"like a dog"

Over at Language Log Mark Liberman looks into where 'talk about me like a dog' might come from. He does this by (gasp!) actually looking at past usage of the phrase by people who aren't currently suspected of wanting to destroy America (I know. Research!).

But neither the sekrit muslin theory nor the hippie revival theory seems likely to be true. Even for those who haven't lived among people who use this expression, and don't know anybody they could ask about it, it's easy enough to do a quick check via Google Books. This would turn up, for example, this passage from Ebony in 1994:

In an interview, Bobby [Brown] say he is disgusted by the way he is portrayed in the media. 'The press has really destroyed my name," he says. "They don't know me and they talk about me like a dog. It's lies! they don't check sources. I just don't like the way they slander my name."

As one commenter says, kudos for finding a source that talks about not checking sources! Another, from Chicago, says "I heard that phrase plenty working in an office 40 blocks from Obama's former church on the South Side of Chicago. Definitely AA. It's always said in the same way too, with the emphasis on the last word which is drawn out."

And another makes this point:

The excerpts you pick seem to show it comes from African American vernacular. That should pretty much explain why conservatives have never heard this phrase before and believe it's some sort of anti-American reference (although to be fair, I've never heard it either).

Once, if the president used a phrase people weren't familiar with, we just sort of assumed it was a regionalism - New England elitist, maybe, but American. Now the go-to position is Yes, this is probably his Indonesian/Muslim early upbringing speaking. We are in trouble, aren't we?