City of Cambridge weighs in on the Indian question

by philg

In local news… “‘Real Indian’ challenging Elizabeth Warren must remove signs calling her a fake Indian, city [of Cambridge] says” (Miami Herald) is fun:

“Only a REAL INDIAN Can Defeat the Fake Indian.”

The words, emblazoned on two signs that hang off U.S. Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai’s campaign bus, appear next to two images: one of a stoic Ayyadurai looking into the camera, and another of a closeup of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wearing a Native American headdress.

So you can say whatever you want in Cambridge as long as you have a permit from the city for a sign on which to say it and you need the permit whether the sign is attached to a building or hanging from a vehicle.

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6 thoughts on “City of Cambridge weighs in on the Indian question”

  1. philg, what do you think of Ayyadurai’s claim that he “invented email.”

    http://www.inventorofemail.com

    It seems to me that Mr.Ayyadurai’s real innovation is in filing a copyright claim on a piece of code, claiming ownership of an obvious and general idea in a sense contrary to the original intention of copyright and patent law. Mr. Ayyadurai is an innovator in making ideas proprietary when they really should not be.

    Also, God bless Mr. Ayyadurai, but if he is a real Indian, shouldn’t he be running for office in India?

    I share Henry Cabot Lodge’s distaste for hyphenated national loyalties. Does that make me deplorable? I wonder what Mr. Ayyadurai thinks of Hillary Clinton going to India and calling half of (our(?), her(?), his(?), my(?), your(?)) countrymen anti-Indian-American bigots.

    Disclaimer: Mr. Ayyadurai can buy and sell me. Whatever aspersions I may cast against him are those of a disgruntled American whose accomplishments are dwarfed by Mr. Ayyadurai’s. It is fortunate that most Bay Staters would condemn me and my ideas as racist. People like me really have no place in this country. The country would be better off with more people like Mr. Ayyadurai and less people like me.

  3. Mememe: I was sending and receiving email in 1976 at my current address, more or less (ARPANET syntax rather than Internet). So I think it is awesome that someone invented email in 1978, two years later! As Sonny Bono said, when asked how it was possible that someone could go from being a TV personality to Congressman, “This is a great country!” Wikipedia notes “Bono remains the only member of Congress to have scored a number-one pop single on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.”

  4. In 1976 I first heard the offer of “I’ll be your best friend,” in exchange for some material benefit. I believed it, made the trade, and was disappointed in the ensuing months when I discovered friendship cannot be bought. That’s like facebook, but in real life.

    We did not have e-commerce but we did have glossy catalogs. The impulse to buy was curtailed by the labor of writing a check.

    All telephone calls were time-metered. A long phone call to Paris cost more than an airline ticket to DeGaulle.

    Kids roamed wild, without supervision, from the age of 5.

    Everybody smoked cigarettes.

    Are we better off now?

  5. I’m concerned they are taking away a person of colors free speech in favor of an incumbent white. Shocking in 2018.

  6. That seams a very odd way to gain publicity…hard to identify the target audience for this slogan.

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