Elizabeth Warren Says She Registered as Part Native American for the 'Luncheons

Massachusetts' presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, Elizabeth Warren, provides perhaps the purest example of an Occupy-style politician currently available on the scene. Having been one of the most vigorous promoters of higher taxes on the rich, and having sprung fresh from a career as a Harvard academic into being a Government bureaucrat, Warren is what many progressives think the American Dream looks like.

And the fact that she's part Native American only adds to the inspirational--wait, what?

Okay, so she really, really doesn't look the part of someone with tribal heritage. Which has some commentators wondering whether the lily white Warren used her supposed Native American ancestry (she claims to be part Cherokee) as a technicality to improve her capacity to get career advancement.

Warren, of course, denies doing any such thing. She apparently believes being 1/32 Cherokee is still good enough to merit minority status. Not only that, but according to her, the reason she registered as a minority was specifically to meet other people "like her." The Weekly Standard brings us her explanation:

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, fending off questions about whether she used her Native American heritage to advance her career, said today she enrolled herself as a minority in law school directories for nearly a decade because she hoped to meet other people with tribal roots.

“I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am. Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off,” said Warren.

Without passing judgment on Warren's stated motivation, one imagines those luncheons would have probably been fairly awkward. Presumably, most of the people attending would have been more than 1/32 Native American.