Friday, June 01, 2012

Boston Glib 1 and 2

Well past time to call the Boston Herald and Globe on their risible failure to make and maintain Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage as even an issue, much less a scandal...

I had expected at least the two self-appointed media commentators — Dave Bernstein and Dan Kennedy — to haul out and use their big shame sticks. Instead, each has mentioned the manufactured mishigas in passing, without calling out the dailies. They in fact clearly enjoy that there's competition in crap production, feigning each jolt of the chest paddles keeping this critter alive is a scoop and actual news.

This is where analysts and columnists should have hooted and stepped up, or at least done their jobs.The Herald pored over Warren and the best they could do was this whiff. Even this was secondary at closest. Harvard Law had claimed on a listing that among their almost entirely white, male faculty, she was one a few who showed a tiny bit of diversity. There was no getting hired, promoted or tenured by falsely leveraging minority status.

The puerile reaction by the Globe (or Glib in this case) was to waste investigative days trying to prove they could do it better. They couldn't and didn't. They ended up with minor wrinkles, a waste of all our time, and doing incumbent Sen. Scott Brown a huge, long-lasting favor.

To their shame, Warren's people utterly failed to keep the focus on Brown. We here know him as a formerly ineffectual, ho-hum state legislator. As a U.S. Senator fill-in, his votes have been antithetical to the needs of the commonwealth and the nation. All of that was lost as Warren was calm and reasonable in the face of absurdist theater.

Now while I like Warren, I have yet to forgive her for marginalizing other Dem candidates, including in particular the last standing, Marisa DeFranco. She has not attended public forums and other such events and coming into this week's party convention has not debated DeFranco. Warren, for Socrates' sake, earned her college scholarship in debate. She owns a room when she speaks. She seemed afraid to legitimize any other Dems' candidacies.

That has nothing to do with the failure of our two bigger dailies. They blew it and for the wrong reasons. They have enabled Brown to hide from his dreadful Senate record and disastrous positions. I call shame.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not so sure if Ms. Warren is out of the woods, so to speak. I read the Native American Tribe is quite incensed that she claimed to have some Cherokee Blood in her ancestry in order to boost her placement (with a minority status) to enter Harvard.
Today, she had to answer the statement she made " I was the first breast-feeding mother that took the bar exam." The paper blasted her for that comment saying she could never prove it. Women were taking the Bar Exam since the late 1800's. Ms. Warren had her aide address the comment and it was a vanilla comment. I was a supporter for Ms.Warren, albeit she came so quickly into the race and was immediately the American Idol. I came later and had doubts but jumped on the bandwagon. I heard that her speeches were great and everyone who was anyone in Boston loved her. I wasn't jazzed yet. Then the ancestry story broke, and I decided, she wasn't for me. Scott was already played out and I knew too much about his social games in the late 70's/ early 80's.
As far as Marisa De Franco, really?
Just because one gets signatures, doesn't make them a Senator. I guess I will write in a name. That's the challenging part.

Anonymous said...

Here's a pretty funny rebuttal video to Mr. Brown who thinks he owns all trucks:
http://vimeo.com/42733370