New video from the Boston Globe -- Behind the scenes with Dr. Warren
It's the year end so we're getting more of these made public. This honor at least was heartily deserved. A feisty (yet polite) graceful, academic-civil servant who effectively utilized the only weapon she was handed (in fact, 'not handed') by Congress: the media bully pulpit. She was given a grand title and little else. The rest was pure moxie.
Most of all, we thank her for being what we wished we could have been ourselves -- that is, a huge pain in Tim Geithner's ass.
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It seemed as if the banks and other firms got a $700 billion bonanza and the American taxpayer got the shaft. But along came this straight-shooting Harvard professor to oversee the bailout, someone who pledged to look out for the middle class and brought a sense of sanity to the economic crisis. For this we give her our top honors this year.
There are many ways to become our Bostonian of the Year. You could be one of the nation’s preeminent bankruptcy scholars, and a tenured professor of law at Harvard University, and a talking head for Frontline specials and Michael Moore’s latest documentary, and a leading voice decrying the human cost of the current economic morass, and the chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the TARP that covers a multitude of financial sins. The panel keeps an eye on how the nation’s banks have spent the taxpayer money shoveled into them in the fall of 2008, as well as the destination of the rest of the $700 billion allocated by the government when the economy seemed on the verge of swallowing itself whole. This can set you at odds with secretaries of the Treasury, various ambitious legislators, and laissez-faire economic fundamentalists. Elizabeth Warren has done all that, and has done as much to earn the title Bostonian of the Year as has anyone who was born and raised in Oklahoma. But she has one even more essentially Bostonian accomplishment on her considerable resume -- she once shut up basketball fans in Philadelphia.
One night about two decades ago, she and her husband, Bruce Mann, who also teaches at Harvard Law, were attending a game between the 76ers and Warren’s beloved Houston Rockets. (Warren taught at the University of Houston when Hakeem Olajuwon played for a Cougars team memorably dubbed “Phi Slama Jama” for its dunking prowess.) “So Elizabeth is up, cheering, yelling at the ref,” Mann recalls. “And the crowd around is getting kind of, well, restive. They’re saying, ‘Hey, lady, you’re not from around here, are you?’ ” Finally, one of the burlier gentlemen in Warren’s section inquired why she was so passionate about the Rockets. Warren explained her background in Houston. He then determined to quiz her on her bona fides.
Who was the coach of that team, he asked her.
Guy V. Lewis, she answered.
What was his trademark, he asked her.
He carried around a checkered towel, she answered.
(Warren was being kind here. Lewis’s most conspicuous trademark was his staggering incompetence in big games.)
Satisfied, the man sat down and Warren went back to being loud. Gradually, the crowd began to get audibly impatient with her again. Suddenly, the large gentleman stood up and addressed his colleagues.
“Leave the lady alone,” he told them. “She’s got history.”
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Continue reading (there's much more) at the Boston Globe >>
