Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, a key factor in John Kerry's primary sweep and the primetime convention speaker tomorrow, has derided blacks, southerners and easterners as bad speakers because she couldn't understand them.
 In inflammatory columns for her local newspaper obtained by the Herald, the normally soft-spoken Vilsack tore into several minority and ethnic groups while lampooning non-midwesterners for regional dialects. ``I am fascinated at the way some African-Americans speak to each other in an English I struggle to understand, then switch to standard English when the situation requires,'' Vilsack wrote in a 1994 column in the Mount Pleasant News, while her husband, Tom, was a state senator.
Vilsack wrote that southerners seem to have ``slurred speech,'' wrote that she'd rather learn Polish than try to speak like people from New Jersey, and wrote that a West Virginian waitress once offered her friend a ``side saddle'' instead of a ``side salad.''
The future Iowa first lady seemed to be promoting English as the nation's official language, an issue that tripped up her husband, Gov. Tom Vilsack, with many Democrats.
A Kerry campaign spokesman dismissed the quotes as ``ancient clips'' and referred questions to the Democratic National Convention Committee. The DNCC wouldn't say whether the comments match the convention platform or theme.
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