I had just gotten through writing my article, "Calling Elizabeth Warren, 'Pocahontas' is the Best Way to Fight Racism." I wasn't expecting the Daily Show to pick up the same material.
The official party line is that Elizabeth Warren is a prog hero and that questioning her fake claims to be a minority is racism. Looks like Trevor Noah didn't get the memo.
“When he says ‘Pocahontas,’ you might be thinking, ‘Trevor, I’m confused. Is Elizabeth Warren Native American?'” Noah asked. “And you see, that’s the question. Because for a long time, she said she was.”
He then played numerous news clips that explain that without any proof, Warren claimed to have Native American heritage and that minority status helped her get a job at Harvard University, which they touted their “diversity” with her employment.
“Wow,” Noah reacted. “How white is your college that when you get called out for being too white, your response is, ‘Nuh-uh, we’ve got her!'”
He then mocked her recipe contributions to a 1984 Native American cookbook called Pow Wow Chow and pointed out that the New England Genealogical Society found “no proof” that Warren had Native American lineage, which Noah called “problematic” because she wrote for Pow Wow Chow.
“I mean, that would be like finding out I’m completely white, I have no African blood, and yet I wrote the book Snacks For Blacks,” Noah quipped.
Noah concluded that while Trump “is racist,” but he’s hitting Warren for saying she’s Native American when she wasn’t, something he noted she “never apologized for or owned up to.”
“Elizabeth Warren did something problematic, the kind of thing we rightfully call each other out for every single day,” Noah continued. “So as weird as it is to say, in his own racially offensive way, Donald Trump was being woke. Yeah, and that’s unfortunately the truth.”
What can I say, except, "Well yeah."
We've been saying that one for a while. Is this a sign of a shift? Probably not. I don't see the more formally party left shows being willing to go there. Don't expect Samantha Bee, John Oliver or the rest of the Mini-Jons to criticize racist behavior by one of their icons. Noah is South African and has a history of approaching American politics from a skewed outsider's angle.
Warren is still a likely 2020 candidate. And that means touching her is risky. And, like Hillary, addressing one lie, opens up all the other frauds at the heart of what Warren is.
Warren was a Republican before she turned Socialist. Before she was fighting corporations, she was helping corporations deny compensation to asbestos victims. And before she was protesting the high cost of education, Harvard Law was paying her $350,000 to teach a single course. A multinational corporation owned by billionaires then gave her a $525,000 advance to tell her tale of rising from “poverty” to fight for ordinary people who don’t get their own chair funded by Wall Street lawyers.
It would take a heart of stone not to make Pocahontas jokes about a blue-eyed scam artist so shameless she passed herself off as Harvard Law School's "first woman of color." A grifter whose campaign tried to prove she was really Indian by citing the work of her cousin who wrote the ‘Pow Wow Chow’ cookbook containing such authentic Indian recipes as Cold Omelets with Crab Meat and Mexican Oatmeal Soup.
Unfortunately the Cold Omelets with Crab Meat recipe turned out to be plagiarized from the braves of the New York Times. Warren’s Cherokee claims are as fake as her outrage over being exposed as a liar.