"Everywhere the same voice, its odd Eastern accent, which in anyone else would have irritated Midwesterners."

"You could follow without missing a single word as you strolled by. You felt joined to these unknown drivers, men and women smoking their cigarettes in silence, not so much considering the president�s words as affirming the rightness of his tone and taking assurance from it."

Wrote Saul Bellow in "In the Days of Mr. Roosevelt," quoted in a Martin Amis essay about Bellow's nonfiction, collected in a new book titled "There Is Simply Too Much to Think About," which I just added to my Kindle. I can give you some more context:
Click for more �

"The Daily Show" chooses Trevor Noah, a South African, to replace Jon Stewart.

The NYT observes that Noah is "nonwhite," but that there's a question "why the network did not choose a woman to crack the all-male club of late-night television hosts."

[Noah] grew up in Soweto, the son of a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father, whose union was illegal during the apartheid era. �My mother had to be very clandestine about who my father was,� Mr. Noah said. �He couldn�t be on my birth certificate.�

By the time he started performing stand-up in his 20s, Mr. Noah said he had long been taught that �speaking freely about anything, as a person of color, was considered treason.�

According to the NYT, Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central, "said that Comedy Central... drew up 'a shortlist' of possible successors 'and Trevor checked off every box on that list and then some.'" That doesn't make sense. If the "list" is a list of "possible successors," how could one person on that list check off "every box on that list and then some"? Obviously, there's some other list. Presumably, it's a list of things Comedy Central thought would be plus factors. I guess being female wasn't one of them. Ganeless seems to have unwittingly stated that Comedy Central really wasn't hoping to put a woman in the anchor seat. Either that or gushy puffery about Noah caused her to say something she didn't mean to say.

Why is Ganeless president of Comedy Central? Perhaps she was promoted beyond her appropriate level.

Anyway, I'm not sold on Noah. I watched the clip of him that was linked at the beginning of the NYT article � I sat through the Coke-and-Pepsi commercial for "Mixify" � which shows him in a colloquy with Jon Stewart. Noah began with what seems to be the old joke "I just flew in and boy are my arms tired." When the predictable groans ensued, Noah held his arms up in the Ferguson hands-up-don't-shoot position and said:

"No, seriously, I've been holding my arms like this since I got here. I never thought I�d be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa. It kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days, back home."

So, get ready for jokes against America told in a not-American accent. I guess, not American was on the Comedy Central checklist of plus factors that Noah checked off (and then some).  Yeah, I know, you don't have to get ready because you don't watch "The Daily Show." I don't either anymore. I used to watch every day. I still record every show, but I can't remember the last time I felt like clicking on the recording. Maybe I got tired of Jon Stewart's incessant yelling in disbelief. How could America be so awful? But does that mean I want to hear Noah's mellifluous murmuring about how awful America is?

I know, I'm old. The show is not intended for me. I saw the commercial for Mixify. Coke and Pepsi's effort to get people to "mix" their soda-drinking with nutritious food was, to me, a ludicrously transparent effort to fend off government regulation, not what they want you to think it is:

#Realtalk: Coke, Dr Pepper and Pepsi understand that balancing your mix of foods, drinks and physical activities can get a little tricky. And since our products can play a part in that equation, we�ve teamed up to help make it easier to find a balanced mix that feels oh so right. That�s where Mixify comes in. It�s like a balance wingman.

Bringing you new combinations to keep your mix fresh and your body right. Like mixing lazy days with something light, following sweaty workouts with whatever you�re craving, and crossing cats with dragons. Because at the end of the day, finding balance keeps you feeling snazzier than the emoji of the dancing lady in red. Balance what you eat and drink with what you do. That�s how you Mixify.

Hashtag Realtalk? A balance wingman? A little tricky? Actually, it's not tricky at all. Don't drink soda. It's not tricky to me, that is, but I take it Coke and Pepsi are trying to trick teach tricks to people who are not me. And maybe those kids will love Trevor Noah.

"Why don�t they get a life and talk about something else? People deserve better."

From a list in Politico titled "Harry Reid�s insults: 10 greatest hits." That headline makes it sound as though he was some sort of master of the insult, perhaps not an Oscar Wilde, but at least a Don Rickles. But the closest he comes to saying anything striking/offbeat is...

When [George W.] Bush invited Reid for coffee in the Oval Office in the final weeks of his presidency, the president�s dog walked in, and Reid says he insulted the president�s pet. �Your dog is fat,� he said.

Also, this one isn't an insult per se...

�[Reid] was wowed by Obama�s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama � a �light-skinned� African-American �with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.��

... or not an insult to Obama anyway. It is an insult to Americans in general and it's a hurtful statement indirectly aimed at black people.

People do deserve better. 

The NYT accuses Scott Walker of changing his accent!

The article, "For 2016 Run, Scott Walker Washes �Wiscahnsin� Out of His Mouth," by Patrick Healy, includes a short video, which supposedly proves the point:

Out on the presidential campaign trail, Gov. Scott Walker has left �Wiscahnsin� back home in Wisconsin. He now wants to strengthen the economy, not the �ecahnahmy.� And while he once had the �ahnor� of meeting fellow Republicans, he told one group here this week that he simply enjoyed �talkin� with y�all.�

The classic Upper Midwest accent � nasal and full of flat a�s � is one of several Walker trademarks to have fallen away this month after an intense period of strategizing and coaching designed to help Mr. Walker capitalize on his popularity in early polls and show that he is not some provincial politician out of his depth.

Is he changing his accent? I'm skeptical. I've lived in Wisconsin for 30 years, and what strikes me is that people outside of Wisconsin, when they hear about Wisconsin, get cranked up and start imitating an accent they believe is a Wisconsin accent. They especially love to say the word "Wisconsin" in their idea of a Wisconsin accent. I don't have a Wisconsin accent myself � I'm from Delaware. The main thing I notice about Wisconsin people saying the word "Wisconsin" is that they make the syllable break after the "Wi." The imitators never seem to get that right. It's wi-SCON-sin. That's the important part. Not the part where you get all weird about the "o."

I had to laugh when I read the end of the article. The NYT quotes a woman named Jennifer Horn, the chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, who wasn't really opining that Walker had changed his accent, only that she didn't hear whatever accent the questioner had asked her about � perhaps by doing that outsider's version of the Wisconsin accent that I've heard so many times over the years:

And at the dinner, as well as in his Concord speech, his Wisconsin honk was noticeably absent.

�I didn�t hear it,� Ms. Horn said. �Good for him, good for him.�

They asked a Horn about a honk.

Anyway, is Walker trying to modify his accent in order to appeal to America at large? It appropriate and competent of him to be working with speech coaches, but should they be taking the edge off his accent and is that, in fact, happening?