Jive talkin'

Clif over at Sadly, No! tells us:

The “well-spoken and articulate” business is, I think, employed with a great deal of calculation by Romney and his ilk. The word “well-spoken” not so subtly reinforces the incorrect notion that most African Americans speak some crude dialect rather than English. And, although the phrase distances Obama from that stereotype, it nonetheless is intended to remind people that the “well-spoken” fella is is still one of a group that, the speaker suggests, are just too stupid and too shiftless to speak acceptable English. So even if he is “well-spoken,” he’s just as shiftless as the rest of them. Best (or worst) of all, when you call someone out on making this remark, they just clutch their pearls, like this putz, and say “My goodness, I was just trying to pay him a compliment!” It’s not a compliment any more than it would be a compliment to describe Obama as a “drug free man with a steady job and no criminal record who hasn’t abandoned his wife and kids.”

Point taken, though I think it's also worth remembering that this is the Party that gave us George W. Bush, so it may not be all that difficult to imagine that the concept of a leader who is "well-spoken and articulate" is, well, noteworthy.