Cracked.com used to be an entertaining humor site but in recent years has devolved into a place for social justice warriors to write listicles about feminism, racism, and cultural appropriation.

I used to be a daily reader but stopped visiting regularly after the election when the site devoted itself to progressive politics and at least one Trump bashing article per day.

When I saw their article titled “Busting The Frauds Who Are Stealing Native American Culture” I decided to read it just to see if they would mention Elizabeth Warren. Nope. Not a word.

Writer Robert Evans even makes a professor the focus of his article without a hint of irony:

The problem of hip white people appropriating Native culture actually goes a lot deeper than wearing headdresses at Coachella. Right now, Native religions and cultural practices are fighting off a vicious eradication campaign. And it’s not being waged by cross-burning racists, or weird hold-over fans of Andrew Jackson: it’s legions of New Age “seekers” who don’t recognize that their Etsy dreamcatcher is part of something sinister. Cracked sat down with Dr. Alton Carroll, a history professor who runs the site NewAgeFraud.org. He’s an actual Native American, and he’s dedicated much of his life to busting fake Natives. And he explained … 6. Native Americans View It As Battling Spiritual Genocide The appropriation Dr. Carroll encounters today can get very strange. He told us about New Age groups “that claimed Native people were descended from dolphins. There’s people out there who claim Atlantis or Lemuria are part of Native tradition, it’s not.

Evans mentions “Iron Eyes” Cody,” the non-Native American actor who you may remember from this 1970’s ad:

Cody is described in this way (emphasis is mine):

He was one of the most influential Native Americans in Hollywood history: He advised some of the great directors of Hollywood’s golden age and insisted on historical accuracy in Native dress and rituals in the movies he worked on. He also wrote a book documenting the nearly lost art of Native hand signals: But Cody Iron Eyes was about as Native American as a nice lasagna. He was an Italian-American fraud, and his book on Indian hand signals was a mix of a bunch of different Native traditions, tossed with his own special sauce of complete bullshit. Cody wasn’t the first or the last person to build his fame lying about Native Americans.

That could have been a perfect segue into talking about Elizabeth Warren’s career. Instead, the focus shifts to people who profit from teaching Cherokee sex magic.

The article wraps up with a section about a woman who claimed to be Native American but was exposed as a fraud. Once again, not Senator Warren:

“I wish we could report more success than we have had. Unfortunately all you can do is put out the information and hope people listen … probably the biggest recent success we can point to is a woman named Kiesha Crowther who claimed she was the returning prophet prophesized by hundreds of tribes, by not simply Americans but also people in Australia, New Zealand, indigenous people worldwide, that she was the returning red-haired prophet.”

I wouldn’t normally spend this much time dissecting an article from Cracked.com but the lack of any mention of Warren on this specific topic is remarkable.

The author either purposely left Warren out of the article or doesn’t believe she’s guilty of the progressive crime of cultural appropriation.

I’m not sure which is worse.



