This is just inexplicable to me. First, Scott Brown is rolling the dice that Elizabeth Warren’s Native American heritage is her Achilles heel. He is running ads about it now.
Then, a couple of his staffers were caught on video taunting Warren supporters with war whoops and tomahawk chops.
David at Blue Mass Group says the idiots include “Brown’s Constituent Service Counsel Jack Richard (camoflage shirt) and — we believe — Massachusetts GOP operative Brad Garrett Garnett, front and center with tan baseball cap and gray hoodie, leading the whoops and chops.”
Local Boston television news says there’s a third staffer, a “GOP operative,” in there somewhere. Then they asked Scott Brown about it, and he said he didn’t know about the video and wouldn’t apologize, but Elizabeth Warren is lying about being part Native American and she should apologize.
If Scott were desperately behind in the polls and needed a “hail mary” pass to catch up, I could sorta kinda see him trying something like this. I doubt it would work, but the attempt wouldn’t surprise me. But the race in Massachusetts is very, very close, and by many accounts Brown is a smart and effective campaigner. Why is he doing this? Is Brown tired of being a senator?
Also, from the Chronicles of the Hopelessly Stupid — Althouse shows she couldn’t get a point if you stuck her with it.
Update: See Josh Marshall, “Really, Scott Brown?“
taunting Warren supporters with war whoops and tomahawk chops
Righty-o, Brownies, that is how you show respect for Native American culture.
All this does, really, is triple-underscore that Brown’s campaign is running on those last, sad fuel molecules that wish they were fumes.
I’m baffled too. I don’t even know what the issue is–does Elizabeth Warren go around making a big deal about whatever Native American heritage she may or may not have? Not that I would even care if she did, but the only reason I’ve heard anything about it is because of Scott Brown, not Warren herself. Of course I’m not in Massachusetts, but to me she isn’t someone who claims to be an Indian, she’s the woman who reads all the credit card contracts and then goes on Fresh Air and explains how they’re screwing you over.
When I lived in So.Cal, Beach Angel and I would go to a Japanese Restaraunt called “Restaurant Koi” in Seal Beach at least once a week. We had been dining there for several years, and the Sushi chefs Kiko, Hiro, and Taka knew us well, and would just keep the sushi coming.We and the chefs all had a great time.
So one Saturday we invited some friends….
We were seated in a booth, and our guests proceeded to push the corners of their eyes up and talk in mock Japanese. F’in great.
That type of behavior is beyond rude and stupid.
“our guests proceeded to push the corners of their eyes up and talk in mock Japanese.”
I hope you were able to go back!
Anyway, these fake Indians, the staffers, are pretending to be real Indians, miming an attack on Elizabeth Warren on the ground that she’s a fake Indian. There’s a lot of fakery in there, but no one is expressing the view that it’s bad to be Indian. That’s all I wanted to say
I don’t know if there is an established name for the tactic above. I call it.. two steps forward then one step back while leaving a slime trail. The bold text is all she really wanted to say.
Big snake has poor venom!
Yeah, Tom; Thankfully we were seated in a booth and our guest’s antics were not noticed by the staff. ( or in Disneyese, “Cast Members”.)
Josh hit the nail on the head. When people start talking about how you “look,” it is racist. If I lived in Massachusetts, I would be making the point that Scott Brown’s supporters are engaging in anti-American Indian behavior. It offends me. And, even if the Atlanta Braves fans still do the tomahawk chop, they offend me, too. I do know that Ted Turner and his wife at the time, Jane Fonda, both stopped doing the chop out respect for American Indians. And, apparently, Althouse doesn’t realize that every fan of a sporting team isn’t always the brightest bulb in the package. This issue seems to be really petty on the part of Brown and his supporters.
Stay classie, Scottie!
The chop and the mocking whoops are like their chants of “The Yankees Suck!”
Yeah, kinda like Brown, they jeer – if you were all so great, then why, like Brown v. Warren, is Warren leading, and the Yankees are over 20 FECKIN’ GAMES AHEAD OF YOUR FECKIN’ RED SOX?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”
Dipsh*ts and loser.
Charles Pierce explains:
Hey, leave THE SOX out of it. Scott Brown was lucky once; he’s a not too bright typical MA pol. I should know I’ve live here about 60 years. Hopefully he’ll go down to defeat. Elizabeth is lookin’ good politically.
They do this because they are not able to find any material thing wrong with the woman or her history. So, elaborate on the unimportant and make her look fishy, somehow.
Over at Wonkette, a geniusly pithy retort from commenter “pinkocommi”:
I object to Scott Brown calling himself Brown.
Yeah!
Why doesn’t Brown contact Rand Paul and see if the Kentucky Stomper is available for a head stomping gig?.. Have boots, will travel.
I bruised my brain trying to read that Althouse post. Wow, is that some tangled thought.
Apparently, the Brown supporters aren’t being racist, because they themselves aren’t using offensive stereotypical caricatures of Indians, they are “playing the role of Indian”. Which they do how, Ann? By using offensive stereotypical caricatures of Indians. I see. And?
To the ‘Indian character’ the Indian is a hero, and they aren’t trying to insult Indians, they’re defending Indians from the inauthentic claim of Warren to be one, and besides, the tomahawk chop can’t really be politically incorrect because Atlanta Braves fans do it all the time? (Which I guess is proof if you both ignore the history of race relations in Georgia and also the decades-long attempts to get them to STOP that.)
The stoopid, it buuuurrrns!!
By the same logic, the old minstrel shows where white guys wore blackface weren’t racist, either.
You regulars know I only have a few things to say – which I say over and over. Why Barbara hasn’t banned me for being repetitive and redundant, I don’t know. What we may be looking at in a larger sense is one of my maxims flipped conservative.
I have always said, since Obama is a moderate who will negotiate to the perceived center, if you want him to be more liberal, change the perceived center to something more liberal. My point here is not so much about Obama, but the perceived center.
The conservative flip on the maxim is how the GOP is demanding that the ‘center’ really and truly is their distorted view which mocks and rejects all things progressive. And Warren is the real progressive deal – frighteningly articulate and informed on what needs to be done and why. They don’t dare engage on the facts and they believe the center is poised to reject her on a trivial argument.
On a larger scale, Romney is refusing to release his tax returns, refusing to fill in the blanks on his economic plan, and generally running as the default candidate. The pivot to the center never happened – Romney is waiting for voters to join him on the fringe. The demand Romney and Brown place on the moderate voter is that he must abandon objective truth, reason and logic to join the mob in the warm cocoon of ignorance.
The idea of winning by deceit is not new. In the presidential campaign of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was the victim of outrageous lies even from the clergy and after the election he wrote,
“But enough of this: it is more than I have before commitred to paper on the subject of all the lies that has been preached and printed against me.”
From that same letter these comments encourage me.
“The delusion into which the X.Y.Z. plot shewed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity…The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes.”
So Jefferson’s opponents, including the clergy, using freedom of speech and freedom of the press, hatched a bunch of lies to try to defeat Jefferson, and the plot failed because the voters didn’t buy into it, which Jefferson notes. But here’s the money line which immediately follows in the letter. Very few who have read these words at the Jefferson memorial realize that ‘they’ whom Jefferson was talking about was the clergy.
“And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Forgive me for taking the long way ’round the barn, but in terms of lies and elections, we have been here before and when all was said and done, the voter rejected the lies, even from trusted members of the clergy and voted for Thomas Jefferson. So it shall be again – fight for the truth and trust the voter to decide.
I don’t mind repetitive and redundant. And, anyway, we’re all repetitive and redundant sometimes.
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Forgive me for taking the long way ’round the barn, but in terms of lies and elections, we have been here before and when all was said and done, the voter rejected the lies, even from trusted members of the clergy and voted for Thomas Jefferson. So it shall be again – fight for the truth and trust the voter to decide.
It’s hard for me to do that, when the right’s message machine has mostly eviscerated anything called real journalism over the last three decades. Eventually the truth will prevail, but will there be anything left but smoking ruins?
You regulars know I only have a few things to say – which I say over and over. Why Barbara hasn’t banned me for being repetitive
Doug, You mean like…”They hate us for our freedoms”? I love that statement and I post it ad nauseum because the truth of that statement is determined by the reader/listener.I don’t have to explain it or concern myself on how it is recieved…I just have to put it out there. God bless America!