Harvard’s ‘Populist’
30th April 2012
There’s a reason why most would-be politicians start by running for lesser offices, as Massachusetts Democrats are finding to their chagrin this spring, as their anointed US Senate candidate springs one unpleasant surprise after another.
The Warren campaign is becoming an excellent illustration of the Cerberus-like combination of government, academia, and the media that Mencius Moldbug used to call The Cathedral.
Last week, news broke that Harvard Law had cited Warren as a minority hire — a Native American — when it was under criticism for lack of faculty diversity in 1996. Asked Friday for proof of her Indian ancestry, Warren’s said it’s part of her family “lore.”
Of course, one must be a member of a fashionable minority if possible. Don’t bother us with pesky facts.
Better a Native American than a ‘white Hispanic’, presumably.
When the campaign began, The Boston Globe saluted Warren for her “rise from poverty” as a child in Oklahoma City. Since then, as the truth has trickled out, the narrative has evolved. Goodbye poverty, hello to “the jagged edge of the middle class.”
We’ve learned that, by 1965, Elizabeth’s family had three cars, including a white MG that the hard-scrabble Native American drove daily to her tony high school. Still, the Globe insisted, the MG was “beat up.”
Well, that’s all right, then. That surely qualifies as Working Class. Don’t bother us with pesky facts.
Last Friday, she released four years of tax returns. Over those four years, Warren and her husband, another Harvard Law prof, averaged $300,000 more than Sen. Brown and his spouse, a TV anchor. In 2009, the Warrens made $981,000 vs. the Browns’ $249,000.
Even the Globe had to admit that Warren was “in the top 1 percent of earners” — ironic, considering her bragging that she provided the “intellectual foundations” of Occupy Wall Street.
Hey, it doesn’t matter who you really are, what matters is who you want to be. Don’t bother us with pesky facts.