Dear
Dr. Bones,
I believe, sir, that we may now reasonably conclude that the goodvolks who cannot give Her Beatitude any useful advice about the New Iceland political mosquitoes, neither the
Herald of Louisedayhicksville in particular nor
los manos de Orloc con Peter Lorre, "the Fingers of Fehrnstrom," in general, foregather in that
tiny closet of a smoke-and-mirrors-filled room at the back of the
Blue Class Group hospitality suite.
St. Elisabeth of H*rv*rdy does not care to talk about [expletive deleted] any more.
The fine
fleur bleu de la noblesse harvardienne, for
their part, have grown weary of
talking about why the [exp. del.] is not worth talking about,
From Media Thru Pols, Enough Warren Muck
massmarrier | Sun, May 27, 2012 2:06 PM EST
A companion piece to my "thought experiment" post (see below). promoted by david
Let’s not even pretend that Elizabeth Warren’s repeating family anecdotes about having Cherokee ancestors is important, substantive in the race for US Senate.
What it does illustrate includes:
* First the Boston Herald, dogged closely by the Globe, have been shamelessly puerile in sensationalism over reason and perspective.
* Incumbent Sen. Scott Brown delights in screaming about moot trivialities
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That’s enough of that to give the general idea. Unlike kiddie selfservatives, I fear this crew are definitely
not "cuter when they get mad." But decide for yourself.
Right now, though, please file that one away for your graduate students to dissect at their leisure, and let us move on to (below) where The Great Thought Experiment Post of future biographers, both auto- and hetero-, awaits us:
A thought experiment for a Sunday evening
david | Sun, May 27, 2012 8:58 PM EST
Imagine, if you will, that right after the Herald first reported that a spokesman for Harvard had, in 1996, identified Elizabeth Warren as Native American, she had released a statement along the following lines:
(( provisional snip ))
Would that have ended the story? Probably, I’d say – in any event, it strikes me as a near certainty that there would have been nothing like the media frenzy we’ve seen over the last few weeks. If that’s the case, then this whole sorry episode says a great deal more about the peculiar relationship between campaign operations and the media than it does about anything else.
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Now before the Muses or yourself hastily complain "It’s all there but the Great Thought Experiment," let me explain that I think you ought to be allowed to play this parlour game for yourselves before you learn how your crash-certified [1] Zeppelin Pilot goes about her job. Feel free to write out your own pscenario of what the little lady should have done instead.
Moreover, to leave the G. Th. E. out (temporarily) allows us to confirm--¡not that we venture to doubt!--the Master’s dictum that Form trumps matter.
Speaking of ‘form’, observe that His Worship must either be a sound Peripatetic or a skillful impersonator, to object thus
formaliter to the doings of the LDHV
Herald and
The Globe of Gotham City. The minion quoted above would have been content if both our hometown-out-of-Boston fishwraps had just pronounced the [exp. del.] unprintable. Or even better, just not have printed it without apology or explanation.
¡His Worship knows a trick worth three of that! (I think he does, anyway--Paddy and Eye have omitted to actually read the precious treasure so far too). The thing to do (we guess) is have the fishwrap community present the [exp. del.] without fear or favour, but in such a way,
tali in formâ ut omnes ... ... that everybody sees what Shinola it is, really.
Naturally no self-respecting out-of-town hometown-media Corporation is likely to allow Herself to be dictated to by a mere New Iceland boondocker, not even when he is a H*rv*rd. ¡And an Esq. to boot!
Realizing as much, His Worship proposes that the august client do it for Herself, and then trust that one or both of the troublemakers will reprint Her Beatitude’s remaks in full, and *then* hope that the Elizabethan-cum-Davidic self-portrayal sufficiently eclipses whatever tawdry frame the Jay School ratfinks decide to mount it in.
If you think that all that trusting and hoping sounds a little feeble, well, remember that this is after all a political Zeppelin
CRASH that we are talking about.
And now, with no further ahoo, I give you the
faux-Thucydidean speech ‘crafted’ by Parry Mason, Q. C., for Her Beatitude of H*rv*rdy, on the occasion of Her Majesty’s impeachment before the Tribunal of Pub. Op.:
Like many kids who were born and raised in Oklahoma, I grew up thinking that I was part Native American. I can’t prove it the way I would prove a case in court, but my mother and grandmother told me that it was true. I believed them then, and I believe them now. It has been part of my family’s story for as long as I can remember.
It never occurred to me that my heritage might translate into some sort of “advantage” for me. For example, I did not note my heritage on my applications to college or law school, nor have I ever portrayed myself as Native American when applying for jobs. I believe that I have always been employed based on the quality of my work, and the record fully supports my belief. With respect to my employment at Harvard, the subject of my heritage simply never came up during the many employment-related conversations I had over several years with various members of the Harvard Law School faculty, student body, and administration. I never raised it, nor did any of them.
In 1986, while I was teaching at the University of Texas Law School, I began to self-identify as part Native American in a directory of legal academics known as the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) desk book. I did so because (a) I believed it to be true, based on what my family had told me, and (b) I thought that students and other faculty members might find the information to be of interest. A number of years later, however, as I learned more about the issues surrounding minority women on law school faculties, I stopped doing so. I concluded that, as my own Native American heritage was fairly distant and was based on family lore, my AALS listing seemed out of place with those of women (and men) whose lives had been more directly affected by discrimination and other contemporary issues relating to minority communities.
Of course, I have no control over what spokespeople for Harvard say, and questions about statements by them should be directed to the appropriate offices at Harvard. I would simply note that, at the time I was offered tenure at Harvard but rejected it in 1993, and at the time I accepted it in 1995, there is no record of Harvard or anyone else referring to my heritage. Especially given the intense scrutiny Harvard Law School was under at that time regarding the lack of minority women on its faculty, it is inconceivable that, had I been thought to be a “minority woman,” there would have been no public statement to that effect at the time I became a tenured member of the faculty. Yet the earliest such statement of which I am aware – the one reported by the Boston Herald – dates from October of 1996, over a year later.
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Hmm. "Number of words: 403 / Number of Unwrapped Lines: 4. Number of characters (non-space) : 2185" plus, just for fun, ¿how about we . . . ?
Looks like A. C., Artificial Criticism, still is rather a wish than an accomplishment.
Meanwhile, back at the hanger, merely organic criticism is feeling grumpy enough to be petty and wish His Worship would not put shudder-quotes around words like ´advantage’ in the above when they are used in their strict dictionary sense. I daresay the way whightists have carried on about Her Beatitude's supposed affirmative advantages in life make His Worship want to shudder, but that is not the same thing as them somehow abusin’ the pitiful helpless A-word. If H. W. intended to convey something like "¿And who, pray, are you whightists to be pooh-poohin’ advantages?" (as Paddy and Eye would guess he probably did), then the sneer should be spelled out in full, not loaded onto the backs of two very underweight burros of punctuation.
Happy days.
--JHM
¡Oops, we almost forgot!
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[1] At the time of certification, the candidate was at the
left front rudder of the "Senator Coakley."
ADDENDUMB.
The happily surnamed Party Neocomradess (ninth grade) Ch. X. McConville has thrown
the latest smallpox blanket at our Ms. Lizzie in,
¿dónde más?, the much-esteemed, _mnogouvazháyemnye_, columns an’ e-columns of the LDHV _Herald_:
ELIZABETH WARREN STAYS MUM ON HERITAGE, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
A day after closing doors on a Herald reporter’s questions, Elizabeth Warren and her campaign yesterday declined to answer questions about her purported Native American heritage and whether she supports affirmative action, instead issuing the same statement they have released whenever questioned about her minority claims.
“There are real issues middle class families are dealing with every day and that’s where Elizabeth is focused,” Warren spokeswoman Alethea Harney told the Herald. “It’s time to focus on the important issues facing Massachusetts. Republican Sen. Scott Brown is trying to distract people from his voting record for Wall Street, big oil and big increases in student loans.”
Brown spokesman Colin Reed said, “Our advice is to just tell the truth. It never looks good when candidates are running from reporters.”
Boston University political historian Thomas Whalen said Warren, in refusing to answer tough questions, is doing what scores of other politicians have done. “She’s playing a basic political game here. When dealing with a controversy, you ignore it all together.”
The Warren campaign did not respond yesterday to Herald questions about the candidate’s own claims of minority status, whether Warren supports minority preferences in higher education and employment and whether those preferences should be granted to people who lack documented minority status and lack a background of hardship related to minority status.
Critics have questioned whether Warren benefited by listing herself as a minority in professional directories, something she and universities that hired her have denied, though Harvard Law School and the University of Pennsylvania touted her as an example of faculty diversity. Warren has been unable to produce any documentation of Native American heritage.
“She is proud of her family and her heritage, and it is something that her family talked about often when she was growing up,” Harney said. “The people who recruited her have made it clear it was because of her extraordinary skill as a teacher and a groundbreaking scholar.”
On Saturday, Warren and Middleton immigration lawyer Marisa DeFranco will compete for the official endorsement from the state Democratic Party.
Warren is heavily favored, but DeFranco is seen as likely to win the 15 percent needed to force a primary.
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The
second-latest smallpox blanket comes whight from the keyboard of Party Neocomradess (sixth grade) H. X. Robichaud, whose precious contribution is, oddly, classified as opinion rather than news by the op-ed freedame’s Employin’ Corporation:
DEM MUTINY COULD SINK ELIZABETH WARREN’S RUN
Could there be mutiny occurring within the Massachusetts Democratic Party? The sentiment of discontent is not happening on John “Anchors Aweigh” Kerry’s yacht, Isabella. It is within the rank and file.
Next weekend, commonwealth Democrats are holding their annual state convention. It will be a gathering of moonbats wearing Birkenstocks and socks, union payroll patriots and limousine liberals. Although Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren is their anointed candidate to take on U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, state Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh is predicting that Marisa DeFranco, a Boston immigration lawyer with a mere 1200 Facebook friends, is going to get 15 percent of the delegates, allowing her to be on the September ballot. That means Sitting Duck Warren will have to face a primary.
This is contrary to the strategy deployed last fall when Democratic challengers such as Mayor Setti Warren and Alan Khazei had a mysterious change of heart and thus quickly dropped out of the race. Khazei has to be kicking himself around the block for quitting the race so early and clearly missing the Native American bundler in his opposition research.
By allowing DeFranco on the ballot, does that mean Democrats think that Lieawatha is a flawed candidate? Have Democratic leaders lost control of their party? Or is this their backup plan in case October’s hot Halloween costume is a Democratic Senate candidate, complete with Indian headdress?
Certainly, delegates defecting to DeFranco would be thumbing their collective noses at Democratic party leaders, who have been plotting for months to give Lizzy a direct shot at our hometown hero, Brown.
As an advocate for more transparency within financial institutions, how does Lizzy avoid debating DeFranco? It should happen, unless she speaks with a forked tongue.
Having a Plan B might be a good idea for the Democrats, because Lizzy is more flawed as a candidate than Marsha Coakley.
Don’t take my word on it. Take President Obama’s. Last summer, Obama refused to nominate Fauxcahontas to head up the new Consumer Federal Protection Bureau. She was sidelined for Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. Maybe if she hadn’t deleted the reference to her phony Native American status, Obama would have chosen her.
As Vice President Joe Biden would say, Lizzy being snubbed is a “big (expletive) deal.” She dreamed up the consumer agency and built it. The White House’s reason for failing to nominate Fauxcahontas is due to a belief she could not get confirmed by the Senate. Maybe we now know why.
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(( To ‘sink’ Her Beatitude’s ‘run’ could be kinda fun, in the octupus-swansong manner. But to qualify, it would have to have been perpetrated by a conscious stylist and swiftspoofer rather than by a frathouse babe or Jay School headline editor. ))
Now the point, Dr. Bones, of all this ‘borrowing’ on a scale Paddy Plagiarist and Eye do not often resort to, is as simple as this:
A. Readability Consensus (for the Pseudo-Warren)
Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text:
Grade Level: 13
Reading Level: difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 18-19 yrs. old (college level entry)
B. Readability Consensus (for Ch. X. McConville)
Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text:
Grade Level: 11
Reading Level: difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 15-17 yrs. old (Tenth to Eleventh graders)
C. Readability Consensus (for Mme. la baronne de Robichaud)
Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text:
Grade Level: 14
Reading Level: difficult to read.
Reader's Age: 21-22 yrs. old (college level)
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