OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – While being interviewed for a local NPR affiliate, tornado victim Dwight Lundgren caused outrage with his disregard for correct English. “I never seen a tornado like this before,” he said, looking at the empty lot where his two-bedroom house once stood.
Listeners flooded npr.org just moments after the interview aired with comments ranging from mild annoyance to rage. “Is this real?” one listener wrote. “I mean, does the guy even know about the present perfect? Sickening.”
Later in the interview, Lundgren expressed shock over the twister, which devastated much of the city and left more than twenty people dead. “This happened twice before,” he said, “and it was unconceivable that it happened again.”
The interviewer, thirty-six-year-old Rachel Hawking, can be heard whispering “inconceivable” while Lundgren goes on to explain how the tornado also destroyed his truck. “I ain’t got nothin’ else,” he added.
“What’s happened in Oklahoma with the tornados and so on is sad,” one NPR listener wrote. “But can’t these people at least try to not sound like caricatures of Okies? I know, I know. They lost their homes and all that, but still.”