Hillary Clinton Defends Southern Accent on Campaign Trail
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she sees her sometimes Southern accent as a virtue.
"I think America is ready for a multilingual president," Clinton said during a campaign stop at a charter school in Greenville, S.C.
The New York senator — who said she's been thinking about critics who've suggested that she tried to put on a fake Southern accent in Selma, Ala. — noted that she's split her life between Arkansas, Illinois and the East Coast.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Clinton added a Southern lilt to her voice last week when addressing a civil rights group in New York City headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. On Monday, dealing with a microphone glitch at a fundraiser for young donors, she quoted former slave and underground railroad leader Harriet Tubman.
The two episodes prompted some ribbing in the media and hatched more than a few humorous YouTube video clips.
Clinton is a linguistic polyglot — a Chicago native turned New York resident who works in Washington and spent two decades living in Arkansas when her husband, Bill Clinton, was governor.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But observers have long noted her tendency to speak Southern primarily in front of black audiences, as she did with Sharpton last week and at a civil rights commemoration in Selma in March.
All the Democrats are vying for the support of black voters — a crucial constituency especially in the early voting state of South Carolina. In 2004, black voters comprised nearly 50 percent of the state's Democratic primary turnout.