Mrs. Davis, termed the Worst Person in the World twice last week by Countdown's Keith Olberman, revealed her plan Friday to KMOX listeners. This was her response to a question about whether she would run for a statewide office:
Well, you never know. All I know is I bought myself a pair of cowboy boots and I'm learning how to say Missour-ah.
Perhaps Mrs. Davis thought that was funny. The co-hosts of the talk program she was on, including Republican operative John Hancock, thought it was hilarious, according to the transcript, which is posted on the Show-Me Progress website.
To help Mrs. Davis' educational curve, I should explain that most people, even in southwest Missouri, pronounce Missouri with the "ee" sound. The large majority of people who pronounced it Missourah are politicians who think that is shows they have the common touch, and out-of-state news media, who have listened to those politicians and think Missourah is the proper pronunciation.
If this was the first time that Mrs. Davis made sport of this area and other rural areas in Missouri, I might feel inclined to write it off as as just another lame joke by a politician. But as was shown in the June 22 Turner Report, when Mrs. Davis thinks her audience is limited to city folks, or at the least those in the St. Louis area, she has no compunction about making disparaging remarks about poor rural folks who cannot be expected to have the grasp of state politics that someone as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as she is.
Toward the end of the accompanying video, Mrs. Davis makes one disparaging remark after another about rural people and the legislators who represent them. Those who view the video will discover the remarkable fact that we have low taxes in southwest Missouri and that the lion's share of the taxation in this state is in St. Louis and St. Charles counties.
But Mrs. Davis has a solution for that. She is going to educate us, according to the video, because we do not understand complicated matters like taxation.
I just pronounce it "Misery" and everyone always knows exactly where I'm talking about.
ReplyDeleteKansas City folks - a city of which I am a native - have always said Missou-RAH because they didn't like the Frencb/St. Louis version of Missoureeeee. To them, it's the hicks who say "eeeeee".
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