Are you prepared, Bernie Quigley?
Are you prepared for your inevitable coronation as national laughingstock?
Bernie Quigley of The Hill has written himself into the laughstock status by his incredibly laughable excuse for Elizabeth Warren's false claim to be part Indian. According to Quigley, paleface Warren really wasn't lying about her ancestry. Why? I have placed Quigley's bizarre rationale below the fold so you have a chance to put down your drinks to prevent the drenching of your monitors when you read it:
...Warren's claim to be "part Indian" is correct in mythical terms.
So is this "fake but accurate" as Dan Rather would describe it? Not quite. It seems to be "fake but mythical" as proclaimed by Quigley.
And now let us enjoy the entertaining Quigley comedy as he expains his "mythical terms" reasoning:
...In the heartland it is almost universal for those who have been there for a few generations to claim Indian blood; that is, to wish it were there even if it isn't. It is not so much a lie as it is the acculturation of personal and regional American myth; the fabric of old-soul American consciousness.
So it's not a lie to benefit from affirmative action goodies based on a false claim of Indian heritage? And now Quigley explains how it is not a lie to lie:
So Warren's claim to be "part Indian" is correct in mythical terms. Every old-school white Oklahoman is in this regard even if this in nominally not true. But it is not a lie to want to be Indian and to imagine your ancestors were. It is to be free of Europeanism.
Quigley adds to his unintended humor with a portrait of Warren as the noble unsavage:
Warren in that regard brings a fresh, classical Americanism from the heartland back to us in Boston where we still have tendencies. The James brothers, both William and Henry, would appreciate it. Henry in particular, in The Bostonians, could only find one worthy character up here, the country cousin Basil Ransom, a lawyer visiting from Mississippi. We are lucky to have Warren among us. She adds stock and substance.
Finally Quigley hopes that Warren doubles down on her Indian claim because she is somehow validated by the mere desire to be Indian:
And I hope Elizabeth Warren doesn't back down on this, because wanting to be Indian, like Hawkeye, makes us in a deeper sense fully American.
And I hope Bernie Quigley doesn't back down on his article because he really is a laughingstock...and not just in "mythical terms."
