WARREN’S STUNT MISFIRES

WE DON’T CLAIM HER

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in a move she may eternally regret, revealed last week an ancestry test showed her to have between 0.1 and 1.6 percent Native American ancestry.

Her previous ancestry claims of Cherokee lineage, which she used to further her career, had been ridiculed by many people, including citizen and now President Donald Trump, who referred to her as “Pocahontas.”

Since Warren’s revelation, which she thought would prove her right, she has been lambasted by Native American groups, including by Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr., who said her simple test “dishonors legitimate tribal governments and citizens, whose ancestors are well documented, and whose heritage is proven. Sen. Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage.”

Even a descendant of the actual Pocahontas, a Native American woman who associated with the colonial settlement at Jamestown, Va., weighed in.

“I think [Native Americans] feel betrayed, they feel disappointed,” said Debbie White Dove Porreco, “and at this point she needs to come back and apologize to everybody for what she’s done.”

ONE BELL MISSING ITS CLAPPER

If actress Kristen Bell has her way, the Disney classic “Snow White” may end up on a list of banned movies.

In the movie, she says, a man (Prince Charming) kisses a sleeping woman (Snow White) without her permission. The “Frozen” star says this kind of nonconsensual behavior could have an effect on vulnerable children like her two daughters.

“Don’t you think that it’s weird that the prince kisses Snow White without her permission?” Bell wondered in an interview published last week in Parents magazine. “Because you cannot kiss someone if they’re sleeping!”

But there’s more. How could Snow White accept an apple from a strange witch? she wanted to know. Didn’t she know about stranger danger?

“Every time we close ‘Snow White’,” Bell said, “I look at my girls and ask, ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that Snow White didn’t ask the old witch why she needed to eat the apple? Or where she got the apple?’ I say, ‘I would never take food from a stranger, would you?’ And my kids are like, ‘No!’ And I’m like, ‘OK, I’m doing something right.’”

One wonders if it wouldn’t have been simpler for the actress to explain to her children that, for goodness sake, “Snow White” isn’t reality but a book and a movie, that witches can’t cast sleep-inducing spells and that Prince Charming is very unlikely to come to their house.

MAINE-LY FIRED

A University of Southern Maine professor has been banned from teaching at any of the state school’s campuses after encouraging her students to protest then-United States Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

“We are embarrassed by and apologize for the rogue behavior of a former colleague,” college President Glenn Cummings said in a statement last week in the Portland Press Herald.

Susan Reiner, who had retired in July but was still permitted to teach courses, had offered “an unauthorized class that advanced her personal political agenda,” he said. However, he said no campus resources were used to support her “one-sided political activism.”

She apparently had taken it upon herself — forgoing a necessary contract — to offer course credit for students willing to travel to Washington, D.C., to protest Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings to the high court.

“The use of institutional resources to advance a partisan agenda violates board policies established to ensure Maine’s public universities remain nonpartisan and politically neutral,” University of Maine system Chancellor James Page said.

Reiner, displaying an unsurprising sour grapes attitude, texted, “It’s USM’s loss.”

We wish other institutions of higher learning would stand up to similar faculty who put politics over students and learning.

IS HE LISTENING TO HIMSELF?

Twelve-step programs call on participants to admit “the exact nature of our wrongs.”

ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro did that last week, but it’s not clear if he’s willing take a couple of the next steps by being “willing to make amends” and then to make “direct amends.”

The sports network has seen its ratings slide over the last several years because it has engaged in more and more political commentary, and commentary usually from the left side of the spectrum.

“What I’ve heard consistently from day one of getting this job,” Pitaro told John Ourand of Sports Business Journal last week, “is the more we lean into politically charged commentary, the more we are alienating not just our core fan, but our casual fan.”

ESPN, according to a 2017 Business Insider article, lost nearly 13 million subscribers in the previous six years from its peak of 100.12 million in 2011 to 87.22 million last year.

The answer is for the network to go cold turkey, to return to sports, to sports highlights, to sports statistics and to sports analysis. Leave the left-wing political commentary to CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.

Time will tell if Pitaro has the gumption to follow through.