Elizabeth Warren on what Larry Summers told her when she arrived in D.C. as a Massachusetts senator (the quotation is from her memoir A Fighting Chance, by way of Moyers & Company):
Larry’s tone was in the friendly-advice category. He teed it up this way: I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
I had been warned.
If Elizabeth Warren = outsider and Larry Summers = insider, I'll take a double helping of outsider, please. And hold the insider.
And, yes, these observations relate in a very direct way to the dynamics of censorship at various Catholic blog sites, which are all about declaring some folks ineffectual, to-be-ridiculed outsiders and others valued insiders. Though as I read the gospels, Jesus himself was pretty much of an ineffectual and much-ridiculed outsider, while Pontius Pilate et al. were well-connected insiders.
And I had also understood that the calling of Christians is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
Not of Pontius Pilate.
The graphic is a justaposition of an AP photo of Warren and a Bloomberg/File photo of Summers from Boston Globe.
