Max's Theorem Revisited

James McMurtry talking about his friend Max (from his latest album Live In Aught-Three):

Max told me that a good old boy can become an intellectual, but an intellectual cannot become a good old boy. I believe that to be true.

So why is it that the son of a couple of blue-blooded erudite Connecticut yankees gets to stand behind the Presidential podium and talk about nuc-you-lar weapons?

I mean Jeb Bush doesn't say nuc-you-lar. You know good and damn well Barbara doesn't say nuc-you-lar.

I posted these lyrics about five weeks ago and a small discussion was sparked about Bush's speaking style and whether or not it was authentic. Click here and scroll down to the April 11 entry to re-read this.

I am re-hashing all this because On The Media, the greatest radio show ever, just ran a story last week on this very topic when they interviewed Geofrey Numberg.

Geofrey Numberg has written a book called Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Confrontational Times. The interview covers topics like Bush's use of "evildoer" and the GOPs hijacking of the word "values." But the part I have to highlight takes James McMurtry quote a step further. Numberg says:

Nuclear is really no harder to pronounce than likelier. And what's more, this is a word that Bush's father pronounced correctly, that Bush would have grown up hearing pronounced properly, whether around the table in Kennebunkport or when he was at Andover or when he was at Yale, and at a certain point, I think it became for him a conscious choice. I call it a, a "faux-Bubba" pronunciation. To my mind, when somebody like that says the word, it doesn't count the same way it does when Homer Simpson says it as nucular. It's rather a way of saying you know-- I got my finger on this button, and I'll call these things whatever I damn well please.

Click here to read the transcript. It will be five minutes well-spent.