Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign has released a statement pushing back against incumbent opponent Scott Brown, who earlier today called on the Harvard Law professor to release her employment records to clear up ongoing questions about her professed Native American ancestry.
Warren and the mainstream press, however, ignored the substance of Brown’s charge and focused on a tangential statement responding to Warren’s latest explanation for her Pretendian claims:
Last week when pressed by reporters, Warren said she knows she has Native American ancestry because her mother told her so.
“My mom and dad have told me a lot of things too, but they’re not always true,” [Brown] said.
Warren’s response was swift and, predictably, outraged: “Scott Brown’s comments about my parents are totally out of line,” she asserted. “I resent him questioning their honesty. My mother and father are not here to defend themselves and should be off limits. Don and Pauline Herring are not fair game and Scott Brown should apologize.”
Well, isn’t that precious. The central pillar of Warren’s “proof” of ancestry–which she brought up herself–just happens to be one that cannot be contested, lest you insult her family.
First, we see the immediate jump to victimhood. “Not true” immediately becomes “intentionally lied.” There’s nothing in Brown’s words to suggest that her parents were not convinced, as Ms. Warren herself is, of the truth of their assumed Cherokee background. There’s less evidence there to interpret that he meant they deliberately hid the truth from her than that they passed on bad information out of ignorance.
And here’s where Warren’s latest round of statements enters Twilight Zone-level spin. Now that the conversation has shifted to who disclosed what in Harvard’s EEOC diversity reports, Warren has returned to touting Cherokee ancestry as an established fact. The spin is “I’m proud of my family” and “I’m proud of my heritage,” as though that “heritage” hasn’t been debunked in painstaking–even gruesome–detail. Sure, she lied at first about what she told Harvard after the school hired her, the logic goes, but that admission somehow erases from the record all the investigative reporting that proved the claim she gave Harvard was pure bunk.
It’s no secret Ms. Warren’s campaign is in dire straits. She needs any good press she can get, and a successful attack on Senator Brown is her best chance of swiveling that hot, hot spotlight off her pale face. But if we’re to get a sense of how the opinion of the left-leaning Massachusetts electorate might swing, let’s look over the charges each candidate faces.
Professor Warren: enjoyed the benefits of both white privilege and affirmative action, exploited tenuous family lore to pursue self-interest in much the same way she accuses corporations and financial institutions, lied to the press about each of the previous charges until federal documentation proved otherwise, then callously dismissed the complaints of verified Cherokee nation members.
Senator Brown: may have insinuated that, since zero proof exists for the 3.125% Cherokee blood Ms. Warren insists was divulged by her mother, Ms. Warren’s mother may have lied.
The verdict should be obvious to any progressive thinker. Warren, dogged by red herrings and distractions in this silly controversy, is finally restoring moral clarity to this race and refocusing on the issues important to Massachusetts–namely, “Don’t talk about my mommy that way!”
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