I guess this is what happens when a local race goes national. Every pundit in the United States now thinks he or she is an expert on our little Senate race, regardless of whether they actually have a clue. And consequently, the stupid is flying fast and furious. Here are a couple of examples, helpfully called to our attention by alert BMGer jhmccloskey.
First, to Margaret Carlson, a commentator for Bloomberg News and (I think) one of the TV networks. In a column that generally seems more critical of the boys club in Washington than of Warren, she nonetheless gets a key fact wrong about the now-famous exchange at the UMass-Lowell debate about paying for college. Here’s Carlson:
At a Democratic primary debate last week, Warren was asked how she had paid for college. “I kept my clothes on,” Warren replied, in a blunt reference to Brown having posed in the altogether for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982.
It’s not as if Warren had revealed a secret.
Indeed not – particularly because it was not Warren who brought it up! Good Lord, do we really have to go over this again? It was the questioner – Republican activist and UMass-Lowell student Scott Conway – who brought Scott Brown’s nude photo spread into the debate. Here’s the exchange again, in case there’s any doubt.
Would it have been a better story if it had actually been Warren who first brought up Brown’s posing in the buff? Maybe so. But the simple fact is that she didn’t, and it would be really nice if people could get that right.
Which leads us to Marty Peretz, the (mercifully) former editor-in-chief of The New Republic. Peretz professes to “kinda like” Scott Brown, and declares that he didn’t vote for Brown, but he also “certainly did not vote for Martha Coakley.” He goes on to excoriate Coakley in exceptionally unkind terms:
Coakley is a nothing, and she would have been less than a nothing in the Senate.
Funny, that’s not what Peretz was saying a couple of years ago. Peretz favored Alan Khazei in the 2009 primary, but he had generally nice things to say about Coakley as well, describing her before the primary as
long on seniority in public office and a woman with common sense, sound political judgment, true rather than hyperbolic liberal values.
After the primary, in late December when it was starting to seem possible that Brown would actually win the general election, Peretz nonetheless declared,
I am content with Coakley, as I wrote a while back.
I have no idea why Peretz has changed his tune so dramatically on Coakley, who continues to do a creditable job as Attorney General. Perhaps he has simply forgotten what he wrote in 2009.
Anyway, Peretz then turns his attention to this year’s contest, and his column deteriorates further into a series of laughably off-base quips, few of which have anything to do with the race that those of us who actually live in Massachusetts have been watching. Discussing Brown’s Cosmo spread, Peretz rails:
By the time the voters went to the polls [in 2010, the Cosmo thing] was one of his assets. Alas, Warren is not a fast learner, and she tried to make a huffy issue of “Brown in the buff” already when the election was still about a year off. Like now. She has a tin ear.
Alas, though, it is Peretz who is the tin-eared slow learner here, because, as we have just discussed, it was the questioner, not Warren, who expressly raised Brown’s nude posing. Furthermore, Warren’s quip was in no way “huffy.”
It gets worse. Responding to Thank-God-gate, Peretz unfortunately continues:
Actually, Warren is a perfectly presentable woman, pleasant looking and handsomely dressed. She might not be noticed on the campus. But almost no one is noticed at 62 in these parts ’cept young ’uns.
Oh my God. Please, Marty, just shut up. But he won’t.
Her campaign is a phenomenon. But she is a phenomenon whom no one knew two months ago. Or even six weeks ago. And maybe four weeks ago. First, there were six candidates: one, the black mayor of Newton, who dropped out in the last few days. Overwhelmed by white liberal money.
Uh, what? The white liberals are out to get Setti Warren? Did Peretz notice that Setti just got himself elected the Mayor of Newton, an 85% white, distinctly liberal city not exactly known for its huge African-American population, by defeating a well-known white state legislator? *sigh* Furthermore, the claim that Warren is someone “whom no one knew two months ago” is painfully and obviously false. Why else would she be able to get into the race and raise $3 million in a few weeks? Why else would her post on our lowly blog have generated national attention? Only someone with a pre-existing national profile would have been able to do that. People will be tempted to compare Warren’s campaign to Deval Patrick’s 2006 campaign – but it’s a very poor analogy, precisely because Patrick was a genuine unknown when he declared that he was running, and Warren was anything but.
Finally, we get to what I suspect is really going on here.
Alan Khazei, the most accomplished of the candidates in community politics, has a sort of modest charisma. He does not say obvious things, as Warren does. After all, she knows what she thinks and she’s thought them for twenty years….
Another fact is that Warren has no foreign policy and hasn’t thought about foreign policy…. But Khazei has. Thoughtfully. Not always agreeing with me.
Now if I didn’t know better, I’d say that Peretz is still smarting from seeing his preferred candidate lose to Martha Coakley in 2009, and he’ll be gosh-darned if he’s going to see it happen again – and to another woman! Earlier in this wretched column, Peretz quoted the aforementioned Margaret Carlson piece as follows:
For Bloomberg on October 11, [Carlson] answered the query: “Do Men Have a Problem With Elizabeth Warren?” She wrote: “Some women just bug men. Hillary Clinton did (and still does.) Nancy Pelosi, who has replaced Clinton as the Scary Democratic Woman in Republican fundraising appeals, surely does. And now Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has joined the club.”
Now, it certainly seems to me that Carlson’s overall valid point (despite her screw-up on the debate thing) was that powerful men in Washington have a hard time dealing with strong women like Clinton, Pelosi, and Warren, because they find them threatening. But Peretz seems to be misreading Carlson’s column by taking it absolutely at face value. Clearly, Warren “bugs” Peretz (despite her being “a perfectly presentable woman, pleasant looking”), and it seems as though Peretz is using Carlson’s column as validation, as if to say, hey, it’s not just me – she bugs a lot of guys. Even though Carlson’s point is that Warren and other women are the victim of “a blatant double standard.” Very strange. (Also, let me be absolutely clear: I am in no way arguing that Khazei bears any responsibility for Peretz’s unfortunate commentary. Khazei can’t be held responsible for the views of his supporters.)
So, memo to the national pundits who want to talk about MA-Sen. We appreciate your interest – really, we do. But please, try to get the basic facts right before you weigh in, and try to lay off the stupid.
sabutai says
Peretz doesn’t understand Israel, despite obsessively talking about it for decades. Why would he have a clue about Massachusetts?
kirth says
It’s chilling how they seem oblivious to the fact that we’re rapidly approaching Peak Stupid. They keep using it like the supply is infinite.
David says
I am launching a campaign to promote the use of Green Stupid, or perhaps Renewable Stupid. Which do you think will catch on faster? 😉
Trickle up says
but a bubble of pundits all repeating to each other how stuffy Liz Warren is, or elitist, or whatever the smear du jour is supposed to be, is not going to persuade anyone here.
She just does not come off that way! But I hope they all have fun.