Bellingham Herald Logo

Commentary: The Massachusetts senate race Indian War of 2012 | Bellingham Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Customer Service
    • Mobile & Apps
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Newsletters
    • News Tips
    • Share a Photo
  • Dealsaver

    • All News
    • Local
    • Crime
    • Databases
    • Northwest
    • Nation & World
    • Weird News
    • Local Elections
    • Videos
    • Galleries
    • Traffic Cams
    • Webcam
    • Reader Photos
    • Columnists
    • Rules of the Road
    • All Sports
    • Seahawks
    • Mariners
    • Outdoors
    • Colleges
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • All Business
    • National Business
    • All Entertainment
    • Calendar
    • Restaurants
    • Movie News & Reviews
    • Movie Showtimes
    • Celebrities
    • Comics
    • Puzzles & Games
    • Horoscopes
    • All Living
    • Celebrations
    • Food & Drink
    • Families
    • Primetime Seniors
    • All Opinion
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Local Obituaries
    • Submit an Obituary

  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Homes
  • Classifieds
  • Place An Ad
  • Mobile & Apps

Latest News

Commentary: The Massachusetts senate race Indian War of 2012

Mary Sanchez - The Kansas City Star

    ORDER REPRINT →

May 20, 2012 10:04 PM

The race for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts has taken a turn toward the absurd.

The contest pits two highly qualified candidates — Scott Brown, the incumbent, who made history by snatching Ted Kennedy’s seat away from the Democrats, and challenger Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor and whiz-kid of the Obama administration who created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

If any election could be counted on to maintain a high-minded tone and stick to important issues, it’s this one.

Instead, Topic A is Warren’s facial features — or, to be more specific, whether there is any way this woman could have had Cherokee ancestors, as she once claimed. Are her cheekbones high enough? The controversy has even earned Warren the epithet “Fauxcahontas.”

SIGN UP

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to The Bellingham Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

The Boston Herald kicked things off in late April by questioning whether Warren had inaccurately claimed minority status when she was hired by Harvard Law School. She has listed herself in the past in a directory of law professors as a Native American.

Warren, the charge goes, is an affirmative action poser. Yet Harvard Law School denies any minority hiring preference in relation to Warren, as does University of Pennsylvania, where she has also taught.

Nevertheless, the press keeps dredging up new “evidence” to keep this scandal alive. The latest is a cookbook. Seriously. Warren reportedly contributed five recipes to “Pow Wow Chow,” a collection of family cooking lore compiled by her cousin and published in 1984 by the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Okla. Under her byline, she’s listed as “Cherokee.”

It seems that Warren may be guilty of a crime millions of Americans routinely commit: claiming, with no actual proof, that some ancestor back in the misty past was a Cherokee. Many families perpetuate these myths, perhaps to make their humdrum antecedents seem more exotic, perhaps just to share in the romance of all things Indian.

From a campaign standpoint, Warren hasn’t done much to end this silly brouhaha. She ought to either offer documented proof of her lineage or fess up to indulging uncritically in family lore.

But that’s not what this is really about. It never is when people imply that someone isn’t really a “true” minority.

This is the coward’s way of smearing Warren as unqualified. Her critics are insinuating that she couldn’t possibly have been hired by Harvard on merit, and that calls into question her fitness to serve in the Senate.

Here’s the thing with Warren, though: Her list of accomplishments is very, very long. She came to national prominence as the highly effective chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). She oversaw the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Time has listed her twice as among the 100 most influential people. She’s written nine books. She is one of the foremost research experts on the financial difficulties of the middle class — a subject of some importance in these troubled times.

A November profile of Warren in Vanity Fair — titled “The Woman Who Knew Too Much” — details the way Warren managed to tick off politicians on both sides of the aisle. Financiers and heads of industry don’t like how she called them to account for their part in the Washington influence game — a system, she charges, in which politicians and plutocrats collude against the middle class for mutual benefit. Her zeal for reform makes career Democrats nervous, too, which is probably why the president declined to name her the head of the consumer board she birthed.

She’s still on the warpath. In the past few days, she has called for Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase to step down from the board of the New York Fed because of his bank’s recently revealed $2 billion losses on complex credit-default swap trades — you know, the kind of gambling that tanked our economy to begin with.

I don’t think it’s unfair to Scott Brown to say that Elizabeth Warren has done more to protect the citizens and the welfare of this country in the last four years than he will accomplish in his entire Senate career, however long the voters see fit to retain him.

And that’s why Brown is calling for Warren to release her Harvard personnel records. As a candidate, he’s outclassed. As a politician, he’s got a chance, and this is it.

  Comments  

Videos

Proposed “tree walk” would create a trail that soars to the sky in Canada

Tim Eyman under investigation in theft of chair from Lacey Office Depot

View More Video

Trending Stories

A Whatcom burger expansion, a cat cafe is coming and a move for Big Lots

February 16, 2019 05:00 AM

Weather offers a weekend reprieve, but here’s when to expect more snow

February 16, 2019 05:00 AM

Here’s what you need to know Friday as snowmageddon wraps up

February 15, 2019 05:24 AM

Storms closed Whatcom schools. So how much longer might the school year go?

February 15, 2019 05:00 AM

Storms left behind snowy, slippery sidewalks. Who’s responsible for clearing them?

February 15, 2019 05:00 AM

things to do

Read Next

Local

Weather offers a weekend reprieve, but here’s when to expect more snow

By Robert Mittendorf

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 16, 2019 05:00 AM

Sunny skies are expected Sunday with temperatures near 40 degrees — a welcome reprieve after a week of heavy snow and brutal arctic wind across lowland Whatcom County. But more snow is on the way, forecasters said.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to The Bellingham Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE LATEST NEWS

A Whatcom burger expansion, a cat cafe is coming and a move for Big Lots

Business

A Whatcom burger expansion, a cat cafe is coming and a move for Big Lots

February 16, 2019 05:00 AM

Latest News

Police searching for man suspected of shooting woman

February 16, 2019 01:17 PM

Latest News

Increased avalanche danger in Cascades

February 16, 2019 12:51 PM

Latest News

Community groups call for more scrutiny on Amazon deal

February 16, 2019 09:54 AM

Latest News

Petroleum terminal expands to allow more oil trains

February 16, 2019 07:05 AM

Latest News

Olympic Game Farm denies animal mistreatment

February 16, 2019 06:40 AM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Bellingham Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Subscriber Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Archives
Advertising
  • Information
  • Place a Classified
  • Place an Obituary
  • Place a Celebration
  • Local Deals
Copyright
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story