Fox's Hill on Clinton's "Southern drawl": "[I]f she was attending, say, a GLAAD convention, would she speak with a lisp?"

On the March 6 edition of Fox News Live, while discussing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) March 4 speech and her participation in a commemorative civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, host E.D. Hill accused Clinton of affecting a "Southern drawl" during her speech and asked pollster Scott Rasmussen: "[W]ould it happen elsewhere, if she was attending, say, a GLAAD [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] convention, would she speak with a lisp?" Hill continued: "If she were attending a Hispanic convention, would she speak with a Spanish accent? Or if she were attending an African-American convention, would she start throwing out phrases -- you know 'Homies, here I am'?"

Hill also mocked a portion of Clinton's speech, in which Clinton quoted Rev. James Cleveland's hymn, "I don't feel noways tired." After airing that excerpt of Clinton's speech, Hill stated: "Well, I don't feel noways tired, neither" and asserted that "it did seem sort of strange to hear a Yankee affecting a Southern drawl." Hill did not mention that Clinton was quoting a hymn.

From the March 6 edition of Fox News Live:

HILL: Sen. Hillary Clinton became a New Yorker specifically to run for the Senate. Now, some wonder if she's trying to become a Southerner to run for president after a rather strange speech in Selma, Alabama. Take a listen.

CLINTON [video clip]: "I don't feel noways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me."

HILL: Well, I don't feel noways tired, neither. But it did seem sort of strange to hear a Yankee affecting a Southern drawl. So, does that help her or hurt her by turning off people?

On the phone now: Scott Rasmussen, independent pollster and the president of Rasmussen Reports. Welcome.

[...]

HILL: Well, I know that one of the raps has been that, despite a lot of people who like her, her negatives have always been high. Does this, for those people, simply reinforce it? Because, well, yes, she spent a lot of time in Arkansas -- I have never, ever, heard her speak regularly with a Southern drawl. I do recall when she was down at the Ann Richards memorial in Austin, Texas, all of a sudden she had a drawl again, but this just seems, you know -- as a Southerner, it just seemed odd.

RASMUSSEN: Sure, but you said it. The people that don't like her, this reinforces it. This is another reason to dislike her. This is another bit of evidence saying that she will do anything, she is shameless. She will do whatever it takes to win. And for those people that have the opposite view, that think she is a great leader, they're going to say this is another incident about right-wing conspiracy's blowing all up out of proportion and it means nothing. You know, she was just trying to connect with an audience. And so --

HILL: If she was attending, say, a GLAAD convention, would she speak with a lisp? If she were attending a Hispanic convention, would she speak with a Spanish accent? Or if she were attending an African-American convention, would she start throwing out phrases -- you know, "Homies, here I am"?

RASMUSSEN: Sure.

HILL: I mean -- you know -- is it OK to do the Southern thing, and not OK, then, to do these other things?

—J.M.