Warren faces down Misogynist Heckler
Posted: November 3, 2011 Filed under: Women's Rights | Tags: Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts 24 CommentsA video has emerged of Elizabeth Warren being called a “socialist whore” by an unemployed tea party activist who also manages to get in a birther meme at the same 
time. Ms. Warren stayed classy.
Moments into a speech before volunteers here Wednesday evening, Elizabeth Warren was interrupted by a Tea Party supporter who hurled a gender-based epithet at the Senate candidate. The man, who said he’d been unemployed since February 2010, objected to Warren’s expressed affiliation with the frustrations of Occupy Wall Street, and argued that the Tea Party has been protesting Wall Street excess for longer than the nascent global movement.
The crowd tried to shout the man down, but Warren told her supporters to let him speak. “No, no, it’s alright. Let me say two things,” she said. “I’m very sorry that you’ve been out of work. I’m also very sorry that the recent jobs bill that would’ve brought 22,000 jobs to Massachusetts did not pass in the Senate.”
Speaking in a packed VFW hall, Warren went on to address his question about her association with Occupy Wall Street. “I’ve been protesting what’s been going on on Wall Street for a very long time,” she said, but added that the movement has its own independent agenda and will proceed along its own course.
“Yeah, so has the Tea Party,” the man said, before losing his cool.
“Well, if you’re the intellectual creator of that so-called party,” he said, “you’re a socialist whore. I don’t want anything to do with you.” The crowd shouted him down as he added that Warren’s “boss,” presumably referring to the president, was “foreign-born.” He then attempted to storm out through a side door. Finding it locked, he retreated out the back of the VFW hall instead.
In April, before President Obama released his “long form” birth certificate, 43 percent of Republicans said that the president was either definitely or probably born in a foreign country, according to a Gallup survey. After he released the birth certificate, the number dropped, but still held at roughly one in four when polled in May.
Warren took the challenge in stride. “So, we are here to do work, and I think we have a reminder that we have a lot of work to do,” she said as the heckler struggled with the door.
You can watch the video over at HuffPost. Warren sympathized with the man’s unemployment situation and talks about her efforts to restrain Wall Street before he goes off on her. The meeting was held in Brockton, Mass and was supposed to be for volunteers. It was obviously an ambush.
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She handled it like the professional that she is and even went further in trying to hear him, unlike the GOP Tea Party candidates that had people arrested for speaking or asking a question.
Why on earth would he show up at a volunteer meeting and then spew such hatred? She handled it really well. The man is obviously upset from his long term unemployment situation but why do this?
Because he’s a woman hating and liberal hating piece of crap.
I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true.
Just think, if he wasn’t getting unemployment insurance and probably other assistance he’d probably be living under a bridge somewhere. The irony here is just unreal. Then again, everyone of them I talk to seem to have no problem lambasting the programs they use to survive.
I thought she handled the situation very well. She was courteous and respectful, even though he was not. That ugliness–socialist whore–comes right from talk radio and the GOP’s obsession with the all things left of center meme. How anyone can defend the zombie banks after what they’ve done to the country and the world is really beyond me.
I wish I lived in MA. It would be so nice to have a candidate to believe in and support. Really encouraging to see the number of volunteers in the room. They’ve got a winner. But the ugliness will no doubt continue.
I am glad you wrote about this Dak, the whole thing looks like a set up to me…
He obviously showed up to corner her. I just watched that south park episode on why men get angry …
The T.M.I. episode?
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e04-tmi
yup, that one!!!
Love the tea bags hanging off the hat!
Yup … And the wigger too…very funny.
for sure.
She’s got a ton of class. That guy is a real creep.
Liz Warren for President
People don’t understand what’s going on with this country. Hell. I don’t understand with this country. I am sure that my male Republican congressman is a whore. I think it’s a rather nice word for a politician, because they hold no promise of pleasure for me.
This woman is the deal when placed in the light of this obscene reality show election. I wish our media lens could focus on well-meaning people like Ms. Warren who want to get into politics and make a difference rather than black-faced grotesques like Uncle Cain, jolly cowboy idiot executioners appointed by “He Whose Name Shall Not Be Said,” totally batshit insane harpies with closet case spouses and some utterly incompetent but harmless cult member who wears magic underwear. Then we have Barry. Oh well. Then again IF the media DID focus on such ideal candidates, they would have a very slow news day.
I just don’t buy it………the whore calling, because of the orgin of the word, it is degrading and it is more than not directed to women…………somebody can package it and put it on another planet. I am rather sick of the way men are spinning words, like redefining the word rape.
This guy acted extremely badly, but it bothers me that HP went right to birther issue. It’s classic Strategic Hate Management (h/t votermom). As if that’s the key issue here–whether the guy thinks Obama was born in the US. Not whether he or Warren or OWS are right that we’ve ALL been screwed over by the 1% (including Obama), or that the reason that his outburst is ridiculous is that OWS, Warren and the Tea Party are all protesting the same thing (in this context). If people didn’t have so many reasons to be angry and fearful about their economic security, the birther stuff would just be a small handful of crazies everyone could ignore.
It’s Warren who not only acted classily, but who has captured the right way to think about the angry guy’s attack:
Do you really believe the Tea Party is protesting the same things as OWS? I see the Tea Party as mostly focused on cutting taxes, along with social issues like abortion and gay marriage. I’ve never been to a Tea Party meeting obviously, but the candidates they support reflect these preoccupations.
I do think the birther issue matters, because if 40% of Americans (including me) believed the president is illegitimate, that certainly undermines our entire system. It was the same under GW Bush. Large parts of the electorate saw Bush as appointed by the SCOTUS, and thus illegitimate. These ways of perceiving are very powerful in dividing the electorate.
The Tea Party is very ticked off about Wall St being bailed out instead of Main St. And a lot of the anger over taxes is coming from the same source — they see the government as responsible for the totally crap state the economy is in. They’re angry about many other things too, and of course they disagree totally about the cure for the economy. But Warren gets it right — the rightwing propaganda is aimed at focusing their anger away from the actual perpetrators (the 1% in OWS terms) and into other avenues — anything but where it belongs. Ignore the man behind the curtain.
I know a lot of people who are not Tea Partiers exactly, but who I’d call “Tea Party Adjacent.” And they totally feel like they’re getting screwed in this economy. They’re worried, fearful and angry, and they are right to be those things. Which is what OWS is saying.
It’s not that I think the birther issue is unimportant overall, but that it’s not important to this exchange. Of all the people in that room who agreed with Warren, there’s probably a good 10% who also believe some other random, crazy for which they have no evidence — in UFOs, that measle shots cause autism, that their cat is talking to them whatever. But that has nothing to do with whether we’re getting effed over by Big Banks and Big Corporate Donors, or whether it’s legit to be angry about it. Or if you turn it around — take the same guy who believes Obama was born outside the US — but imagine that he supported Warren. (I have read that at least the NY OWS has included some Tea Partiers, so it’s not out of imagination). Would anyone care then what he thinks about Obama’s BC?
And I do really think that zombie lies like the BC issue thrive in times of extreme stress and fear. So if the economy were humming along and most people felt positive not only about their present economic security but their future security, the birther propaganda would not have caught nearly as much traction as it has (same for Obama being a socialist). It would still be around probably but it would not have gained that 40%. The anti-tax crazies have been around for a long, long time, but it has only been since the economy crashed that they’ve gained a huge following.
And I think that’s the lesson of OWS — or the one I draw from the 99% thing — that we are ALL getting screwed. And focusing on how that group over there is totally wrong or crazy about an unrelated thing just distracts from that. It amps up the tribalism and downplays any points of commonality which could be used to join people together to disempower the 1%. The thing is, it’s really hard to do what Warren seems to have done — feel empathy for this guy who attacked her, and it’s really easy for us (and I totally include myself there) to spend energy making fun of this guy for his and others’ ridiculous beliefs.
I’m not making fun of the guy, and I do have empathy for anyone who is struggling in this economy. Calling a woman candidate a “whore” isn’t a real good way to express the pain, but I still feel sorry for him.
Do you have any evidence of the Tea Party actually focusing on Wall Street as the source of our problems though? Again, I don’t know any Tea Partiers, but that hasn’t been the focus of any of those that I’ve seen or heard interviewed on TV or radio. If they agree with the notion that 1% of the population is screwing the rest of us, why didn’t they support ending the Bush tax cuts for the richest among us?
IMHO, the Tea Party movement is terribly flawed, because it is bankrolled by people like the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey, who are simply using people’s sincere grievances to manipulate them. The objections to TARP and the stimulus were based on opposition to any government spending rather than on Wall Street corruption.
People need to be open to understanding the facts if they want to change things. I can see shared grievances between liberals and the Tea Party, but if they don’t see the similarities and they focus more on Obama being somehow evil incarnate and on controlling women’s bodies, then how can we work together?
I’m open to the idea. We ARE all getting screwed. But it’s the old “voting against your best interest” problem. The candidates the Tea Party elected are supportive of Wall Street and aren’t interested in creating jobs.
There was an enornmous amount of anger from the TPers over the couple of exec compensation blowups, and there was a very strong anti-TARP, anti-bank-bailout reaction from who I would consider “proto-Tea Partiers.” Esp. on TARP — for some reason I ended up reading a bunch of conservative sources at the time and people were way ticked off about it. Plus I’ve heard plenty of animosity personally toward Wall Street because they seem to be getting all the money (what’s left). The Main St not Wall St thing is definitely not confined to people who consider themselves left, or Democrats.
I don’t mean that the TP is running around all supportive of of OWS — for the most part, they’re the opposite, because OWS is (unfortunately) widely perceived as being some sort of Obama-supporting hippie thing (and other reasons).
The TP was not created by Koch brothers. The early TPers were mostly an actual grassroots movement, but 1%ers like the Koch Bros moved in pretty early and all of a sudden the TP lost their rough-sounding animosity toward govt and taxes and turned into the classic rightwing crazy propaganda channel. The reason (I think) they are so anti-tax is because they really feel that the government is taking “their” money away from them and giving it to other people. Which is actually true, it’s just that in addition to resenting the Wall St giveaways, they are also channeling classic rightwing propaganda about their tax money going to all those “undeserving” people. In a funny way, they are consistent in their principles in opposing tax hikes for the rich because they are against all tax hikes, period.
I read an early TP “manifesto” online somewhere (I have no memory of where and of course it’s impossible to find amid all the TP crap online now) which amazed me because among the recitations of their grievances, I found a lot of things I basically agreed with — corporate bailouts and general corp greed among them. Of course their solutions weren’t anything I agreed with, or for the most, their analysis of source of the solutions. And it talked almost exclusively about economic issues — nothing about social issues (except I do thinkt here was some 2nd Amendment stuff in there). I think a lot of people who are attracted to the TP overlap with hardcore rightwingers who are also anti-choice and religious fundamentalists, but that doesn’t mean that the latter two things define them as a group.
I am not putting this very well. But remember when Palin came out with her anti-corporate stuff and people went crazy about it? That’s really the same thing — it was a big hit with just the people you’d think it would NOT have been. Of course what Palin was saying was like that TP manifesto I was talking about — she had it right, except where she had it wrong.
Ugh, I’m late and I have to run but I think this is a really interesting topic because the success of we 99%ers (I feel) is dependent on figuring out some way for all of the 99% to really feel like we are all on the same team and not letting the two legacy parties push their tribalistic kabuki on us. But the tribal propaganda has a huge head start. I am just really glad Warren didn’t react by making fun of the angry guy with some snappy sound bit or anything. I guess it’s the difference between condeming his anger and condemning the way he expressed his anger. Of course his behavior was totally unacceptable. But it’s important to be able to see past that part and ask what’s creating the anger.
Also — real quick — I always wonder about how true the media images created about the TPers are. There are a million examples, but remember howback with early PUMA, all the articles about PUMA portrayed them as either a bunch of bitter feminist b*tches or (mostly from the left) Republican rat-f*ckers? I think the media always, always puts the most extreme version of whatever on camera.
I don’t mean I think they are really all cuddly bunnies or anything, but just that whenever a particular media picture gets constructed around any group which is amazing conforming to one kind of narrative, I’m very suspicious.
Valhalla wrote:
I agree that it would be great if the 99% could unite to take back the country. This is the same problem the peace movement had in the ’60s–perceiving people who are really on your side as the enemy. Unfortunately, the left was not good at communicating with the working class people they supposedly wanted to “help,” and lots of those working class people voted for Nixon and later Reagan.
An even bigger problem we’re going to have is getting the 51% of the population that is female included in the “99%.”