Eventheliberal New Republic sends out a sacrificial youngling to poke us Olds with a stick, under the headline “Facebook Fight: Inside the cult of Elizabeth Warren“:
On Tuesday, Representative Patrick McHenry called Elizabeth Warren a liar. Twice. As Obama’s advisor for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren has grown accustomed to conservative ire. But this grew personal. First, while chairing a House subcommittee hearing, the North Carolina Republican accused Warren of misleading testimony. Then, after she testified, she asked to be excused for another meeting, which she claimed to have previously discussed with the congressman’s staff. McHenry snapped, “You’re making this up.” As Warren’s mouth fell agape, Democrat Elijah Cummings jumped to her defense: “Mr. Chairman … I’m trying to be cordial here, but you just accused the lady of lying.”
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McHenry, whatever his motive, could not have prepared for what was coming next. Within hours, hundreds of Warren supporters took to the congressman’s Facebook “fan” page to chide his bad manners. “You kiss your mother with that mouth? Apologize to Elizabeth Warren,” wrote one. Others called him “classless,” “undignified,” and accused him of blatant sexism: “What a pathetic display of pig-headed machismo.” By Wednesday afternoon, just twenty-four hours later, the negative comments numbered into the thousands, with diatribes from Warren defenders unspooling every five to ten seconds like clockwork. A nascent Facebook group—Citizens Against Patrick McHenry—sprung up to maintain the momentum: “We’re starting to get noticed. More posts, people, more posts.” The insults ranged from the political—“Hiding behind your Republican Agenda is not good enough”—to the petty: “You’re ugly and your mama dresses you funny.”
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It seems safe to say that, under normal circumstances, government officials—those culled from the ranks of dull bureaucrats, policy wonks, and lawyers—rarely inspire this kind of fealty, much less passion. And on paper, at least, Elizabeth Warren appears to fit this uninspiring mold: She’s a lawyer, an academic, and one from Harvard to boot. Yet Warren commands a legion of loyalists apparently willing to rush, at a moment’s notice, to her defense. The whole episode was strange enough for me to decide to find out more about her devotees and ask a basic question: Just who are these people, this de-facto Elizabeth Warren Fan Club, and why would they go to such great lengths?
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The first thing that surprised me about the Warren Facebook gurus was that they were by no means the same Internet-savvy millennials that pioneered Obama’s web support in 2008. (Even before getting them on the phone, their profile pictures, as well as the peculiar yet charming reticence of their insults, gave them away.) But my cursory phone survey lent further evidence to the fact that Warren fan clubbers are overwhelmingly 40-plus, boasting a fair number of retirees in their 60s…
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To be sure, it also doesn’t hurt that McHenry appears in many ways the perfect stooge for banking interests. Among his top campaign contributors in 2010 were Wells Fargo, Bank of America and the American Bankers Association. This is not surprising when you consider his district, once blue-collar backcountry, is now becoming a bedroom community for banking-centric Charlotte…
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… Should Warren eventually secure Obama’s nomination, Republicans, no doubt, will publicly denounce the move. But when they do, they’ll have to answer to Warren’s loyal fans, who will be there to defend her honor. “We need Ms. Warren to run the new Consumer Protection Agency,” one devotee wrote on McHenry’s Facebook page. “We need her to protect us from people exactly like you.”
Ms. Tiffany Stanley, reporter, may think of us in terms of our “peculiar yet charming reticence“, but I suspect the Obama administration’s re-election team uses a phrase like “habitual long-term voters”. Rep. McHenry may be, as his disenchanted constituents have informed me, embedded like the bloated tick he so resembles in a safely death-before-Democrats district, but he’s not the person responsible for nominating the head of the CFSB, fortunately.
Yutsano
ZOMG TEH OLD FOLK R ON OUR TWITTERZ!! No one tell poor m_c, she’ll have a conniption over that.
And the fact that Warren has a solid backing in this country gives me more hope than I could have imagined. Her confirmation fight will be epic to the core.
PeakVT
Ugh. Could she pack more condescension into the piece?
Warren Terra
“Tiffany Stanley”, “Reporter”, last seen urging the disrespectful to leave poor Harold Camping alone. And in the process somehow managing to mis-identify Barbara Bradley Hagerty as “Barbara Brown Haggerty”. We should take her seriously because she is employed by “Even The Liberal New Republic” – a magazine that, yes, employs Jonathan Cohn and has employed a string of luminaries, but has also employed Stephen Glass, Ruth Shalit, Michael Kelly, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, and any number of more forgettable fabulists, fantasists, fanatics, plagiarists, and nitwits? A magazine whose major accomplishments of the last two decades were to promote The Bell Curve, to sink Clinton’s health care reform, to root for the installation of George Dubya Bush, and to back the invasion of Iraq?
jeffreyw
This has to gain at least on honorable mention in the BJ tag line Hall of Fame:
Linda Featheringill
:-)
andrewsomething
Posting a comment on Facebook isn’t really that demanding of an activity…
JGabriel
Nice to see the media acknowledge that there are at least some over-60’s not bewitched (sorry Wiccans) by Fox News.
.
Linda Featheringill
Who else is out there telling the world that we have been and are being screwed by the financial sector? And then backing that up with facts and figures? And never stopping?
Nobody but Elizabeth Warren.
And regarding Bloated Tick, he was just rude. That wasn’t necessary. It was low class and juvenile. Not manly at all. And if he is playing switch-and-bait with meeting times and places [especially with minority witnesses], he really is acting juvenile.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Warren Terra: I think the mag has improved markedly since crazy Uncle Marty was essentially put out to a blog-pasture, but this is a remarkably stupid piece. As PeakVT said, it’s all condescension in every direction. Reminds me of David Brooks trying to be funny.
Joel
and people think commenting on blog postings is “nut picking”. hell, these are actually people who are quite reasonably pissed about the current state of affairs; as in, not nuts, yet stanley deems fit to call them such. she should do her penance; ten hail marys and a long-form article on the free republic comments sections.
PS
@andrewsomething: Young fellah, you may not think posting on the Face Book is demanding but those of us … what was I saying?
Linda Featheringill
@PS:
You’re so cute!
driftglass
The author seems oblivious to the fact that large numbers of those “dull bureaucrats, policy wonks, and lawyers” she writes so condescendingly about (“Isn’t it cute? Granny thinks her mouse is a butter churn!”) got into public service because they believed in its mission. And now, after years of Republican administrations who think public service is a joke, public employees are mooching scumbags and government jobs (like, say, running FEMA or rebuilding Iraq) are plums you hand out to frat buddies or the inbred children of major contributors, they have finally found a leader who is smart, articulate and unashamed of being a Liberal.
Fuck yes they’re going to fall on a grenade for her.
khead
@PS:
I was gonna stay off your lawn, but since you can’t remember me….
JCT
@driftglass: This. My oldest is a college junior planning on entering govt/public service for all the right reasons (it’s kind of amazing how many of her classmates are geared up to do the same) and she REVERES Warren.
The funny thing is that this hate for her on the Republican side always reminds me of what they say about how liberals hate Palin…. and I know, I have some penance to do for mentioning those two women in the same sentence.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is one of the weirdest habits of political elites, the mockery of elitism. I’m sure we’re all shocked to learn Ms Stanley is an alumna of Harvard, and probably in her real life has a number of “uninspiring”, middle-aged academics among her fairly recent mentors. But it’s so sophisticated and knowing to make fun of them!
@Linda Featheringill: McHenry and Adam Putnam were two of the loudest chickenhawks in Congress in ’05-’06. Two sad, nasty, little men seemingly determined to act out every left-liberal caricature of Young Republicans
13th Generation
What’s this face-space I keep hearing about?
fasteddie9318
@Yutsano:
Assuming she has one.
13th Generation
@khead
loved your stripes references in previous thread even if no one else got it.
No, we’re not gay, but we are willing to learn!
malraux
Well, you know who those dull bureaucrats inspire a bunch of passion in? Those people working to destroy government. Warren is getting a lot of positive support because she wants the government to work. Why is she getting so much passionate angry by those against her?
Yutsano
@fasteddie9318: Hey it wouldn’t bug me if she were recess appointed. Unless you’re poutraging in advance here.
Mnemosyne
Actually, the quote from Stanley was:
… which is weird in itself. Is she shocked and surprised that people in their 40s and up don’t say, “Fuck you, you motherfucking fuck” when using their real names on the intertubes?
kdaug
@driftglass:
The nexus of the blowback. I don’t think they see what’s coming.
khead
@13th Generation:
“You can’t go. All the plants will die”.
I actually tried that one years ago. She chucked the plant at me.
kdaug
@fasteddie9318:
Ding – recess appointment. Push it.
slag
@driftglass: Although, to be fair, the media has a long vaunted history of treating public service as a joke. Which is one of the many reasons we end up with GW-esque administrations in the first place. It’s a self-propagating clown show. Technical term: Bozosynthesis.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yutsano: I don’t know if this will hold up, but…
13th Generation
@khead
Is this your last beer? We’ll split it!
Yutsano
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought that was only for a week though. There’s a much longer summer break coming up after Independence Day where maintaining that quorum will be much harder. I think Obama is keeping his powder dry until then.
Martin
And this is the variable missing in the left-right spectrum, and certainly by the villagers — competence. Some voters really, really value it. They’re desperate for it in government. That’s why seemingly little things like whether the head of FEMA will be an actual emergency management guy, or a horse show lawyer can have a significant impact not only on how some voters vote, but whether they bother at all.
Sharl
Just to add a bit to @Jim, Foolish Literalist‘s comment at #27, the following comes from a Friday Yves Smith post:
cmorenc
@Annie Laurie:
Patrick McHenry is one of the most colossally stupid, arrogant twits ever to be a member of Congress. For example, his “two-bit security guard” comment said in a childish pique about being denied access to a gym in Iraq by a security contractor.
I would lose no sleep about ANYTHING said by this asshat.
Yutsano
@cmorenc: And of course he’s in a totally safe seat. Fucker.
huckster
@cmorenc: Patrick McHenry is one of the most colossally stupid, arrogant twits ever to be a member of Congress.
Sportello
Shorter EventheliberalNewRepublic:
Elizabeth Warren speaks knowledgeably and directly about complex financial issues. Many people appreciate this. Some of these people remember the Beatles.
khead
@13th Generation:
I’ve always wanted to get in a poker game with Ox, Cruiser, Booger and Takashi.
slag
Actually on-topic: Am I the only person who was unaware that May is Older Americans Month?: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/older-americans-and-the-cfpb/ And are gifts usually exchanged in celebration?
rob!
By God, when did newspaper reporters get this insufferable? As late as the 80s, movies portrayed them as heroes, bravely telling truth to power.
Now they write smug pieces about a group of people being good citizens and asking–without threat of violence–for their government officials to not be impolite assholes.
Violet
@rob!:
Not only that, but they point and laugh because the good citizens didn’t say “fuck.”
El Cid
It certainly is bizarre that not enough attention is being paid to the teen-to-twenties demographic which have such prominent concerns about consumer financial regulation.
The over-40’s should get out of the way and let younger folks express the sorts of enthusiastic pressuring for credit card term simplification or mortgage qualification standards which they grew up with.
Warren Terra
@rob!:
Not a newspaper – The New Republic, an opinion magazine. Not that the distinction excuses an disinterest in substance, of course. And it’s The New Republic that practically invented, or at least systematized, the idea that a reporter should excite the interest of their readers by being superfluously and even willfully obtusely contrarian, as a goal to be pursued for its own sake. Writing that the people who want an informed, energized consumer protection czar are a bunch of boring old stiffs is a bit lowbrow for this contrarian tack, but it’s not really so very surprising.
rob!
@violet
…if maybe they had used threat of violence like the teabaggers do, they would have earned more respect.
@Warren Terra
I should have just said “reporters.” I saw Shattered Glass…
Danny
Rough day. Just got kicked off of FDL by Jane Hamsher in person. She accused me of being a paid DLC stooge… Whatever should I do with my life now?
JCT
@huckster:
That monumental asshat makes me want to burn my medical license.
Speaking of which, for those who have NYT access — check out the article about the changing of the guard in medicine (shedding the Republican/Conservative bias) — 100% true. The increase in the % of women is a huge factor.
Barb (formerly Gex)
IOW: Those uppity citizens are getting in the way of us fabulous people playing with people’s lives for profit.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@JCT: This is why Title IX has to go. That and then we can spend more educational resources on the NFL and NBA minor leagues.
Sly
@Danny:
I guess the DLC is the only outfit that has people working for it after it dissolved. Asinine conspiracism on the part of a political flake is unsurprising.
You can always try and get kicked off HuffPo for
insisting on the scientific credibility of all claims related to human healthbeing a paid “Big Pharma” stooge.Mnemosyne
@Sharl:
Oh, FFS:
Is Smith somehow under the impression that Warren appointed herself as the president’s advisor for the consumer protection bureau without Obama’s knowledge? If not, I have no idea why Obama would need an “out” from appointing her to a position he’s pretty much already given her.
aisce
@Danny:
apparently brag about it to strangers online. so we can give you high fives through the internet? and congratulate you for being just so awesome. because you are. really. i don’t know how the professional left will survive such a humiliating defeat. lady jane of the immaculate poutrage will surely rue the day she tangled with our heroic pal danny here.
Danny
@aisce:
Still butthurt from yesterday huh? I’m not bragging I’m pining for support and a pat on the shoulder. I’m pissed – was being perfectly courteous just not toeing the party line, or perhaps toeing it too much I guess.
hamletta
@Danny: Sit down and drink this fine beer I just bought you.
Danny
@Sly:
Thats the ticket!
Danny
@hamletta:
Yes… A beer would be nice…
PS
@khead: Had to have my nap or I’d have retorted earlier. When it comes to my lawn, it’s up with hose, spray first and sort out the soaking wet intruders later.
aisce
@Danny:
what was yesterday? was it important? sorry dear, you seem not to have left an impression.
i had all sorts of internet high fives ready to go in tribute, but i guess you got the reaction you were looking for after all. enjoy hamletta’s beer. you earned it.
…with your hard work of getting banned from a shitty blog run by a petty woman. accomplishment, your life has it.
Amir_Khalid
Interesting piece. It’s all about Elizabeth Warren having fans! It examines the image that defines her appeal, like she’s a celebrity or something. It looks at the politics behind Republican hostility toward her, and at their chances of blocking her appointment to head the CFPB (curiously, without mentioning that she is herself a Republican).
Why, you’d think it didn’t matter that she’s the leading authority on personal finances in America, that she’s made a career of educating the public about their money, that heading such a bureau is only the logical extension of that career, or that nobody else wants the job because they believe she’s the best possible candidate.
Sharl
@Mnemosyne: Heh, I thought that little phrase might get a response.
I don’t follow Smith enough to know whether that site is a bastion of firebaggery, or whether this is a bit of working-the-refs. I hope the latter, although I don’t think whiney-blogging is gonna do jack. Seeing some creativity among Washington Dems would be nice, vis-a-vis hanging this around the necks of the craven goopers, but I wonder if there is something more substantial we mere rabble can do to back up Warren and the Prez.
Arundel
There was an extremely irritating article in the NYT yesterday by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, about how Warren was somehow the disrespectful one.
“THE denizens of Capitol Hill let out a gasp last week when Elizabeth Warren upended the natural order of things by telling a congressman that his time to question her had run out.”
Gasps! Pearl-clutching!
“Congressman, you are causing problems,” Ms. Warren declared; Mr. McHenry, in not so many words, responded by calling her a liar. The upshot was a city abuzz with tsk-tsking, and in some quarters applause, at a bureaucrat’s brazen violation of a cardinal rule of the Capitol Hill etiquette book: the Congressman Is Always Right.”
Never mind that Mchenry had sent Warren’s aides on a wild goose chase as to themeeting, never mind that McHenry had already called Warren a liar earlier in an interview. No, Warren according to Stolberg is a “divisive” figure, disrespectful of the Republican congressman calling her a liar, baselessly. Hence, Warren probably hates America. God.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/weekinreview/29etiquette.html?ref=weekinreview
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sharl:
I had to bite my virtual tongue. Like you, I don’t follow Smith, but for me, and I don’t think I’m alone, that reflexive petulance just undermines the credibility of the people who indulge in it.
As to what can be done, I can’t think of anything more than contacting Senators. I don’t know which, if any, Republicans are movable, or if any are friendlier to Warren. I’d guess that Dems from NY, NJ and CT could use some spine-stiffening phone calls
aimai
@Amir_Khalid:
Its always considered risible when a large group of people start to pay attention to politics, watch hearings, and notify their representatives about their feelings on a political matter. At least, its considered funny if you aren’t wearing a 17th century costume or waving a gun or riding on a harley.
aimai
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@aimai: Josh Marshall said this a couple years ago: The Cokie Roberts/David Gregory types consider it vaguely embarrassing that the plebes in Flyoverland actually care about policy, they’re confused by the notion that what Congress does affects people’s lives.
In a similar vein, a few years back Joe Klein was being interviewed about “new media’ and he literally laughed at the notion that anyone could tell him anything about politics, when he had “thirty-eight years of experience” as a reporter, and you really had to hear the way he said 38 years, as if it were unanswerable. It was around the time he was defending his expertise on national security based on some lie that rightwing nutbag Pete Hoekstra had fed him. Klein makes himself a target, but that arrogance is pervasive amongst the Gasbags.
Sko Hayes
I don’t know why she’s surprised that “older” people use the internet, or is it because they use Facebook? Some of my older friends use FB even more than the younger set.
After all, the tubes have been around going on 30 years now, I am actually more shocked when I meet people my age that don’t have internet access or a computer these days.
Sharl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree with you that the phrase comes off as petulant. I almost did the magical elide thang on it, so it wouldn’t distract from other content, but decided it would be more honest to leave the entire block quote intact.
Not being much of a reader of Yves Smith, I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, by presuming that what appeared to be petulance might in fact be great frustration, and perhaps a bit of fear that Warren might withdraw, or Obama might waver in his support.
The depth of corruption and co-opting of Congress by Big Money – implacable enemies to Warren (and the nation, IMO) – gives some cause for concern. Hell, Goodwin Liu finally bowed out of his nomination to a federal judgeship after it was clear Senate Republicans would never approve him, and his appointment wasn’t nearly as feared as Warren’s by the Powers That Be.
AAA Bonds
McHenry is a shit.
fasteddie9318
@Yutsano:
Doesn’t look like there’s going to be an official “recess” in which to appoint her, so that’s not it. Poutrage? That implies I showed any emotion over the possibility they won’t nominate her. I showed no such thing. But the possibility certainly does exist that they won’t nominate her.
Fluffy
@aimai: Its always considered risible when a large group of people start to pay attention to politics, watch hearings, and notify their representatives about their feelings on a political matter.
Especially middle aged adults who’ve been repeatedly screwed out of hundreds or thousands of hard earned dollars. After all, if we can’t stomach paying for services that are functionally rescinded after payment by fine print and forced binding arbitration….. it must be our own faults.
Media people can’t truly afford to ignore these issues. But they hope that they’ll someday be able to afford the disdain if they try loudly enough.
Chuck Butcher
Let’s see, she’s a smart clear spoken woman who seems quite capable and not in the banksters’ pockets – what’s not to hate if you’re a GOPer.
Suffern ACE
@Chuck Butcher: Or for that matter, the national media. Doesn’t she know that she should be approaching politics like it was an extension of the Style section?
tkogrumpy
@PS: I resemble that remark!
PS
@tkogrumpy: The funny thing is, I was semi-serious — I have to go on FB occasionally to post some work stuff and I find it confusing, despite or because of my experience that stretches back to the days before GUI interfaces.
Nutella
@JCT:
Everyone has NYT access. If you get the “To keep reading, sign up today” message and don’t want to sign up, just edit the address.
The address bar of your browser shows the address starting with “http://www.nytimes.com” and ending with “&gwh=some-long-code”. Edit the address to remove “&gwh” and everything after it and you’re in.