Is “Liz Warren” how you say “affirmative action” in Cherokee?
When the “Faux-cahontas” story first broke, I looked at it mostly as a laugh line — a truth-stretching liberal hoist on the left’s identity-politics petard.
And as comedy, Liz Warren’s campaign continues to be a knee-slapper. She listed herself as a Native American — based on a possible 1/32nd of Cherokee ancestry — because, she told the Boston Herald, she was hoping “it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon.”
Sorry, Liz, but the Occupods are wrong. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.
Beyond the comedy, however, are some seriously disturbing facts, reported by Paul Bedard in the Washington Examiner. He notes that Warren’s decision to check the “Native American” box on her academic credentials “likely played a role in her Harvard hiring.”
It’s true that Warren inexplicably stopped touting her Native American roots once she got to Cambridge (not the sort of Indians she wanted to have lunch with, I suppose). But once she was hired, Harvard repeatedly bragged about her minority standing.
Could it be that Warren’s years of sending self-promoting smoke signals helped her hunt down a cushy Harvard job?
As evidence, Bedard notes that, during the time she was at Harvard Law, only one of the approximately 100 professors and assistant professors hadn’t graduated from a Top 10 law school. Who?
Wahoo. As in “Wahoo” Warren. Her degree was from Rutgers Law, ranked 82nd by Top-Law-Schools.com.
Bedard then expanded the search to all Ivy League law schools. Did any of the 350 or so law professors have a degree less prestigious than “Dances With Truths?”
Just one. “A Yale professor who attended the University of Nebraska Law School, ranked 89,” Bedard reports.
Snagging a Harvard Law gig with such a mediocre curriculum vitae — and no preferential treatment? Wow — a woman this lucky should open a casino!
People at Harvard Law School deny Warren benefited from any affirmative action, of course. Unfortunately these are the same Harvard hacks who boasted about Warren’s contribution to faculty “diversity” when Harvard Law was under fire a few years ago.
Who knows what really happened. At this point, we don’t even know for sure if Cherokee Warren’s newly-discovered great-great-great-grandmother was actually a Native American.
All we can do is take Warren at her word that claiming standing as a member of an ethnic minority was merely an excuse to meet new people (think “TeePeeHarmony.Com”) and had nothing to do with academia’s elevation of identity politics.
In other words, even if we lived in a day when Elizabeth Warren would have suffered occupational discrimination for being a Native American, she would have spent her career making the same claims.
If you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront sacred burial grounds in Oklahoma to sell you . . .
On Fox News Channel yesterday, Megyn Kelly asked me if this story was relevant and why. I told her the fact that the Democrats’ hand-picked candidate is sinking in deep-blue Massachusetts shows it’s relevant.
And the reason her story resonates isn’t simply because she tried to pass off some political peyote as the real deal. It hits a nerve with the many working Americans who know what it’s like to fight for a desperately-needed job, aware that their lack of any special standing could mean that a job they’re qualified for could end up going to someone else.
Like with Martha Coakley in 2009, the whiff of liberal entitlement is in the air, and voters don’t like it.
Sorry, Princess IsItFall–Yet. This time, you have to earn it.
Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
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