It was only after I’d been on the road an hour that I realized how isolated I’ve been. I’ve been cooped up for months. For a guy like me, a month without crossing a state line is practically house arrest; no wonder I’ve been getting antsy! Also I tend to hide out when I’m not traveling. I avoid people, human interaction, most social bullshit, and especially the press.
So there I was, gradually emerging from a few months of deep freeze isolation. I hadn’t heard a TV “news” broadcast in forever. Not much radio. Even on the internet I’ve instinctively screened out a lot of what is excreted by politicians and rolled in by the press. I was, in effect, a blank slate.
I reached for the FM knob and then pulled my hand back like it’d been burned. NPR, America’s propaganda arm and state media, is always there and it’ll invariably piss me off. I kept the radio off.
Eventually I had to check into a hotel. Most hotel lobbies have a TV that’s never watched and always yammering away. Cue CNN (the channel most likely to be on in a location where nobody’s watching TV).
First item of “news”. A plane had crashed in Ethiopia. (I’m sure y’all know more details than me.) To my shame, I breathed a sigh of relief. I shouldn’t be relieved that a couple hundred people died but I was just super happy that it was nothing that could possibly be construed as being an American problem. Boeing’s problem? Sure. Tragic loss of life? Sure. But a Boeing in Africa ‘aint a US Federal Problem. In this matter at least, the talking heads would have to quit yanking people’s chain.
The next day I encountered a second item of news. The TV in the lobby was alive with pearl clutching bobbleheads clucking about rich yahoos who’d been scheming and cheating to get their nitwit offspring into fancy colleges. I chuckled and finished their sentence; “also water’s wet and the sky is blue”. Then I left. Not my monkeys not my circus.
The base act of cheating to get into a college; I’m not even sure it’s a crime. It’s immoral of course. And shabby. And embarrassing. None of which is a crime. Oh, of course, it’s 2019 and everything is a Federal Crime. I presume they’ll twist things into the wind and add Federal funding and lob lawyers at it… it’s gonna’ wind up in court.
In my opinion, it’s utterly irrelevant. If Yale or Harvard wants to populate their school with fucking idiots, what’s it to me? After all, it’s their reputation not mine (and a mighty tarnished one at that). Plus it has always been that way. Can you believe actual adults thinking otherwise? Even when I was young and naive I wasn’t that naive.
Every sentient Freshman is well aware there’s a big difference between being a smart and dedicated student (who’ll get a decent ROI on their education investment) and the sniffling sycophants encouraged by the crotch sniffers in the admissions office. It also doesn’t take many encounters with the “elite” educated to find out they’re not remotely elite. Maybe they once were, but now (and even decades ago) a high end college just means Mommy and Daddy have an assload of cash… nothing more.
My application process into college was dirt simple:
Them: “Write an essay that explains why you should be let into our august institution.”
Me: “Because I can pay tuition and I won’t flunk out. Here’s a blistering high SAT and some other crap that proves I won’t be found in the halls licking the windows and peeing myself. Are you done yet? I want to wrap this shit up so I can get to work.”
Them: “That’s not good enough. You cant’ get in unless you were in eleventy extracurricular activities in high school and write an essay about how you weep when whales die.” (Remember “save the whales”?)
Me: “Blow me. I’ll go to a cheap ass State School and have my loans paid off before you can say ‘return on investment’.”
Them: “College is about much more than…”
Me: “No it isn’t.”
I stand by that. One can buy education. One cannot buy “more”. That other shit is just ad copy for fools.
So I didn’t sweat the whole “will I get into school” carousel. I could get into anything that was based on your ability to do the thing and get out. Beyond that, it’s all smoke and mirrors. Thus, I don’t have an Ivy League pedigree. Whoopty fuckin’ do. No regrets. No fear. No bullshit.
A wise student buys an education, they don’t inveigle their way into a societal hand job. (I also happen to be the kind of guy who uses words like inveigle. Try that at an ivy league snowflake factory!) Learn a trade and GTFO. People impressed with a name like Harvard are pretty much the last people whom it’s worth the trouble to impress.
The funny part is this; if you need to drop a couple hundred grand to get your genetic package into Harvard, your genetic package won’t benefit from Harvard and probably won’t benefit from any college. Drop ’em at the Starbucks job where they’ll wind up and save everyone the hassle of a failed education.
The best I can divine is that the colleges are pissed that some third party got a cut instead of it all going to the college’s slush fund (i.e. endowment). Presumably the FBI needed to bust someone somewhere that had nothing to do with politics and they’ve gotten out of the habit of chasing real… ya’ know… criminals. Unlike investigating process crimes amid dudes with suits, real criminals are scary!
We all accept that if little Suzy cheats in a 3rd grade spelling bee it’s not the kind of thing that involved FBI and guns. But if Suzy is 17 and hires a ringer for the SAT I’m supposed to get the vapors? Why? Aside from age and some sort of misplaced respect for names like Yale, what’s the difference? How the hell does SAT cheating get FBI attention? Does it rank up there with murder and arson. “The Gambino family firebombed your house? Can’t waste time on that right now, the FBI’s hot on the trail of someone who falsely pretended to be a gifted water polo athlete to get into Harvard.”
In other news, the game’s rigged. What’s new and who didn’t already know this?
I stayed off grid another day and a half before I was once again in my truck and bored silly. I clicked on the radio.
First thing I encountered was an announcement that the FAA had grounded certain planes. It seems a bit extreme but whatever. I’m sure they’ve got some logical reason and an idea that the Boeing issue can be rectified (probably through software). Of course there was no discussion of Boeing, pilots, lift, airplane mechanics, or anything like that. It all boiled down to someone bitching that The Orange Menace had not moved fast enough in grounding the planes. He (or the FAA) had apparently done what they wanted but too darned slow and this was proof that seventy million deplorable Americans elected a flaming dipshit that will kill us all in our sleep.
I hit scan and listened to a few songs before encountering the second news “article”. Apparently, people think cheating to get into college is both a new thing and super bad. I mean… they were carrying on. Really? Did they not go to college? Where do they hatch these fools?
I’m not a particularly religious man but it reminded me of a Bible passage (I had to look it up). Matthew 10:29:
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.
At the risk of blasphemy, I rewrote it for the modern media:
Are not Boeings plentiful? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without the direct intervention of Donald Trump. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Trump knows this too. He counts them while you sleep.
And if a kid cheats on the SAT the righteous shall dispatch the FBI with guns drawn to protect the hell out of us. Because college is about…
Ha ha ha… OK I couldn’t type it without choking. Let me continue:
…college is all about excellence. It’s about the best education for the very best so that ….
Oh forget it. I quit. Seriously, a kid cheats on the SAT and the FBI responds with drawn guns? These people need to get a life.
I’m kinda’ curious what’s really going on. There must be something that they really really really don’t want to notice. Has Russia, Russia, Russia finally wound down or what?
Oh well, I’m back home and will be crawling back into my shell until the snow melts. I’m sure by then the press will be reporting about the robins flying north and how that was caused or adversely affected by a New York real estate investor who won a hotly contested election.
Like I said in my last post; the skunks are fucking.