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An increasing number of Democrats seem to have a new Covid strategy: Do a one-eighty and hope everybody has hit their head and can’t remember what happened for the past nearly two years. Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is among them:

Miami Dolphins defensive end Robert Quinn lashed out at the media for not paying enough attention to his national anthem protests, which he said are supposed to shine a light on racial problems in America. “Y’all ignore it,” he said during a press conference Thursday, The Miami Herald reported. “Because when I gave my first message on trying to bring unity, y’all swept it under the rug.” Mr. Quinn has been raising a fist during the national anthem since he joined the Dolphins in the offseason. The Miami Herald suggested that kneeling during the anthem in protest is “radioactive to...

A D.C. lawmaker responded to a brief snowfall Friday by publishing a video in which he espoused a conspiracy theory that Jewish financiers control the weather. D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) posted the video to his official Facebook page at 7:21 a.m. as snow flurries were hitting the nation’s capital. The video, shot through the windshield of a car driving west on Interstate 695 through downtown Washington, shows snowy skies while White narrates. “Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” he...

Vice President Joe Biden has clarified a comment he made earlier today in which he said presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney would "put you all back in chains" by unshackling Wall Street. "And I'm told when I made that comment earlier today in Danville, Virginia, the Romney Campaign put out a Tweet, you know Tweets, and went on the air, went on the airwaves saying 'Biden's outrageous in saying that - I think I said, instead of unshackled, unchained or - anyway, outrageous to say that, that's what we meant. I'm using their own words. I got a message for...

The Southern Accent: We're Losing It By Rob Marus The Moose Is Loose Have you ever noticed that people in our generation seem to be losing their Southern accents? "Hold on," most of y'all are now thinking, "I haven't noticed any lack of Delta drawls or backwoods twangs here at Rhodes." But stop for a second and listen very closely to the inflections of your peers. Now compare their accents with, say, your father's (or, if you're from the North, your roommate's father's). See the difference? And his accent is even a little milder than your grandmother's, isn't it? She...

Not to be outdone by Ebonics in California, the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools is requesting billions of federal dollars to teach "Y'allbonics" in all classrooms south of the Mason-Dixon line. Included here are some samples of "Y'allbonics." If you do not understand any of them, contact a Southerner for an explanation. HEIDI: (noun) Greeting. HIRE YEW: (complete sentence) Remainder of greeting. Usage: "Heidi, hire yew?" BARD: (verb) Past tense of the infinitive "to borrow." Usage: "My brother bard my pickup truck." JAWJUH: (noun) The state north of Florida. Capital is Lanner. Usage: "My brother from Jawjuh bard my...

Michael Stravato for The New York Times John O. Greer is an architecture teacher at Texas A&M University. But when a couple of researchers sat down and talked with him recently, they were less interested in what he said than in how he said it. COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — "Are yew jus' tryin' to git me to talk, is that the ah-deah?" That was the idea. John O. Greer, an architecture teacher at Texas A&M University, sat at his dining table between two interrogators and their tape recorder. They had precisely 258 questions for him. But it waddn what...

New Southerners are more likely to pick up the accent than to change it. Could America's mouth be heading south? Depends on who's talking. About 40 percent of the nation's population will be living in 16 Southern states by 2030, many of them Northern transplants, the U.S. Census Bureau predicts. Those in-migrants are unlikely to eradicate Southern speech, according to Dennis Preston, professor of linguistics at Michigan State University. It's more likely that arrivals will end up speaking Southern, he says, especially after a few generations. "If anything, those newcomers would strengthen Southern norms rather than weaken them." This raises...

In a June appearance on NBC's Today Show, singer Marc Anthony made an unusual but, according to some linguists, not-so-surprising word choice. When co-host Matt Lauer asked Anthony how he'd spend the upcoming weekend, Anthony said, "Y'all know I don't talk about my personal life." A New York native of Puerto Rican descent using "y'all," a distinctly Southern term? Linguists Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery would say Anthony is exhibit A in a national trend that is spreading the uses of "y'all" beyond the South. The two, who teach at the University of Texas at San Antonio, wrote an article...

Students get lesson in how Americans talk from 'NewsHour' ex-anchor By Katie Humphrey AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Y'all better get ready because the Texas drawl is the future of American English -- at least according to journalist Robert MacNeil, who has spent many years studying and chronicling how Americans talk. Maybe it's because of country music or migration from north to south, but any way you look at it, the number of people speaking with a Southern dialect -- particularly "Texan" -- is on the rise, MacNeil told about 270 area high school students who gathered at...

Y'all are being discriminated against. Maybe I should say, "y'all" is. The discriminators are the editors of some of our nation's dictionaries. They ain't from here.For instance, Webster's New World College Dictionary, which I use at work, offers such helpful entries as "grossularite," "cootie," "gill fungus" and "a**hole."But no "y'all," y'all.Other dictionaries are equally snooty. So I wanted to see if "y'all" made it into the new, 11th edition of the popular Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, rolled out, officially, on Tuesday.Some 10,000 "new" terms impregnate this lexicological work of art, including "frankenfood": genetically engineered grub; "dead presidents": paper money; "longneck": beer...