xiphias]

I bet that Romney aide was trying to talk about "Anglo-American heritage", because that's a real thing that people say, and it goes along with the term "special relationship between England and the United States."

And it just came out as "Anglo-Saxon heritage", because the aide had one of those brain-frotzes where your brain takes the beginning of a term, and autofills the rest of the term without consulting you, and "Anglo-Saxon" is the term that comes in before (heck, on Google, it's 27 million hits for "Anglo-American" and 50.5 million for "Anglo-Saxon", so I bet the aide's brain just autofilled it wrong.)

Comments

[redbird]

You may well be true, but it's still problematic: he's still saying "the white guy would be a better president than the black guy because being white means he understands Britain better." Not because a hypothetical candidate went to graduate school there, or taught British history or literature, or has a grandmother from there. Because he's white.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

From what I gather Barak Obama has as many "Anglo-Saxon's" on his family tree as Mitt Romney does

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Not that I care two hoots, but I thought Obama's mother's ancestors were Irish? There was that great song in the 2008 campaign.

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

I am not sure, I expect that they are like many Americans a mix of a bunch of groups. I agree it doesn't really matter

[redbird]

He has some Irish ancestry—when he visited Ireland he stopped off in the village that one of them emigrated from.

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

Some of them, but not all of them. Many white Americans have an Irish ancestor they can point to without being 'Irish-American', per se.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that the Irish are extremely NOT Anglo-anything.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The Irish have integrated many successive waves of invaders and made them "more Irish than the Irish themselves" (which our teacher assured us was a catchphrase in the original Irish).

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

Níos Gaelaí ná na Gaeil iad féin. More Gaelic than the Gaels themselves. I think the original phrase is in Latin, though. Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced about the "because he's white" part. I mean, I'm not discounting it -- it's certainly possible -- but I see other possibilities, too. Not to get all Will Shetterly about it, but it COULD actually be a class thing -- Mitt understands the people who matter in England better than Barack, because he's rich, and always has been. Obama grew up poor -- how could he really understand the IMPORTANT people?

[yendi]

As an OTM listener, I assume you caught the interview a few weeks back with the guy talking about the silliness of focusing on gaffes instead of issues?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

If you view gaffes as Freudian slips that reveal how someone "really" thinks, then they're important to analyze.

If you view gaffes as the verbal equivalent of tripping over a curb, then not so much.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

To use an anglo sort of phrase, are you taking the piss?

If you're sincere, I have to disagree. I'm pretty sure Sununu said what he meant, if not what he intended to say.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I don't personally think that THAT quote was supposed to be racist.  I make no observations one way or the other on whether the speaker has made racist comments on any other occasion, as I don't know.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Oh -- one further comment: if I was working for the Romney campaign, even if my explanation ISN'T what actually happened, it's still the explanation I'd use. ;)

[(Anonymous)]

/bemused-outsider here/

I agree; at least it's most likely. I'd apply the same to Obama's "you didn't build that." Obama's comment overall made sense, he just accidentally stuck in the phrase "If you have a business" in a paragraph about infrastructure.