A Reader Wonders if Peter Brimelow's Unassimilated English Accent Is Exaggerated

NOTE: PLEASE say if you DON'T want your name and/or email address published when sending VDARE email.

02/01/09 - Letters Editor Joe Guzzardi Writes To The Oregonian Editors About Its Reporter Betsy Hammond

Re: Peter Brimelow's Appearance On The Tom Roten Show

David Webb <email him > wrote:

Hi, I am English and have no essential trouble understanding Peter Brimelow's accent, but I have to say the links to the audios you post are truly dreadful. [Audio of Tom Roten Show, MP3 ]First of all, I think he hams up his regional English accent.

Nearly any Englishman in North America for decades develops a more neutral accent, unless somehow he views it as a trademark or a brand or otherwise tries to ham it up. His accent is probably incomprehensible to most Americans.

Second, on every audio file I have ever heard, his voice goes loud and soft, and on that Roten show link at least 25% of his words are totally inaudible. I would guess he doesn't know how to use a microphone. These audios are just dreadful. I think your site could do with more audio content, but please pay attention to audibility.

James Fulford writes: I'm afraid we aren't responsible for audio quality--we just post the links from the Roten show. It was a telephone interview.

As for Peter's modified Lancastrian accent, (it is modified—you're hearing the "more neutral" version) if anything could be done about it, it would have been done years ago. Peter himself called it his "stubbornly-unassimilating English accent,"Linda Chavez referred to it as "his charming British accent that betrays his own foreign roots "and John Podhoretz once  xenophobically complained that in a discussion with George Borjas , John Derbyshire, John O'Sullivan, and Peter Brimelow, he "was the only person speaking with an American accent."

But if Brimelow hasn't totally assimilated after all these years, what chance is there that all those people who don't speak English at all will do so.