America just got exposure to a heretofore unfamiliar patois.
Fundi-baby voice.
We all have exposure to regional accents. James Carville has a Cajan accent. It isn't a "mistake." It is how people talk in some micro-communities in Louisiana.
We know the "Valley Girl" patois, a voice that drops in and out of vocal fry, that low rattle. There is a Black patois, used in some communities. I have heard people turn it on and off. Steve Harvey, a Black game show host, jokes about it. Holden Caulfield's language in Catcher in the Rye was a mid-century boarding school patois.
"Fundi-baby" is the current term for what we heard Thursday evening. I expect a new, more respectful term will emerge as people realize that Senator Katie Britt wasn't making a mistake. She was talking in the manner of a particular subculture, one that Trump is cultivating. She was talking in code to "her" people.
The Fundi-baby voice is the voice of a fundamentalist Christian mother-homemaker. The voice and manner communicates a woman's primary role as a person who bears children and teaches language and faith to them. It is a way to affirm stay-at-home moms living in traditional, pre-Betty Friedan, pre-feminist, pre-"women's liberation" America. That role and lifestyle is "old fashioned." There are more women in the workforce now than men, and it takes two incomes for most Americans to have a middle class lifestyle. The Fundi-baby voice is a way to show pride and solidarity with that group.
She needed to exaggerate to make her point. She is, after all, a U.S. senator, the very expression of a woman out in the "man's world" of economic and political power. She wanted to make sure that her team understood that, notwithstanding all that, she was still one of them, at home in the kitchen.
Fundi-baby voice is slow-paced, sing-song, child-like speech, exaggerated in its facial expressions and emotion. It is like baby talk, except as spoken to young children learning to read. Remember how you read a Dr. Seuss book to a pre-school child? It's weird when spoken to adults, but less weird if one considers American Sign Language. ASL interpreters use exaggerated facial expressions and big gestures. It is boldly expressive because people not fluent with ASL, and people at the back of the room, may need extra clarity. When Joe Biden spoke beside a barn in Iowa, this woman interpreted.
Kelly Johnson, the wife of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, spoke in Fundi-baby voice in a Fox interview. It was far less exaggerated than Senator Britt 's, but we heard it clearly. The interview on Fox was introduced by asking how she was holding up amid the media's "constant attacks on her family and her Christian faith."
I am not part of the Christian fundamentalist "bless your heart" subculture, but a great many American voters are. They deserve respect, even if I personally find it offputting. The past five days have seen an explosion of commentary mocking Katie Britt. Even religious conservatives realize she was over the top on Thursday, but Democrats need to be careful here. Fundi-baby voice is an expression of pride, of solidarity, and belonging in a disfavored group. Saturday Night Live mocked her. I laughed, too. I have decided that was impolite and wrong-headed. I wouldn't make fun of James Carville's patois and I shouldn't make fun of hers.
It is also impolitic. This may be a version of the "deplorable" gaff. Churchgoing, submissive stay-at-home mothers don't like being laughed at.
We are right to mock the Fundi Baby Voice. People that use or respond to that positively are intent on subverting your rights, your body, and dismantling democracy because they are convinced that they are both "better" than you and operating in the name of "God." They are crazed, scary, and deserve neither respect, support, or your vote. This is not an ethnic, or cultural, trait. This is a learned patois taught by men, to women, they would subjugate, as they would you and I and anyone else in their way. Think Gilead. Fight Back. Now.
I think we have probably moved on from the voice question now that everyone knows she was lying about a central anecdote. I grew up as fundamentalist as anyone, and I was going to say that lies were not a fundamentalist value before 2016, but thinking back over a lot of the sermons I heard, I may have been wrong about that.