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You'd be surprised, pal. I know guys with Ph.Ds who sound like they just fell off a turnip truck.

Now, I fully concede that there are plenty Southerners who don't speak the Queen's English, but not all of them are rednecks (as you seem to believe). Some of them are Choctaw Indians, Vietnamese immigrants and African-Americans.

So, indulge me for a moment and tell me, if you were king of the world would these folks be prohibited from being anchormen just b/c you don't like Southern accents?

I will agree fully that the English language is being ripped apart by a diverse bunch in this country, and that applies to the UK & the rest of the English speaking world.

"So, indulge me for a moment and tell me, if you were king of the world would these folks be prohibited from being anchormen just b/c you don't like Southern accents?"

If I were the "king of the world" as you put it, Southern accents would not be a priority in light of the threats the world is confronting.

Now, I fully concede that there are plenty Southerners who don't speak the Queen's English, but not all of them are rednecks (as you seem to believe).

You are posting to the premier South-basher on FreeRepublic. He's from Bahstin, and he hate Southerners, I assure you from having read his spew before. You will conserve your energy and time by plonking his odious, and odiferous, drivel.

As for people speaking the Queen's English, H. L. Mencken and other scholars, paying attention to the known tendency of rural districts, especially isolated ones, toward linguistic conservativism, have announced from time to time that the so-called "hillbilly" inflection of the Appalachian and Ozark hollows is actually pretty much what Elizabethan and Jacobean English sounded like, before the 18th-century stage affectation of an actor named Beaumont swept upper-class English society and became the accent of today's Windsors, and the basis of the modern English accent.

Far from barely speaking English, those Ozarkers and "hillbillies" actually speak better English than the affectation-ridden BBC, if you get right down to it.