How gauche

There’s a great little exchange at the beginning of the Godfather II, when the corrupt senator is trying to shake down Michael Corleone. The senator makes a point of pronouncing Corleone’s name with exaggerated correctness. This is a double insult, both because of the exaggeration, but more so because an hour earlier the senator had (now obviously intentionally) mangled the pronounciation of the family name when acknowledging the acceptance of a large charitable contribution from them, during his speech to the audience at Michael’s son’s first communion.

That seemingly trivial matters of etiquette can be fraught with all sorts of social and political significance is evident in things like Mark Krikorian’s continuing insistence that there’s something un-American about trying to pronounce “foreign” names as the bearers of those names pronounce them.

While Krikorian’s first post on this was silly, his followup is grotesque. I happen to remember the press conference at which Ronald Reagan introduced Antonin Scalia as his SCOTUS nominee. The very first question was how to pronounce the nominee’s name correctly. Has Krikorian ever anglicized the pronounciation of Scalia’s or Alito’s names? How about Sen. John Breaux? Etc. I bet you this principle of mispronouncing (Hispanic) names in order to hold back the dreaded tide of multi-culturalism occured to him about fifteen minutes ago, after someone whose name sounds a lot like his maid’s* got nominated to the Court.

This is actually all typical right-wing elite faux-populist posturing, of course. Anglicizing foreign names is something people are far more likely to do as you move down the SES scale. So, in winger land, it becomes an “authentic” thing to do, at least in a context in which you also have an irresistable urge to gratuitously insult America’s 30 million Hispanic voters. (I can well imagine Krikorian’s late employer’s reaction if he had asked him how the skiing was in Ge-Stad).

*I’m guessing here — maybe his maid is Polish. Speaking of which I wonder how Krikorian applies his principle of using the “English” (sic) pronouncation for Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s name?