Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apparently decided her Bronx accent needed a vacation and swapped it out for a southern drawl while speaking at a rally in Memphis, Tennessee. As Trending Politics reported, the congresswoman from New York was stumping for State Rep. Justin Pearson, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen in Tennessee's newly drawn 9th Congressional District, when things got linguistically adventurous.
"We cannot afford to leave Tennessee behind," AOC told the crowd, and listeners noticed the word "behind" came out with a bit of a twang that would make Dolly Parton raise an eyebrow. Then she kept going. "We cannot afford to leave Kentucky behind, Alabama behind, Mississippi behind, Georgia behind." With each state, the accent reportedly got thicker, like she was absorbing regional dialects through osmosis in real time. By the time she reached South Carolina, the transformation was apparently complete.
The internet, as you might expect, was not going to let this slide. Social media users had a field day, with the clip going viral after being posted by the account Western Lensman on X. The comparisons to former Vice President Kamala Harris came fast and furious, because Harris made something of a habit out of this exact move during her political career.
Harris famously deployed a southern accent while campaigning in Georgia and once channeled her inner revival preacher while talking about organized labor. "You betta thank a union member for sick leave. You betta thank a union member for paid leave. You betta thank a union member for vacation time," Harris told a crowd, despite having grown up in Canada as the child of wealthy parents of Jamaican and Indian heritage. That is quite a geographic journey to arrive at a southern church cadence, but politicians are nothing if not versatile.
AOC herself has a bit of a track record when it comes to accent exploration. She has previously shifted into preacher mode when speaking at church events on more than one occasion, which suggests she keeps a rotating wardrobe of vocal stylings for different venues. At a rally last year during her "Fight Oligarchy" tour, she yelled, "Donald Trump is a criminal who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of fraud, liable for sexual abuse, of course he's lying and abusing and manipulating the stock market too. When he talks about rapists and criminals, he should look in the mirror!"
There is something almost admirable about the confidence it takes to roll into Memphis from the Bronx and just start talking like you grew up on sweet tea and front porch conversations. Most people can barely pull off a convincing accent at a dinner party without getting roasted. AOC did it at a political rally in front of cameras, knowing full well the internet exists. That is either supreme confidence or a complete disregard for the existence of video evidence. Either way, the clips are out there now, and they are not going anywhere.
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