Shepard Smith on Fox News is a Southerner, and he makes no bones about it. He just said, “We still have some Southern civility here.” He refers to the South by its other name, God’s Country. He speaks fondly of the University of Mississippi Rebels.
Smith has no Southern “accent.” But on the air, Roger Mudd has no “accent” either. But in person, Mudd has a VERY Southern “accent.”
I put “accent” in quotes because WE don’t talk funny, THEY do. Right after Jimmy Carter won the election of 1976, Tennessee Ernie Ford said, “Finally we are going to have a president who doesn’t have an accent.”
Smith talks like a Southerner. He makes fast jokes and is entertaining. He makes you relax.
And I always suspect he knows a lot of things he’s not allowed to say.
#1 by Peter on 04/15/2005 - 8:00 pm
I wondered why, when I first came back East to the South, why no one on TV sounded Southern. What’s wrong with Southern, for Pete’s sake?
#2 by Bob on 04/18/2005 - 5:26 am
Jeff Foxworthy did get one thing right.
Executives told him he couldn’t succed because of his “Southern accent.” He said, “What in the hell are they talking about. A third of Americans talk this way.”
Southerners are cowardly about defending their own language and history, then they bitch about how they get insulted.
White workers are cowards about fighting “civil rights,” then they bitch about affirmative action.
Let an old man teach you some worldly wisdom:
Cowards ALWAYS get stepped on.
#3 by Elizabeth on 04/19/2005 - 1:22 pm
His is one of the three FoxNews programs I watch. (I watch Fox & Friends and Brit Hume’s show, too.)
It didn’t take me long to figure out that Shepard Smith is from the South. I had no idea how far south until I just happened to be watching his afternoon show (Studio B — 3pm Eastern) on his birthday a couple of years ago, and his parents called in. (FoxNews does this kind of thing to its anchors occasionally.)
Like other career anchors, he’s moved around a bit. Every so often, when he’s got a correspondent on the line, he’ll ask a question that only someone familiar with that area would ask.
Elizabeth