Michael Tomasky writes in the Daily Beast that the whole Elizabeth Warren Cherokee Nation rumpus is the news media’s fault (sorry no links or visuals – we’re iPadlicked):
So now Elizabeth Warren has to prove that she’s 1/32nd Cherokee? The temperature on the story is rising. There was a huge article in the Boston Globe on Friday written to raise a number of questions and suggest that Warren used the minority designation to get her job, or get ahead—exactly at the same time that a poll was released (PDF) showing that 69 percent of Bay State voters don’t consider her heritage to be a “significant” story. It reminds me of nothing so much as Monica Lewinsky, and of the media’s need sometimes to get a grip.
So the Missus and I trundled Uptown to do some Met/gallery-hopping, and here’s some of what we saw (sorry, no visuals or links – we’re iPadlicked):
THE MET ALMOST ALWAYS MEETS EXPECTATIONS
The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde did not disappoint – a sweeping survey of a remarkable family’s remarkable art collection.
Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, while hosting the most pretentious gathering of humans per square foot in the universe, still delivered a smart compare-and-contrast of two fashion giants.
GALLERY-A-GO-GO
Gagosian Gallery: Pablo Picasso and Francoise Gilot unplugged.
Jill Newhouse: Edouard Vuillard unplugged.
Luxembourg & Dayan: Domenico Gnoli unplugged.
LONELY, YOU WON’T BE
The Missus and I wound up Midtown at Second Stage Theatre for a performance of Lonely, I’m Not starring Topher Grace. We’ll turn this review over to the Missus: A totally charming, clever production that was just SO CUTE.
Rarely do we like – and care for – every character in a play, but this one we did.
After the Missus and I got back to the Salisbury (excellent hotel on 57th between 6th & 7th, run by the Calvary Baptist Church, which discounts your room if you attend services at the chapel next door) from the theater last night (see above), I trundled down to an Irish Pub at 54th & 7th to catch the end of the Rangers-Devils Game 6.
There I experienced the privilege of paying $8 for a Black-and-Tan, and got to watch the last half of the third period and all 90 seconds of the overtime on no less than eight TV screens – seven of them large, one of them really large.
So the Missus and I trundled down to the city yesterday (monumental traffic jam on the Cross Bronx Expressway) and here’s some of what we saw (sorry no visuals or links – we’re iPadlocked):
GO FIGURE
The Forum Gallery’s current exhibit, The Figure in Modern Sculpture, features works by Alexander Archipenko, Chaim Gross, Gaston Lachaise, Jacques Lipchitz, Elie Nadelman, and John Storrs. And it’s an absolute knockout. (Through June 23.)
CLAES OLDENBERG IS FOREVER YOUNG
Pace Gallery has a lively show of Claes Oldenberg’s works on paper. At 83, he’s still living and working in New York. And his work still works.
OTHER DESERT CITIES WAS A TASTY DESSERT
The Tonys will tell if it’s “the best play on Broadway (Ben Brantley, New York Times)” but it’ll do until something better comes along. Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach, Judith Light, Elizabeth Marvel, Thomas Sadoski – all marvelous.
Today’s New York Times says Elizabeth Warren’s Indian-giver-heritage story is no big deal.
Voters Shrug at Revelations of Ethnic Claim in Senate Race
SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. — The controversy surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s ethnic heritage and whether she misrepresented herself as a minority in the past may have engulfed her Senate campaign and the news media, but in parts of western Massachusetts, voters seem either mystified by it or unconcerned.
Desiree Smelcer, 35, a librarian here, said over lunch at the Egg and I that she had heard the buzz. But Ms. Smelcer, a Democrat who is one-eighth Apache, is more focused on the price of gas.
“I think she could be a little more aggressive about fighting back,” she said of Ms. Warren, who had been shaking hands with diners here. “But I’m more concerned about my own bottom line.”
A new poll out Wednesday in the closely watched Senate race indicated that Ms. Warren’s ancestry — the subject of intense media scrutiny and mockery for nearly a month — has so far not made much difference to voters. The poll, conducted by Suffolk University/7 News in Boston, showed the contest nearly even between Ms. Warren and SenatorScott P. Brown, the Republican who in 2010 snatched the seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy Jr.
Mediaite reports a new twist on U.S. Senate wannabe Elizabeth Warren’s Indian giver lineage:
Post In The Hill Calls Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Heritage ‘Correct In Mythical Terms’
A post in The Hill from Monday heaps praise on Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for her Native American heritage. But it is not her background in the traditional sense, but her upbringing in Oklahoma that qualifies her to be close to and reverential of Native American heritage. So, “Warren’s claim to be ‘part Indian’ is correct in mythical terms,” according to the post.
The piece in The Hill‘s “pundits blog” section of the website, by Bernie Quigley, claims it is common for those Americans who were raised in the Midwest “to claim Indian blood; that is, to wish it were there even if it isn’t.” Therefore, the debate over Warren’s true heritage is immaterial.
Voters in the Golden State will decide in two weeks whether to jack up cigarette taxes by $1 per pack to – wait for it – fund research into cancer-related diseases.
Via Politico’s Morning Score:
CALIFORNIA INITIATIVE – $8.6 MILLION SPENT TO OPPOSE CIGARETTE TAX: Two weeks before Californians vote on Proposition 29, Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group reports that supporters of the measure have spent nearly $2 million on broadcast TV advertising while opponents have put $8.6 million behind broadcast TV ads. The proposition would increase the per-pack tax on cigarettes by $1 to fund research for cancer and tobacco-related diseases. Ads in favor have featured Lance Armstrong and representatives of medical associations. Ads against have emphasized claims that it would create new bureaucracy and the revenue would not remain in-state. Lance Armstrong ad: http://bit.ly/JmGvLK. Industry-backed ad: http://bit.ly/JGx0Yy.
Pres. Obama’s “Bring the Bain” campaign produced another defector last night, as BuzzFeed reports:
Deval Patrick Defends Bain Capital: “Not A Bad Company”
Democratic Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick appeared on CNN and defended the Boston-based company Mitt Romney led, saying it wasn’t “a bad company.” Patrick added “I respect what Bain does and its role in the free market system,” he said.
(The hardworking staff has alerted its Department of Redundancy Department – tip o’ the pixel to the Firesign Theater – about that last quote.)
Meanwhile, Patrick’s CNN turn:
Add Patrick to the list of “Black Democratic Stars” who have proven to be “Fickle Obama Allies” according to another BuzzFeed post:
As Senator Barack Obama rose toward power in 2007 and 2008, he was sometimes taken as the avatar of a new generation of African-American leaders.
They were, PBS’s Gwen Ifill wrote, a “Joshua Generation” led by figures from Alabama Rep. Artur Davis to Newark Mayor Cory Booker. They were, like Obama, born too late to participate in the Civil Rights movement, and late enough to benefit from it with blue chip educations and direct paths to power. They were free of the urban machines that had defined black politics in America, and ready for a different and more hopeful sort of politics of race.
But as President Barack Obama struggles to keep his party united around him, few figures have proven more troublesome than that cadre of black leaders, each of whom was seen at some point as a candidate for the post which only Obama will ever hold: First Black President.
Davis, 44, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, was among the first members of Congress to endorse Obama in 2007; a campaign joke labeled him the “Second Black President.”
Now he’s out of politics after an unsuccessful run for Governor of Alabama, and writing for the conservative National Review. Harold Ford, another leading light of his generation of black leaders, this week re-emerged as a spokesman for the finance industry that employs him. And Booker, 42, a Rhodes scholar who has remained closest to Obama and to his party, had to be pushed firmly back into line by the White House after saying the Obama campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital were “nauseating” and made him “very uncomfortable.”
Booker has, of course, moonwalked away from that statement, but you have to wonder if Obama’s smashmouth reelection campaign will wear well with the choir.
A critic’s notebook article on Monday about the prevalence of standing ovations at Broadway shows described incorrectly the quickness with which audience members appeared to be on their feet at a performance of the current revival of “Death of a Salesman.” Their ovation seemed to occur within a millisecond — one-thousandth of a second — not a megasecond, which is one million seconds.
Good thing – some Broadway production runs don’t last that long.
Campaign Outsider 