Shorter Ross Douthat: Why should poor minorities get scholarships when poor whites, the salt of the earth and the defenders of our faith, do not?
Douthat wants to claim that cultural bigotry is keeping the poor out of the aristocracy. It's not income inequality, the result of out-of-control and unregulated capitalism. It's not the end of the American Dream of rising to a higher class. It's the university admissions offices, who are liberal and hate the poor and patriotic.
Ross Douthat Eats Breakfast:
Hmm, what do I feel like eating today? I could have oatmeal. That's conservatives. Good, hearty, heavy, oatmeal. But I hate oatmeal. I want French Toast. But that's French, and I hate the French because they envy us for our masculinity. No French Toast. Maybe doughnuts. That'll show the Nanny-staters. Lots of fatty doughnuts. But doughnuts are eaten by cops and cops are lower class. Maybe I could eat a cruller. That's higher class. What's more elite, a bear claw or a cruller? But the doughnut shop has doughnuts with rainbow sprinkles and that's gay and anything gay makes me extremely uncomfortable and gives me flashbacks of those times at my summer camp for young gentlemen of good family. I'll have eggs and toast. That's safe. Pastry is a liberal plot to corrupt American masculinity anyway.
I don't even think Douthat is the worst. The Rod Dreher thing is worse, in many ways. I don't know why this gets to me so much. Maybe because its just so naked, you know? The only time these assholes talk about the lower classes is to rev up hatred of other minorities and support upper class privilige by forcing the outsiders to duke it out for scraps from the master's table. I mean that's about it.
ReplyDeleteWill no one think of the pentecostalists and the 4H'ers??? No. No one gives a flying fuck about people whose ancestors didn't go to Harvard or who can't pay full freight. Exceptsometimes, for reasons of their own, some of the top universities decide to offer membership in the exclusive club to some individuals who they think add something to the cultural/racial/historical mix *because that's good for business.* Sometimes they do it altruistically, because they sincerely believe its good for society. But its a fringe activity, like all charity work. A kind of tithing. It can never get higher than some limited percentage--in numbers of such students and in cost to the university--because otherwise the university starts to a) fail to attract upper class types with lots of money, and b) fails to be able to pay scholarships.
But anyone, like Dreher, who pretends that affirmative action policies are anything other than choices that the upper class makes to defuse tensions is full of shit. Universities and businesses create affirmative action and diversity plans *because they think its good for them* not becuase its good for the imaginary beneficiaries. So Dreher's attempt to pit the white working class against the imaginary all powerful jews/blacks/gays/transexxuals of his imaginary diverse workforce is simply shit stirring. I mean, Dreher may be stupid enough to think that the jews and the blacks and the wimminz forced their way straight into the boardrooms and now control affirmative action and all slots in all companies. But I don't think he is. I think its a professional requirement that he be this stupid and disengenous. Also, perhaps, a natural inclination.
I don't know why this got my goat so badly.
aimai
Douthat indirectly admits that he -a connected, rich white punk from Connecticut, got a slot at Harvard that should have gone to some hardworking kid from St Louis.
ReplyDeleteFor once, I agree with him.
I was listening to NPR yesterday in the car; the discussion was about the costs/benefits of extending unemployment insurance, and one of the guests was this dude from Harvard, forget his name... but apparently this guy was the Dean of Undergraduate studies or something.
ReplyDeleteGuy was making his case against unemployment benefits, and his arguments were so full of holes I almost drove off the fucking road. I mean it was really that bad.
Fuck Harvard. I'm sick of hearing about it, like it's the gateway to aristocracy in America. Which it is, you know... though only in the meanest, cheapest sense.
Ivy league schools look good on a resume, yes. That, and the fact that you might get to room with some Captain of Industry's nephew, are the only advantages to going there. They use the same books everyone else does.
Douthat is a suck up.