An Op-ed at The NY Times by Judy Bolton-Fasman tells you everything you need to know about how far Elizabeth Warren supporters will go to excuse Warren’s ethnic fraud, All My Mother’s Stories.
In the Op-ed, Bolton-Fasman concludes that the truth of the family lore doesn’t matter, what matters is the effect it had on Warren. This is in keeping with the narrative of the left-wing media about Warren in the face of near conclusive proof Warren has no actual Native American ancestry.
In the Op-ed, Bolton-Fasman relates how her own family lore told by her mother turned out to be fake, and she excuses Warren because Warren in good faith believed it as did Bolton-Fasman:
ONE of the more hotly contested issues in the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren has been Ms. Warren’s claim that her mother was part American Indian. Ms. Warren has only family lore to back up her claim, and Senator Brown, accusing her of opportunism, has demanded proof. But as Ms. Warren counters in her own ads: what kid asks her mother for documentation?
I can sympathize….
The stories were made up.
Am I in denial? Or worse, am I knowingly perpetrating a lie?
I don’t think so. And I don’t think the details of Elizabeth Warren’s story matter as much as the fact that the story has been perpetuated with well-intentioned conviction. It’s a family legend that has inspired her to identify with the dispossessed and work on behalf of the marginalized….
For my own history, I’ve found as solid and authoritative proof as any in my father’s 25th Yale University Reunion book, published in 1965. The thick hardback volume sat on our living room coffee table for years. In it my father reported that his much younger wife, the former Matilde Albuquerque, “is a descendant of the Duke of Albuquerque, and graduated from the University of Havana. She is an English and Spanish teacher, translator and singer, and active in aiding Cuban refugees.”
That’s all the confirmation anyone should need of the peripatetic family lore on which I was weaned. Elizabeth Warren says her parents eventually eloped because her father’s family disapproved of him marrying a woman with Native American blood. That’s all of the corroboration we should need from her too. When it comes to family lore, true and false are often beside the point.
Unlike Bolton-Fasman as to her supposed ancestry, Warren refuses even to admit that she has no Native American ancestry.
But there is a bigger problem Bolton-Fasman ignores: There is a mountain of evidence that Warren exaggerated or made up the family lore. In other words, it is not Warren’s parents who lied to her, it is Warren who is lying to us.
Bolton-Fasman ignores actual facts such as Warren not claiming Native American status until she was 38; Warren only claiming Native American status for employment purposes but never associating with Native Americans; Warren’s adult nephew describing the family lore as “rumor” in 2002; and documentary evidence substantially rebutting the existence of the family lore (not just the truth of it), including the supposed elopement.
In short, only a willfull disregard for evidence and truth can lead Warren supporters to excuse Warren’s conduct.
The truth does matter.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Ask yourself one question: what would the NY Times and the rest of liberal punditry, academia and intelligentsia say if this were about Sarah Palin having advanced her career based on spurious “family lore” of her Eskimo heritage.
Let your imagination do the rest.
One thing to “fudge the truth” in front of the kiddies, another thing to LIE on a college admission form to get preferential treatment.
In other words, it is not Warren’s parents who lied to her, it is Warren who is lying to us.
Exactamundo, Professor.
So she felt like an Indian?
Winning comment!
Yeah, she felt like one but never wanted to actually associate with any of them.
I wish you would submit a counter op-ed to the NYTImes. 🙂
Yes, Professor, please, submit a counter-part to the Times. Talk about how she changed her ethnic status from white, when she was at Rutgers and U. of Houston to Native American when she got to Penn and Harvard.
The NYT is in the business of helping Democrats get elected. The reason they published this op-ed is to excuse Warren’s long history of engaging in ethnic fraud to advance her career. It’s no more commplicated than that.
So, you’re basically asking Prof J to waste his time because there is no way they will publish his op-ed.
It never hurts to try.
The truth does matter.
That’s so quaint, Professor. It’s clear you don’t identify with liberals, who see “truth” as a means to an end. If the truth doesn’t fit into your world, change the “truth” to make it fit.
When it comes to the law (checkboxes on documents), family lore is beside the point.
This really seems to be the crux of the matter: does family lore trump the law, or the other way around?
Though I do like the precedent being set – I hope all Conservatives in Massachusetts will follow her lead and start checking that they are Native American+Black+. Because, after all, if she can invent family lore, and the legal system is OK with it, so can you.
…I hope all Conservatives in Massachusetts will follow her lead and start checking that they are Native American+Black+. Because, after all, if she can invent family lore, and the legal system is OK with it, so can you.
The start-up I worked for failed and my individual efforts have not yet blossomed. I may well qualify for food stamps, but I don’t apply as long as there is money in the bank.
No, I won’t follow Warren’s lead.
gs, you paid the taxes, you might as well get it back while you can.
1. Thanks for your concern, but my situation would take multiple off-topic paragraphs to describe. Suffice it to say that it’s serious but, heaven willing, with effort and luck, it won’t become critical.
2. Barry and Betty want an economy in which we try to grab each other’s taxes—with themselves doing the redistributing, of course.
3. Though I’m libertarian about drugs, these words by Nancy Reagan fit the case:
Just. Say. No.
In these perilous days, there is a TERRIBLE DANGER in someone who, confronted with FACTS, PROOFS, AND KNOWN DECEPTIONS, refuses to admit, apologize, take corrective measures, DO THE HONORABLE THING.
IS THIS THE KIND OF LEADER MASSACHUSETTS WANTS? Someone who, upon being shown WRONG, double-triples-quadriples down on falsehood and error?
What will this kind of person do when THE VITALITY OF THEIR STATE AND THE SURIVIVAL OF OUR NATION IS AT RISK?
And Radiofreeca’s point is JUST TOO AWESOME: Let’s all choose who we “want to be” and claim a new heritage!
Barrackah Husain Obama.
And, remember…”It is different when we do it”.
No it’s not. It’s only ‘different’ if you buy into their crap and allow it to lead you by the nose.
You missed the point.
This is Shaidle’s First Law for understanding the Collective.
Hey, C4Pay, you’ve been wanting to know how to bold text so you don’t have to use caps. Do it like this: precede the word or phrase with an angle brackets (”<"), minus the quote marks, of course, followed by the word "strong" and the closing angle bracket that looks like the greater than symbol. Type in the word/phrase, open angle bracket, forward slash "strong", and close angle bracket. That should give you bold. For italics, replace "strong" with "em."
I think it bears treasuring all the Warren fabulations…
the Nursing Mother Bar Exam comes to mind.
The My Daughter Was A Small Business Person one is also a favorite.
1. I’ll extract from my comment of ten days ago:
I consider those remarks confirmed.
2. That the MSM continues to feature this bilge means they’re not confident of the election result, either in MA or nationwide. They want Warren to be waiting in the Presidential wings, especially if Obama loses.
3. I read the full NYT column. Author Judy Bolton-Fasman is a real piece of work. She asks
Yes, a personal lie and a political lie. Next question.
Warren will never, ever even get off the ground if she decided to try to make a Presidential campaign. She’s far to loathed by the Conservatives, and there are enough Conservative Democrats which recognize both her ethnic shenanigans and her Marxist redistributionist leanings for her to get any traction outside of the Tri-State area, Chicago and the Pacific Northwest.
At this point, never again underestimate the ignorance of the American people, and the power of the leftist media/union/education/democrat party complex.
That complex has got to be destroyed — it it’s not too late.
If Obama is re-elected, that will be notice it is too late.
True or false are NOT often besides the point when it comes to history. “Facts are stubborn things,” as John Adams said, or as I like to say, “Reality is that which will bite you in the buttock, when you ignore it.” When you knowingly live a lie, Reality will come to haunt you for perpetrating the falsehood.
Reverse the roles, Hyphenated Liberal, and would you pen the same Op-Ed?
The Magic 8-ball sez:
Noooooo.
Judy JUDY judi , Bolton Fessupman. Thy name be spelled RATION al IZATion.
Fasman might be right IF… a) The only Warren controversy were her native American “heritage.” b) If Warren had not lied bout her practicing law without a license. c) If Warren had not lied about being for the “common” citizen when if fact she defended large corporations against justified class action lawsuits AND collected large amounts of money for doing so.
IOW, Warren is a fraud inside out, upside down and throughout.
But this defense of her should come as no surprise considering the source…
Notice the ‘comments’ are disabled here. I delight in posting/replying when the so-called facts just cry out for additions and corrections.
One of the fun parts of my day is watching the lefties explode into ad hominem attacks when I post a sane, fact-filled comment.
This author is likely quite afraid what the readers will say here, why am I not surprised?
The stories were made up. Am I in denial? Or worse, am I knowingly perpetrating a lie?
The minute you check the box, without due diligence to discover what benefits you’re jumping the cueue to obtain, and for whom they’re intended, you’re lying like a rug.
Ironically, Judy Bolton-Fasman is outraged when someone cheats on an SAT to get into an Ivy League school. Here is an article she wrote about that http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/the-irony-and-the-heartbreak-of-the-sats-by-judy-bolton-fasman?xg_source=activity
She is very proud of her Yale family heritage. Fine. And she is proud of her Jewish heritage. But does she have any outrage that Elizabeth Warren STOLE a coveted position for a Harvard Law professorship from a real Native American? How can she be proud of an identity thief?
What, in her Jewish heritage, or Ivy family heritage, allows her to enable (or excuse) theft this way?
After reading the NYT op ed “When it comes to family, true and false are often beside the point,” I looked through Warren’s Harvard bibliography for insight into Warren’s positions re: race.
See: http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1422&context=wlulr
This is the text of a Warren 2002 paper (delivered as a lecture): “The Economics of Race: When Making It to the Middle is Not Enough.” She is looking into black and Hispanic bankruptcies, particularly as caused by predatory sub-prime mortgage practices. Although she does not specifically examine Native American bankruptcies, throughout the paper she generalizes “the economics of race” as “minority” economics.
On page 1798, Warren discusses varying consequences for different issues of minority abuse. Although she is arguing for more activist agitation against predatory lending, she iterates several actual and desired consequences that she ardently approves of for powerful people who in some way abuse race:
“When Senator Trent Lott seemingly expressed his nostalgia for a segregated America, minority groups around the country barraged the talk shows and newspapers, and Senator Lott was ultimately stripped of his powerful position as Majority Leader of the Senate. Similarly, when Texaco executives were accused of using racial slurs to refer to blacks, the company was boycotted, sued for millions of dollars, and forced to adopt new practices to ensure that its black employees had better opportunities.(53) But when a Citibank official said in sworn affidavits that she regularly added extra fees to a home mortgage “[i]f someone.., was a minority,’(54) there was little response. Citibank quietly agreed to a cash settlement with the FTC, and there were no press releases from the NAACP, no extended discussions on Hispanic radio stations, no interviews on the evening news, and no calls for Citibank’s highly visible CEO Sandy Weill to resign.”
Why don’t similar sanctions apply to a person who falsifies minority status — clear legal definitions of Native American status universally available — for a college professorship … or for a U.S. senator? Shouldn’t that person be called on to resign/withdraw?
(I posted this elsewhere on the Legal Insurrection site but probably it belongs here.)
Digging into footnotes in the aforementioned “Economics of Race” paper, I find funny-that-turns-scary “fact” sourcing by Warren.
For example. On page 1973, Warren presents the “statistic” that “[a]t Citibank, for example, researchers have concluded that at least 40% of those who were sold ruinous subprime mortgages would have qualified for prime-rate loans.” See footnote 35.
At footnote 35, we get: “See Sichelman, supra note 32, at 25 (reporting that NTIC claimed nearly 40% of Citibank customers were eligible for lower rates than they carried).”
Sounds important and valid — this has got to be fixed — right?
So what is NTIC? It apparently no longer exists, but per its old site:
“The National Training and Information Center (NTIC) was founded in Chicago, IL in 1972 as a national policy, research, and training center for communities who were tired of seeing their neighborhoods torn apart by federal housing foreclosures and bank redlining.
Founded by Gale Cincotta, a housewife and mother of six, and Shel Trapp, a former Methodist Minister, the work of NTIC grew out of a belief that everyday people are the experts on the challenges they face and that strong neighborhoods form the foundation of a strong country.”
Chicago / Trapp / Cincotta sound suspicious. On p34 of his book Architects of Ruin author Peter Schweizer fulfills expectations:
“[Gale] Cincotta’s organizations trained up a new generation of activists. In the mid 1980s a young college graduate named Barack Obama went to the NTIC to learn the essentials of community organizing. The sessions were held on the South Side of Chicago, and run by Cincotta’s partner, Shel Trapp. Obama would spend four years heading up the Developing Communities Project, which received assistance from Cincotta’s organizations and used Alinsky-style tactics to mobilize the black community. Obama embraced the actvist agenda of shaking down banks and forged a close relationship with activists at ACORN.”
So back to the apparently damning statistic, that 40% of Citibank mortgage buyers were dupes and could have qualified for prime mortgages at lower rates. Warren supports her assertion with 3 footnotes that sound credible … but refer only to a newspaper article based on an NTIC press release that announced the “statistic!”
After reading about the NTIC + Cincotta + Trapp + Obama + ACORN nest there in Chicago, how valid could that”statistic” be?
Other aspects of Warren’s “proofs” seem bogus. A mark against her character, and a possible string to pull re: Warren + ACORN + Obama’s Chicago connections.
The Wonderful World of Liberal “Magic Thinking”:
Fauxahontas: “Your honor, the facts of the case don’t really matter. It’s family lore that the land my client is accused of illegally appropriating really belonged to my client’s family all along. Deeds, tax records, and title searches are meaningless.”
Hizzoner (noted leftie): “It so so ruled. Case dismissed.”
The NY Times is not a ‘newspaper.’ They are not merely ‘in the business of getting Democrats elected.’
The NY Times is a propaganda organ of a corrupt quasi-communist movement: that is, the plan is for a privileged class (the ‘elite’), and communism for the rest of us. But controlled speech for all. It’s exactly how it worked in the NY Times’ beloved la-la land of the Soviet Union.
When will people finally get this, and react accordingly?
When?
Well, I guess you CAN just make up this stuff…
The Democrat Party is largely, if not exclusively, composed of pathological liars voted into office by ignorant dupes.
Liz Warren IS beside the point and never squarely on it.
This seems to be a real-life example of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle…
…scientists now confirm that we can see the Quantum nature of Liz Warren: The truth is slip slidin’ away.
Here’s a thought.
Scenario: The Republican Party manages to win control of the Senate, and Warren somehow manages to win the Senate seat in Massachusetts.
Question: Will the Republican Leadership move to deny seating Warren due to the unanswered questions of corruption, ethnic fraud and unauthorized practice of law?
I think that this should become our fall-back position should Warren win; that she should be denied being seated and recognized by the Senate.
Oh, sure. Mitch McConnell is going to MAGICALLY grow a pair on 7 November and refuse to seat Fauxcahontas in January.
Remember who will run the Senate should the GOP take control…
You’re right about Mitch McConnell, but I disagree with your explanation for “why” he is the way he is.
The vast majority of Republicans in D.C. are treacherous. They want us to think they’re spineless because it’s easier to vote for a well-meaning coward than a dedicated, true-believer traitor.
That is why none of them have lifted a finger to help elect the GOP ticket (their own choice, forced on us, for President, a Congressman — one of their own! — running for V.P.). They WANT Democrats to remain dominant, so that the GOP can comfortably remain the junior partners in corruption.
The FACT that he doesn’t have a pair doesn’t mean you aren’t also right…
I feel like an Indian too. Who wants to go out and get me one?
Winston Churchill is to have stated “that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in [a] somewhat ungainly posture.” As I see it, points about this or that can be argued about Warren, yet they are ones that call into question her veracity and character. What is not subject to debate is that there are matters about herself, her tenure as a professor, and as an attorney which have raised doubts, at least in the minds of some, concerning her suitability for public office.
While Warren has made attempts, as have some of her supporters, to “answer” such questions, there is little doubt that they have been sufficient so that her “posture” is one that people now will find it easy to “look up” to her. She still believes that circular-speak, double-speak, and non-speak will suffice to get her elected. Perhaps, it will. However, she and others like her ought to make a very large note to themselves that is kept in plain view. Now, think of what reminder you would have your elected officials remember, daily.
“true and false are often beside the point”
She’s just recycling what Rigoberta Menchu and her apologists said.
The truth does matter – but not to the left if it interferes with their narrative.
Wasn’t most of her (il)legal work defending major corporations from the “dispossessed and marginalized”?
I note that Judy Bolton-Fasman apparently didn’t try to claim the castle in Spain or the land in New Mexico, or to note a “right to claim such” on any professional documents relating to directories, education and/or employment. There also doesn’t seem to be any question about Judy’s mother’s Cuban heritage. (It doesn’t appear that her mother was generally identified as “white”, while telling her children about the castle and such.) So I am not sure how her story about her family is relevant to the situation with Ms. Warren.
Ms. Warren, on the other hand, is claiming the “right” to access affirmative action policies due to her “family lore”, completely ignoring the fact that regulations include a second part of the definition in those forms where Ms. Warren may have “checked the box”. Did Ms. Warren maintain “cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition”? No, apparently not. So why would a purportedly highly educated lawyer claim to be a “person of color” solely on the basis of unproven “family lore” when the forms require something clearly more substantial, evidentiary and immediate in order to “check the box”?
How many people would trust a lawyer who tells them that if their family called them princes or princesses that it is alright to go and lay claim to a throne someplace? Would you be willing to pay a retainer to such a lawyer?
The truth absolutely matters, particularly since we are not talking about “family lore” here. This is simply more slippery leftist semantics and irrational dodgering.
It goes like this (if we accept the premise that this is all actually family lore–I’m not convinced, either, that it is, but let’s run with it for the moment): Aw, come on, we all know that our family histories are full of extra-factual exaggerations; we all know that our families go to great lengths to stash away the crazies in attics and to foreground, even invent, heroes and larger-than-life . . . blah blah blah. Someone in everyone’s family invented this; was present at that historical moment; knew, married, or was otherwise linked to some historical figure; fought in this key battle or was even key in the battle’s success/failure/whatever; was given a gift by this famous person or attended this key event; etc. and etc. Gee, doesn’t your family ever do that? So good grief, how can you possibly say anything about poor old Liz and her family doing the exact same thing. It’s only natural. Only human. You can’t attack little Lizzie for something like that.
Uh huh.
Except no.
Leftists do emotional appeals, turn things around on “feeling” and “relating,” but the tiniest scratch at the surface of this reveals what they are actually hiding and the incredible thing they seem to be saying about Warren’s detachment from reality (sure, I can go there . . . come with me. . . ).
If we all know that the truth doesn’t matter when it comes to family lore, as the supporter suggests and many of us would agree, then wouldn’t there be more onus, not less, on Warren to ensure that she knew the facts before claiming on legal documents that her claims of minority status based on family lore were indeed true? After all, goes this logic, such things are often false, right? The truth doesn’t matter when it comes to family lore; oral histories/family lore’s truth gets lost, exaggerated, twisted, even invented through the decades and centuries. We ALL know that. That’s why we all include details of our family lore for our professional advancement . . . um, wait, no. That doesn’t make sense unless . . . No! Surely, they aren’t arguing that Warren is so moronically, mind-numbingly stupid that she didn’t know the difference between claiming minority status on applications and other documents for professional advancement and tall tales that get told amongst families? They can’t be stating that Warren is deranged or mentally incompetent, that she can’t tell fact from fiction, true from “lore”? Naw, that can’t be what they are trying to say.
(and it’s not. They don’t want anyone thinking about it at all, just going, yeah! My family has a lot of grandiose stuff going back generations, too! Poor old Liz; she’s just like me! Well, just like me if I lied about my “minority status” for professional advancement . . . but let’s not think about that last part)
Good grief. It doesn’t matter whether she is of indian heritage or not? It is how she feels? Feelings are all with these people. Facts don’t matter one iota. This is liberalspeak at its finest. I feel I should have a million dollars in the bank. Where is it?
I suppose it doesn’t matter that she practiced law without a license either. She probably didn’t FEEL she needed one. That is really a slap in the face of all the lawyers who studied so hard and took the bar exams. Some more than once. However, as we all know, rules and regulations are for the little people. Dims are not of the little people.
If the NYT wouldn’t publish McCain’s oped in 2008 because it didn’t mell well (they said) with obama’s oped that they had already printed, why does anyone think they would print the professor’s oped that would refute false statements made by one of their own.
I am sorry but Judy Bolton-Fasman’s opinion on this matter is a disgrace. I can remember some of the stories my parents told me that are of questionable accuracy. I may share those stories with friends and family members after stating my concerns about their accuracy. I would never share them with the general public.
My parents told me I was “X” so I grew up feeling sympathy for people who are “X.” Sorry, that does not pass the laugh test. Only a person who has genuinely faced hostility or discrimination because they were “X” should be able to claim the status of “X.”