Elizabeth Warren's Tribe, and Mine : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News

I can really identify with with Elizabeth Warren, the self-governing Massachusetts Senate candidate who may owe her connection with Harvard to the school's belief that she was Native American. I don't say this because I'm a particularly empathetic person. I say it because I may owe my connection with Harvard to the school's belief that I was Native American.

It seems that the school started claiming it had a Native American on the law faculty when Warren arrived as a visiting professor in 1992 and kept doing so once she got a tenured job.
The claim strikes some people as odd, since she doesn't look Indian, doesn't have an Indian person's name, didn't grow up on a reservation and is not a registered member of any tribe. But Warren says it has long been a part of family lore.
_She had said she was not conscious the university was identifying her as a minority, but after weeks of unflattering publicity, she issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging she had told Harvard officials she had Cherokee roots. She also says -- and school officials confirm -- that her purported ethnic makeup played no role in her hiring, even though Harvard was under pressure to boost its minority numbers.
I can only say I have good reason to prefer Warren's version. Back in 1971, in my senior year of high school, I took the SAT. When the results came, they included my score along with name, birth date, home address and the like. There was also a line for ethnicity -- and mine was "American Indian."
This came as a surprise to me, a green-eyed Presbyterian suburbanite with an English name. Now, it's true that, like Warren, my relatives have been known to say there was a Cherokee way back on our family tree, but it's one of those things that no one has ever bothered to verify for fear that it might be untrue.
I got a laugh out of my racial classification but figured it was a harmless clerical error. I didn't know how I could get the SAT folks to correct the mistake, which didn't seem worth the trouble anyway. I went ahead with my college applications, and the following April, I found myself unexpectedly admitted to the Harvard class of 1976.
Unlike Warren, I never told anyone at Harvard about my great-uncle Runs Screaming from the Room. After applying, I had to undergo an interview with a local alum, who didn't ask me if I was Indian. I may have figured the answer was obvious and that the admissions folks were smart enough -- I mean, this is Harvard, right? -- to realize I wasn't.

Media Social Gossip

National Spelling Bee Winner: Snigdha Nandipati Wins 2012 Scripps Competition (PHOTOS) : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News

Snigdha Nandipati heard a few words she didn't know during the National Spelling Bee, but never when she stepped to the microphone.
Calm and collected throughout, the 14-year-old from San Diego spelled "guetapens," a French-derived word that means ambush, snare or trap, to win the 85th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night. She beat out eight other finalists in the nerve-wracking, brain-busting competition.
After she spelled the word, she looked from side to side, as if unsure her accomplishment was real, and, oddly, she was not immediately announced as the winner. Applause built slowly, and a few pieces of confetti trickled out before showering her. Then her 10-year-old brother ran on stage and embraced her, and she beamed.
"I knew it. I'd seen it before," Nandipati said of the winning word. "I just wanted to ask everything I could before I started spelling."
A coin collector and Sherlock Holmes fan, Nandipati aspires to become a physician or neurosurgeon. She also plays violin and is fluent in Telugu, a language spoken in southeastern India.
A semifinalist last year, Nandipati became the fifth consecutive Indian-American winner and 10th in the last 14 years, a run that began in 1999 when Nupur Lala won and was later featured in the documentary "Spellbound."
Wearing a white polo shirt with a gold necklace peeking out of the collar, the bespectacled, braces-wearing teen never showed much emotion while spelling, working her way meticulously through each word. Only a few of the words given to other spellers were unfamiliar to her, she said.
Her brother and parents joined her onstage after the victory, along with her maternal grandparents, who traveled from Hyderabad, India, to watch her. At one point as she held the trophy aloft, her brother, Sujan, pushed the corners of her mouth apart to broaden her smile.
Her father, Krishnarao, said Snigdha first showed an interest in spelling as early as age 4. As she rode in the car, he would call out the words he saw on billboards and she would spell them.
In the run-up to the bee, Nandipanti studied 6 to 10 hours a day on weekdays and 10-12 hours on weekends – a regimen that she'll need to maintain to get through medical school, her father said.
"She says this is harder than being a neurosurgeon – maybe," said her mother, Madhavi.
Stuti Mishra of West Melbourne, Fla., finished second after misspelling "schwarmerei" – which means excessive, unbridled enthusiasm. While many spellers pretend to write words with their fingers, the 14-year-old Mishra had an unusual routine – she mimed typing them on a keyboard. Nandipanti and Mishra frequently high-fived each other after spelling words correctly during the marathon competition.
Coming in third for the second consecutive year was Arvind Mahankali of Bayside Hills, N.Y. At 12, the seventh-grader was the youngest of the nine finalists. He has one more year of eligibility remaining, and he pledged to return.
"I got eliminated both times by German words," Mahankali said. "I know what I have to study."
Nandipati's prize haul includes $30,000 in cash, a trophy, a $2,500 savings bond, a $5,000 scholarship, $2,600 in reference works from the Encyclopedia Britannica and an online language course.
The week began with 278 spellers, including the youngest in the history of the competition – 6-year-old Lori Anne Madison of Lake Ridge, Va. The field was cut to 50 semifinalists after a computer test and two preliminary rounds, and Lori Anne was two misspelled words away from a semifinal berth. The tiny, blue-eyed prodigy said she'd be back next year.
The highest-placing international speller was Gifton Wright of Spanish Town, Jamaica, who tied for fourth. This week, Scripps announced tentative plans for a world spelling bee with teams of spellers from dozens of countries. Once that gets off the ground, the National Spelling Bee would be closed to international participants.
Also tied for fourth were Nicholas Rushlow of Pickerington, Ohio, and Lena Greenberg of Philadelphia. The excitable Greenberg, a crowd favorite who ran delightedly back to her chair after each correct word, pressed her hands to her face and exclaimed, "Oh! Oh!" when she was eliminated.
Rushlow was making his fifth and final appearance in the bee, and this was his best showing. He got three words he didn't know – one in the semifinals and two in the finals – and managed to spell two of them correctly before the third one, "vetiver," tripped him up.
While he was satisfied with his performance, he's sad that his run is over.
"I'm a has-been now," Rushlow said.

Media Social Gossip

Kathie Lee to Martin Short How's Your Wife, Who Died 2 Years Ago : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News
It might be the most cringeworthy few seconds in TV history -- Kathie Lee Gifford asked Martin Short how his wife is doing ... one small problem ... she died 2 years ago.

Martin appeared on "The Today Show" this morning to endorse his new movie, "Madagascar 3" -- when Kathie asked, "And you and Nancy have one of the greatest marriages of anybody in show business. How many years now for you guys?"

Martin doesn't know how to react, saying, "We ... have ... married ... 36 years."

It seems that Kathie didn't get the memo -- Martin's wife Nancy Dolman died in August 2010 from ovarian cancer.
Kathie later apologized on the air -- saying, "I feel so badly ... my apologies to him and his family."
Media Social Gossip

Legendary Folk Guitarist Doc Watson Dies At 89 : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News
Grammy Award winning Folk legend Doc Watson passed away at the age of 89 on Tuesday.

The blind singer and guitarist passed away at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after complications from injuries sustained in a fall at his home in the state's Blue Ridge Mountains last week.

Watson was taken to a medical center near his Deep Gap, NC, home last Monday and then airlifted Wake Forest's intensive care unit on Thursday, where underwent surgery on his colon.

Despite being in critical condition for days and showing signs of improvement late last week, Watson succumbed to his injuries at 7:21pm.

The bluegrass pioneer, born Arthel Lane Watson, is partially credited with taking the acoustic guitar from its origins as a rhythm instrument to being more of a lead instrument in bluegrass and country music during the 1950s and 60s. His Flatkiping style also helped change the instrument's role in folk, blues and gospel music.

The seven-time Grammy winner was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina on March 3, 1923, and lived there for virtually his entire life.

He formed a successful trio, releasing 15 albums with his son Merle and bassist T. Michael Coleman; but the venture ended in 1985 when Merle was killed in a tractor accident.

North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue released a statement on Tuesday; saying, "Over his long and brilliant career, Doc Watson traveled the world playing the music he loved, but his heart never strayed far from his home in Deep Gap, North Carolina. His peerless abilities garnered him countless awards, including North Carolina's highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award, in 1986, and the North Carolina Heritage Award in 1994.

"Our state was fortunate to have such a worldwide ambassador of North Carolina's culture and heritage. He will be missed."
Media Social Gossip

Chris Hayes Apologizes For Memorial Day Remarks About The Word ‘Heroes’ : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News


On Sunday morning’s Up with Chris Hayes, the host mused about his discomfort with the word “heroes,” and that it is marshaled “in a way that is problematic.” His remarks touched off a frenzy of ourtage, including demands for an apology from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Monday evening, Chris Hayes issued a thoughtful apology that might not satisfy all of his critics, but is nevertheless sincere and in character.


He said statement (via email):


"On Sunday, in discussing the uses of the word “hero” to describe those members of the armed forces who have given their lives, I don’t think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I’ve set for myself. I am deeply sorry for that.
As many have rightly pointed out, it’s very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots. Of course, that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation’s citizens as a whole. One of the points made during Sunday’s show was just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight, how small a percentage of our population is asked to shoulder the entire burden and how easy it becomes to never read the names of those who are wounded and fight and die, to not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan, and to assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues.
But in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don’t, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war. And for that I am truly sorry."

Media Social Gossip

Dario Franchitti Wins Indianapolis 500 For Third Time : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News

Dario Franchitti held off Japanese competitor Takuma Sato on Sunday to claim his third Indianapolis 500 victory after Sato attempted to make a last minute costly move that sent him veering into a wall.

The 39-year-old Franchitti won the Indy 500 in 2007 and again in 2010, this time beating his Target Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon under caution. The caution was one of only eight for 39 of the races 200 laps.
Finishing in third-place was Tony Kanaan who has attempted to take 1st place in the race 11 times.
During the race a record 35 lead changes were finished. Race fans during the Indy 500 were treated to redesigned cars that were named after Dan Wheldon, the 2011 Indy 500 champion who was killed in an accident in Las Vegas last October.
Talking about the conclusion of the race Franchitti spoke about Wheldon’s likely reaction to the finish:
“I think D-Dub would have been proud of that one.”
Franchitti averaged 167.734 miles an hour.
Dario Franchitti became only the 10th driver to win at least three Indy 500s and all three of those victories have come under caution.
Franchitti, apparently adjusting to the new car design struggled through the first four races of the season before finally matching Sebastien Bourdais and Paul Tracy on the all-time wins list.
In the meantime racers competed not only against one another but also against mother nature as temperatures reached 91-degrees, just one degree cooler than the races 1937 record of 92 degrees.
Media Social Gossip

NFL Star Nick Fairley Arrested: Lions DT Reportedly Charged With DUI, Attempting To Elude Police : Media Social Gossip

Media Social Gossip Associated News

Detroit Lions suspicious tackle Nick Fairley was arrested early this morning for driving under the influence and attempting to elude police ... TMZ has learned.

Fairley was popped in Mobile, AL just after 1:00 AM. In addition to the DUI and eluding charges, Fairley was ticketed for irresponsible driving, no proof of insurance and having an open container.

Fairley is from the area, having gone to Williamson High School and he attended Auburn University.

It's Fairley second bust in just over a month -- he was arrested on April 3 for marijuana possession.

Media Social Gossip