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In a Wednesday debate, which highlighted the vexed racial dynamics in which the Florida governor was, Andrew Gillum, Democratic candidate and mayor of Tallahassee, had the opportunity to quote his grandmother.
"My grandmother was saying," A rifle dog will howl, "and he yelled in this room," said Gillum, reacting to the defense mounted by his Republican opponent, Rep. Ron DeSantis, to the charge of racism.
It was a roundabout way of saying what he would say more directly 40 seconds later.
"I do not treat Mr. DeSantis as a racist," said Gillum, "I'm just saying racists believe he's racist."
Gillum unveiled her grandmother's words, along with the video of her delivery, in a tweet that had attracted more than 73,000 "likes" early Thursday morning.
The language comes from a nineteenth century proverb that an offended person would commit an offense. But that took on an extra, and now more common, meaning: This howling is not such a subtle proof of guilt. Gillum's grandmother seems to have conveyed the expanded interpretation.
By invoking the family saying, the Democratic mayor has quoted, by extension, the words of a failed lawyer and alcoholic who had found God during his struggle to stop drinking and had become a famous Methodist preacher at the end of the Nineteenth century.
Samuel Porter Jones, who was best known in the South but preached in New York and Los Angeles, and even in Canada, was one of the first to use the "watchdog" aphorism. During the waking ceremonies, he warned that alcohol, dance, theater, dime novels and baseball were sins. Nicknamed simply "Sam Jones", he was "humorous and brutal, strident and theatrical – not at all what many people expected from a preacher," according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
Born in Alabama in 1847, he spent most of his life in Georgia. Kathleen Minnix, her biographer, documented the case "Laughing in the corner of Amen: the life of evangelist Sam Jones". Jones promised his father, on his deathbed, that he would stop drinking, and he turned to religion. for support. The Methodist Episcopal Church in the South did not require formal training. After reading the books recommended by the bishops, he joined the North Georgia Conference in 1872 and rapidly expanded his preaching circuit.
According to the biography, he loved to make people feel bad. "As he liked to say, it's the dog – or the pig – that's screaming," wrote Minnix.
The first quotations from the proverb – originally mainly "the big dog always brave" – also testify to the geographic reach achieved by Jones.
In 1886, one of the News-Herald in Hillsboro, Ohio, contained a column chronicling an insult committed by the leader of a group of Tennessee singers during a religious service in southern Ohio.
"Maybe he was hitting me; Anyway, says Sam Jones, "the big dog always screams," wrote the author.
This adage is also published in "The Sam Jones Book: A Series of Sermons Collected and Edited under the Control of the Author", first published in 1887. "I am sailing you in your dramatic adventures, at the theater , playing cards, and dancing, and the city rises against me; but it's the winning dog that screams, you can say it, "he said in a sermon entitled" A New Creature in Christ ".
Already at the end of the 19th century, the words had taken on the additional meaning suggested by Gillum – this howl bore witness not only to the offense, but also to the guilt of the one who shouted it.
A writer from the South Carolina weekly, Anderson Intelligencer, claimed on December 3, 1891 that the newspaper had no excuses for making controversial statements in the previous week's edition. The newspaper regularly wrote humorous letters.
"It seems that two or three of our little jokes in last week's articles have been misinterpreted; but we have no excuse, because we believe with Sam Jones that "it's always" the big dog screams, "writes Lazy Lawrence, presumably a pseudonym.
The reference summarizes the approach taken by Gillum, who would be the first black governor of the state, to answer questions that were asked about his Republican opponent, who made statements and appeared at events widely perceived as stoking racial resentment.
In an interview with Fox News on Aug. 29, he described his opponent, Gillum, as "articulate" while arguing that his opponent's policy would hurt Florida, warning, "The last thing we need to do is complicate the situation by trying to socialist agenda with huge tax increases and state bankruptcy ".
The Washington Post revealed last month that DeSantis has been voiced four times at conferences organized by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a right-wing group that described its mission in a funding call launched in 1998: "We Let's fight the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values and disarm this country as it tries to defend itself in a time of terror. Horowitz said that African Americans owe their freedom to whites and that whites are the victims of "the only serious racial war".
While the moderator of the debate, Todd McDermott of the WPBF, enumerated Horowitz's statements, DeSantis became furious.
DeSantis called the line of questioning a "mccarthyite game," while McDermott persisted, citing Horowitz's inflammatory statements – "if blacks are oppressed in America, why is there no black exodus?" – and the approving statements of the candidate. At an event in 2015, he stated that he was a "great admirer of an organization that pulls right, that tells the truth to the American people and defends the right thing".
DeSantis, a three-term congressman, interrupted.
"How on earth am I supposed to know each of the statements made by someone?", Tonnait DeSantis, attracting audience attention from Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
"That's the market," he continued. "Let me just say this right now. You know, I lived my life, whether athletic, military, prosecutor, you know, when I was in Iraq, we worked together, regardless of race. We had the American flag on our arm. We wore the same uniform and fought for the country.
The crowd applauded by adding, "When I was a prosecutor, I stood up to defend the victims of all races, all colors and all beliefs. This is the only way to do it in our country. But he also promised not to "bow down to the altar of political correctness."
It was then that Gillum quoted his grandmother, suggesting that his opponent's defensive reaction was a sign of his guilt.
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