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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA girl who soared, but longed to belong (Elizabeth Warren)
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/02/12/girl-who-soared-but-longed-belong/rx59B8AcqsZokclyJXkg7I/story.html
Elizabeth Warren grew up amid the infinite expanse of Oklahoma, the finite expectations of her place and time, and financial pain at home. The lessons of those years still drive her.
By Noah Bierman | Globe Staff
February 12, 2012
VIDEO: http://bcove.me/d5ojwpi2
First in a series of occasional articles examining the life stories and careers of the Massachusetts candidates for US Senate.
OKLAHOMA CITY - The father and daughter had an unspoken arrangement. Her classmates would not see the car. He would drop her off a block away from Northwest Classen High School, so they wouldnt notice that things had gone down.
For a teenage Elizabeth Warren, then known as Liz Herring, the old off-white Studebaker was the most tangible sign that her family was struggling to maintain the trappings of middle-class life that marked Oklahoma City in the early 1960s.
The air-conditioned bronze Oldsmobile that had once ferried her to high school was gone - lost when the family stopped making payments after her father had a heart attack and got demoted to a job that paid much less.
Her mother had gone back to work to keep the family afloat, but she resented having to do so and wasnt shy about saying so. Money, or the want of it, was suddenly a source of pain, acid in the air.
FULL story at link.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)Thanks for sharing it.
Omaha Steve
(99,878 posts)Glad you found us.
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)virgogal
(10,178 posts)I had grown up the way she did I would have felt affluent.She was ashamed of her house and one of their cars.
And her attitude towards her ex classmates is elititst and snobby.
I
pnwmom
(109,025 posts)she was far less well off.
If you had grown up in a situation where your father had lost his job and taken a huge pay cut; your mother was bitter about having to go back to work; and your parents let you know that you might have to leave your high school because of their finances -- and everyone around you seemed much much better off, I doubt that you would have felt "affluent."
That's an adult perspective, thinking about the larger world, not a child's.
virgogal
(10,178 posts)cold water flat. No car,ever.
Everyone around me was better off,and some of them are still friends.I did not cut them out of my life.
To live in a single house was my goal in life.
It was a most unflattering article.
pnwmom
(109,025 posts)For all we know, some of them could have ostracized her as a debate "nerd."
Lots of people grew up worse than she did. That doesn't mean that -- as a child living in quite ordinary circumstances, with less than most of her classmates -- she should have felt "affluent."
Her family had descended on the economic ladder, and they were constantly worried about falling farther. They were hardly affluent.
renate
(13,776 posts)... is much more about how we perceived it at the time than how it actually was.
Mass
(27,315 posts)CTyankee
(63,926 posts)not the only young girls and women who had to face this kind of dilemma. It is comforting to me to know that she experienced something I immediately identified with. I was there once and I know what it feels like.
Mass
(27,315 posts)I dont know, but how does being ashamed of your parents become a plus. Poor baby, she was not as rich as her classmates. It would seem that, with her father having a heart attack, the worry for her father should show. Now, I understand that teenagers could feel this, but you could expect somewhere something that tells us she regrets this. Nothing.
I read the piece this morning and consider it a character assassination going right into the RW memes of class envy, and given the deep love of the Boston Globe for our junior senator, this would not be surprising. What I find more puzzling is why the campaign considers this as positive.
virgogal
(10,178 posts)posted earlier in the thread her life would have been considered well off for me when I was growing up.
The article oozed self pity.
Strange,and I was going to vote for her.
pnwmom
(109,025 posts)I didn't see that at all -- just empathy for the financial difficulties most families have.
I think you're also not taking into account the effect her mother's anger must have had on her.
From the link at the OP:
I knew to my bones he was humiliated by what he couldnt do, she said. My mother made it clear that he had failed. She was not hesitant about saying any part of this at full throat. She would really hammer him about this and he never, ever, ever fought back, pushed back, said anything. He just pulled more within himself.
Warren didnt intervene. She stayed out of the way, so her mother wouldnt yell at her. She clenched her teeth so as not to let on that she was scared.
My mother was really angry, she said. She felt like she had been cheated. She had made a deal in life and it hadnt worked out that way.
Mass
(27,315 posts)There is nothing new in this piece for anybody who actually looked at whom she is. But you could have thought a positive piece would show how she changed, not just who she was as a kid.
pnwmom
(109,025 posts)I think she was worried, more than ashamed. But virtually all teenagers are unhappily self-conscious at least some of the time, and this carries over to their feelings about the their families.
How do you know she wasn't worried about her father?
Mass
(27,315 posts)She probably was worried, but the article makes her look like a self-centered teen and nothing else. I do not see it as a positive piece. And I do not see this piece playing well in MA, which I suspect is why it was written, given the passive aggressive style the Globe reporters have been using when talking about Democrats. I personally could not care less about what she was like a teen as long as she beats Brown (whose story as a poor kid is worse than hers). She may not have been my dreamed candidate and I wished we actually have had a primary, but she is definitively better than this idiot. But the piece is not good.
pnwmom
(109,025 posts)and the whole family afraid of what would happen to them next, how would she have been expected to act?
Mass
(27,315 posts)Starting by the title "who wanted to belong". Even if the article is factual, the presentation is going to the RW meme of class envy, and presents her as bitter. Yes, I could understand she felt this way, but, just as virgogal, I really thought it was a hit piece when I read this yesterday morning. Feel free to consider it as a positive piece if you want.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)I think she "get's it" which is very unusual these days.
Brownie is on his way out.
zacherystaylor
(98 posts)I don't doubt that she is much better than Scott Brown but I still have serious doubts about her. She became a shoe in for the nominee thanks to all the attention that she received from the Mass Media and the establishment seems to have shut out all other contenders without much if any input from the majority of the voters before the primary was even held.
I would have no problem with this story if it was also accompanied by a serious effort to adress the major issues that any candidate should be addressing but that isn't happening.
Instead Elizabeth Warren is criticizing the money race and leading the pack at the same time which should raise doubts.
If anyone is interested I went into more detail in Elizabeth Warren is NOT as sincere as she appears!!