Mugabe Tells Bush: ‘Yankee, Go Home’ (Doesn't He Sound Like a Redneck Southerner?)

Bahrain Tribune ^ | July 6, 2003 | DPA

[AveMaria]

Mugabe tells Bush: ‘Yankee, go home’

Harare: On the eve of US President George W. Bush’s visit to Africa where the Zimbabwean crisis is expected to be a dominant issue, President Robert Mugabe and his government turned up their abusive propaganda to new levels.

If Bush was coming here to “dictate” to Africa, “then we will say, go back home, Yankee,” the state-controlled Sunday Mail quoted Mugabe as saying.

Speaking at a ruling party rally in a remote rural area about 350 kilometres from the capital on Saturday, Mugabe also said that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair “should stand before the International Court of Justice to answer charges of genocide which they recently committed in Iraq.”

At the same time, the Sunday Mail, the regime’s major propaganda organ, kept up its week-long diatribe in advance of the American leader’s first visit to Africa, denouncing Bush as “the Texan gunslinger” whose visit was to “dangle the carrot of billions of American dollars to buy out the African leaders so that they can allow him to spread his stinking imperialistic wings.”

Recalling Mugabe’s advice to ruling party officials last week that the July 7-12 visit to five African nations “should not send tremors to your nerves,” the Sunday Mail said: “It really should not, because while Mr Bush has the resources, he doesn’t have the brains.” It repeated its assertion that US Secretary of State Colin Powell was “a liar” and a “house negro,” despite the US embassy in Harare protesting last week at the government’s use of “racist slurs.”

Both Bush and Powell have made it clear that the holding of new elections and the restoration of democracy in Zimbabwe will be a major part of their agenda on the trip, especially when they meet South African President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria on Wednesday.

[AveMaria]

Why are Yankees so disliked?

But in Bush's case, the term may not apply, because he is an adopted son of the South, despite having been born in Yankee Connecticut.

[Constitution Day]

AHEM.

[Alberta's Child]

If Bush was coming here to “dictate” to Africa, “then we will say, go back home, Yankee,” the state-controlled Sunday Mail quoted Mugabe as saying.

I agree with Mugabe on this one. Now give me and all my fellow taxpayers our $15 billion back, too.

[laotzu]

No, not the right sound at all.

More like some slack-wits impression of his toddler-mentality assumption that Foghorn Leghorn accurately represents the south.

[wimpycat]

Yeah, I saw this last night. He's nothing more than a flea. He's a third-world tinpot despot, nothing more. My husband said he's of concern because he could invite terrorists to use his country as a safe haven. I said if he did that he's even more stupid than I gave him credit for, because if he did that, we'd know about it, and it would be the very best way for him to invite the "Yankees" to go over there and crack him between our fingernails.

I make a distinction between Americans using the term Yankee and foreigners using it.

[reelfoot]

Didn't the "Yankees, go home!" expression originate in Latin America? It may have been picked up later by Southerners exasperated with greasy Northerners moving southward, but I don't believe its genesis lies in Dixie.

[AveMaria]

>>>greasy Northerners moving southward<<<

You mean carpetbaggers, right?

[wimpycat]

What does Fritz Hollings have to do with this?

[Constitution Day]

I make a distinction between Americans using the term Yankee and foreigners using it.

Good point, but Southerners don't like to be 'dictated' to either, and on that I have to agree with this monster... even a broken clock is right twice a day!

Yeah, that would be damned stupid for Mugabe to harbor terrorists, but, to belabor the obvious, he hasn't exhibited exactly sound reasoning so far, so I wouldn't be surprised at anything he did.

[sticker]

That's what we in Tennessee said to gore in 2000, Yankee Go Home

[reelfoot]

No. I believe "carpetbagger" is, strickly speaking, used to refer to the opportunistic crooks who invaded the South during "Reconstruction" following the War of Northern Agression. My memory may be faulty here, but I think I have read that "Yankee, go home" originated during a later imperialistic venture of the U.S. in Latin America.

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[XRdsRev]

I believe you are correct. To people around the world we are all Yankees which is a corruption of an 18th century Dutch term. During the American Revolution, the English styled all American Colonials as "Yankees" or "Doodles" regardless of whether they were from the north or south.

The use of Yankee during the War Between the States to denote people from north of the Mason Dixon line is a modern corruption of the term and bears little meaning to it's original use.

The term Yankee has over time carried with it the connotation of being industrious, rebellious and cunning in addition to some less flattering regional meanings. Currently in the southern United States it has a derisive meaning. In the northeast it is a term of pride and in the mid-Atlantic, mid-West and Western regions, it has very little use today. In the north, the counterterm to the use of "Yankee" as an insult, is "Redneck" which means backward and stupid. Niether term is generally used by polite company.