As IF Times

Source: College admissions cheating scandal: Prosecutors detail how Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin and more allegedly rigged college entrance – CBS News

Perhaps the only thing that’s really surprising in this recently exposed scandal are the eye popping amounts of money involved. That the parents would pay such usurious sums to enroll their progeny into a name brand school reveals at least 2 things.  First, that there is too much money available to these people and secondly, the kids have to be real dummies in order to need this level of enrollment help.   It’s one thing to be a C student in math, but according to the stories, entire resumes were fabricated in order to nudge the darlings ahead of other qualified candidates. This is essentially affirmative action for rich but dumb people.

People with a grip on reality know that this protocol has been around since….forever. There was probably someone taking bribes to get onto the Ark as the waters were rising. Anyone who’s ever stood in line to get into a restaurant or night club knows that the process can be skipped by slipping some currency into the hands of the gatekeepers. (As an aside, that’s why you always need cash, it’s not that easy to bribe someone with a debit card)

No, the reason for the shock and outrage is the fact that the people endlessly preaching  sanctimony to the public about equality, tolerance and diversity are the very ones that are parties to the perpetuation of the policies of exclusion. To be clear, institutions and people should have the prerogative to do as they wish with their own institutions. But at the very least, be honest about it.

If you are one of these vaunted academic institutions, just advertise that you only take people who either; pass some level of academic competency, are good at a kid’s sport, or be wealthy enough to get a coveted space in the lecture halls. Admit that diversity really isn’t that important and that you are really only interested in making money. That way, at least people will know to which institutions they really want to send their kids. Maybe these schools should issue prospectuses as they do in the stock business wherein they issue a phone book sized document with plenty of fine print legal mumbo jumbo about risks.

Regardless, it’s become clear that the value of a degree received from many of the heretofore august educational institutions have no bearing at all to the cost involved in achieving them. Certainly not as measured by employability. Does one really need a degree in advanced gender studies from USC to be a Starbucks barista or to be a You Tube star when a simple junior college diploma will do? Let’s not kid ourselves; a primary reason that people push their kids to get into top level schools is so they can have them mix with the scions of the wealthy and famous. You get to mix with the cool kids.

Spoon feeding the children of the rich and famous to get into the best schools and the best clubs is a privilege accorded to those that have reached success in their lives.  It’s like the old joke about what is the best way to catch fish. Answer; have someone throw it to you.  This we can expect.  What we don’t like are those same groups telling us that it ain’t so.

Update:  a revelation from an hired enabler

Source: MSNBC guest unchecked after floating theory that Trump-supporting cops may have framed Jussie Smollett | Fox News

One of the most lucrative TV shows ever produced is the classic sit-com, Seinfeld. Even though it last aired an original show more than 20 years ago, it continues to broadcast via re-runs in a seemingly continuous loop on the cable channels. It’s not so much that the show remains entertaining, it still is, but the main reason for the longevity is quite simply because it makes money. Advertisers still pay to hawk their wares during the show’s broadcasts even though everyone has seen each episode dozens of times. But fair to say, after listening to the same shtick over and over again, it’s not about art, it’s about money.

This model is not lost on the people operating in the racial division/social justice business. To this day, in 21st century America, even though the stigma of slavery is a distant period of history, the on going bleats of racism and oppression consumes social discussion as if it was the most pervasive issue facing Americans. As Tucker Carlson points out, no one alive today has grandparents who experienced slavery first hand…unless they’ve been alive since 1863.

Yet over 150 years later, the racial division industry has never been stronger. Some of the early adopters of this racket, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton etc have now been supplanted by a newer generation of ‘activists’ who frame any and every possible issue, no matter how mundane as having some kind of racially oppressive motive. The Jussie Smollet saga is of course the most recent in a never ending line of indignities suffered by the black community.

Some are too young to recall that in 1991, the Heileman Brewing company introduced a new beer product named PowerMaster, a potent malt liquor with an alcohol content of 5.8%, whereas most beers have a content by volume of 3.5% or less. Black community leaders were outraged claiming that this product was targeting urban blacks. I am not making this up. So, due to pressure from Federal regulators, the company retracted the product from distribution. One year later, the product was re-introduced as Colt 45 Premium with an alcohol content of 5.9%, with much success….even though the can had the same design as PowerMaster!

Politicos today pander endlessly to the ‘oppressed minority’ because, like Seinfeld re-runs, they continue to make money off it. Perceived slights are overstated for their sympathy factor and if none are available, some are made up out of whole cloth as in the Smollet case. In fact, as some have observed, overt racist attacks are so rare that they have to pay people from out of the country to do them. This enables these champions of the people to strengthen their political power since otherwise, they would have no platform.

Modern social justice ‘fighters’ truly have no original content, so like the Seinfeld re-runs, they beat on the same old themes which have always brought them success. And like the re-runs there continues to be an audience for this. But it gets tiring and it’s predictable. Even the most sympathetic amongst us will tire of same thing ad nauseum especially if we know the ending. To paraphrase a line from an old Seinfeld episode, “hey the 1880’s called, they’ve run out of outrage”.