« previous post | next post »

Justin Sink, "Santorum denies making a racial comment on welfare", The Hill 1/5/12:

Iowa runner-up Rick Santorum said Thursday that he would be "a much bigger player" than expected in the New Hampshire primary and denied saying that he didn't want "to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."

Santorum allegedly made the controversial comments when discussing welfare in an interview Wednesday night with Fox News, but he maintained that people misheard the word "black" when he stumbled on a word.

“I looked at that, and I didn't say that. If you look at it, what I started to say is a word and then sort of changed and it sort of — blah — came out. And people said I said ‘black.’ I didn't," Santorum said.

Here's the passage in question:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Santorum: They're just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you

dependent upon them so they can get your vote.

That's what the bottom line is. I don't want

to- to make

((black)) people's lives better by giving them

somebody else's money —

I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money Audience: Right. Santorum: and provide for themselves and their families.

Here's how Senator Santorum explained himself to Bill O'Reilly:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Santorum : I- I looked at that

and I didn't say that.

Uh if you look at it what I- what I started to say is a word and it sort of changed and it sort of bleugh came out and

people said I said "black", I didn't. No one in that audience

and I've talked to a lot of people … O'Reilly: No we looked at it, and it is a little blurry …

Here's a close-up of the phrase in question:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It is indeed "a little blurry" — in particular, the vowel seems closer to [ɑɪ] as in "Bligh" than to [æ] as in "black". Senator Santorum's explanation is also a little blurry — he tells us that "what I started to say is a word and it sort of changed", but he doesn't tell us what that word was.

One plausible theory is that he started to say "black" and used the vowel in "lives", as an ordinary sort of anticipatory speech error, perhaps enhanced by a sudden doubt about whether it was a good idea to bring race into the discussion. I don't see any other obvious source for the [bl] part of what he said. He offers "bleugh" (sp?) as a candidate, but that's not the sort of thing that we hear him sprinkling randomly through his stump speeches.

But when a public figure says something indistinct that might be interpreted in a politically damaging way, and then denies the damaging interpretation, it seems reasonable to give him the benefit of the doubt.

More coverage here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

Permalink