even more quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a new rolling new york times thread

extremely unsurprising.

this is a gem from the times article:

“I couldn’t believe we are both the executive mind-set. That reinforced a compatibility.”

heh, i was just about to post the same quote!

After she said yes, he asked her children if he had their permission, and if he could marry them as well.

👁️

He will, as soon as they're old enough to work out at the gym by themselves

wait he met both of them at the gym?
also

(Robert told The Post: “Nikyta and I were separated and both consented to a mutual and amicable divorce. This is all very surprising to me and I was unaware that there was ever an issue. I’m happy with my family and I wish Nikyta the best.”)

he sounds bad

Imagine being the new wife and seeing your near future laid out in black and white in the New York Post

She's fine with it, they're MBTI compatible. She'll use this as a story in her business leadership book - like accepting a new job before telling your current boss that you're looking etc.

Sorry I guess as an ENTP I was unable to grasp her point of view

This feels very NYT ruling class

Tonight someone testifying against the use of UWS hotels as emergency shelter asked that Community Board 7 also consider the perspective of those who were "up on their luck."

— Will Thomas (@willthomas_usa) September 2, 2020

truly the people that are never talked about

say what you want about punching down but it's definitely easier than the alternative

https://nyti.ms/2EOo47G

I nominate "up on their luck" as the title of the next nyt quid/ag thread

Dr. Anthony Fauci warned us last week that Covid-19 is likely to be hanging over our lives well into 2021. He’s right, of course. We need to accept this reality and take steps to meet it rather than deny his message.

Many Americans are resistant to this possibility. They’re hoping to restart postponed sports seasons, attend schools more easily, enjoy rescheduled vacations and participate in delayed parties and gatherings.

They may also be hoping to restart being able to afford three meals a day you fucking psycho

It is completely understandable that many are tiring of restrictions due to Covid-19. Unfortunately, their resolve is weakening right when we need it to harden. This could cost us dearly.

i.e. it will be lumpenAmerica's fault if the worm starts heading north again

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/squash-lacrosse-niche-sports-ivy-league-admissions/616474/

god

One Greenwich parent told me she believes that, far from being a glide path to the Ivies, lacrosse had actually hurt her older son’s college prospects. As team captain and a straight A student with stellar test scores, he would have been a credible applicant to NYU or Columbia—but these schools lack varsity-lacrosse programs, and he’d fallen in love with his sport. “There were eight or 10 strong academic schools we couldn’t even look at, because they didn’t have varsity lacrosse,” she said.

Her kid just completed his freshman year at a not-so-fancy college in the South, and, according to his mom, he’s happy enough. But she feels bitter, and wonders if her younger boy should quit club lacrosse. “The guys who get recruited to the Ivies—it turns out these guys are beasts,” she said. “I saw them at showcases. They were like stallions.”

this is truly a quid-ag motherlode

“To have that opportunity lost …” His voice trailed off, before he picked up again, mournfully: “The kid who would have gone to Yale now goes to Georgetown. The kid who would have gone to Georgetown now goes to Loyola. On and on. And then eventually you get down to Wentworth. And then you just don’t play college sports.”

“Sorry, but there’s no way in hell,” said the water-polo mom from Stamford. “What parent wants to have a child who’s going to be playing for a bottom-tier school with bottom-tier academics in the armpit of the United States? I want to be polite. But there’s no way in hell.”

some amazing stuff going on in the wording choices in these parents, just amazing

"What parent wants to have a child who’s going to be playing for a bottom-tier school with bottom-tier academics in the armpit of the United States?" Indeed, who would want such a child?

Such a child is no stallion, that's for sure

what a savage

insane article, but those photoshop illustrations are fantastic (especially the lacrosse one on top)

Gah, the horror of settling for Georgetown

I have a hard time understanding what this whole college sports machine is and what it's doing. With stuff like D-1A football, I understand the cynical (and correct) explanation -- it's big money entertainment. But what the fuck is the point of college lacrosse, let alone college squash? From the college's perspective, why are they so avidly looking for top student fencers or water polo players? What's the big deal about that?

donor money

https://news.virginia.edu/content/university-virginia-s-mcarthur-squash-center-celebrate-debut-grand-opening-festival

yeah. i mean some crappy school in the south now has a rich kid from greenwich just because they have a lacrosse program

my dad used to teach at a small catholic college in pennsylvania that was absolutely convinced it needed division iii football to attract (non-football-playing) students. it may have been correct, i dunno, but it's a phenomenon i understand much less than building top-flight division i programs in obscure rich-people sports

It almost seems like college amenities are swallowing colleges, like they're just becoming four-year resorts with some education options included.

basically except CONNECTIONS dontchaknow

People who go to Ivies and care about the prestige of having an Ivy-league education, particularly for undergraduate studies, have absolutely no regard for education. They have a regard for status and power.

The undergraduate schools that produce the most PhDs, even in many hard sciences, tend to be the small, elite liberal arts schools that the people in those articles pooh-pooh. That doesn't necessarily mean the quality of education is better, but the culture is different.

I went to Rutgers-New Brunswick (a state U), and Rutgers is like 35 mins drive or a pretty quick train ride from princeton, so there used to be some traffic between the two. We'd go down to princeton to hit up the Princeton Record Exchange and their nicer bookstores, and I guess kids would sometimes also come to New Brunswick from Princeton for a change of scene. I remember one day I was sitting in a New Brunswick coffee shop with my gf, and this guy started chatting with us. He was from Princeton but didn't have the Princeton air about him, seemed more like a middle class kid that could have been at Rutgers. I don't remember why or how the conversation got to this, but he launched into a long and slightly surreal spiel about "the game" and about how everyone at Princeton was playing "the game," whch was basically what he called the race for status. There were different levels in "the game," and he meticulously laid them out - what career outcomes were the top, what were just below that, etc. What about being a high school english teacher (what I thought I wanted to be at the time) I asked him. Oh no, that's not even part of the game. You're out of the game if you do that. You don't even exist. I guess I was a naive kid but I had somehow reached the age of 20 or so and never really thought about life that way, or at least never realized that there was a whole class of people who unreflectingly and unironically lived their lives according to that code. I assumed nearly everyone in the entire world would find that laughable even if they quietly sought status, but this guy set me straight.

I guess I was a naive kid but I had somehow reached the age of 20 or so and never really thought about life that way, or at least never realized that there was a whole class of people who unreflectingly and unironically lived their lives according to that code. I assumed nearly everyone in the entire world would find that laughable even if they quietly sought status, but this guy set me straight.

I grew up in a relatively well-off suburban NJ town and that shit was going on when I was in high school. I didn't apply to any colleges at all, and the looks I got not just from my friends' parents but from other kids were amazing.

i taught at columbia for a year, met maybe 50 students, and the top five were all either from overseas or on the (terrible) football team. those guys were great.

i once had a student ask me for "life hacks"

I went to an expensive school for smart kids but it was probably because I was an affable brown kid who'd written an award-winning (and yes unproduced) play, and charmed the admissions committee while high as a kite

fwiw I felt the same way about the way a lot of princeton kids dress, like "WTF, you wear brand new, pressed department store clothing and use a calfskin knapsack? Why the fuck would anyone dress like that?"

i'm sure the 'game' was happening at my university, but i was unambitious and oblivious

it absolutely was *not* happening at my high school, lol

Like "who buys the non-suit clothing at Brooks Brothers? Oh, these kids."

FWIW that's probably not true anymore, I think there was a cultural shift a decade or so after I left college.

i always thought it was wild that you could get an athletic scholarship to an ivy, but not an academic one. i guess i still think it's wild! (disclaimer: i went to an ivy, had a great time, would v much not recommend anyone in 2020 going this route unless they could figure out how not to pay for it. oh shit am i going to be a lacrosse dad??)

I never understood the Game.

That probably explains why I'm a well-respected experimental poet who has made more than 30k a year only twice since I turned 18.

I went to a yupwardly-mobile high school where the central anxiety of most juniors and seniors was getting into a good school, for which the euphemism was "the school of your choice." As if it were your choice and not your parents'.

Personally, I was somewhat immune to that pressure. Partly because I was a complete slacker with terrible grades, and partly because my parents were exhausted and did not give a shit. But I saw what the pressure was doing to my friends, and I am still sad for them. Sad for what they missed out on, and sad for what the anxiety did to them.

I hasten to note that this is all *relative*. It was still culturally assumed that I would go to *some* sort of college, get a degree, and work in some sort of salaried white-collar office job.

No other future was even considered for people of my class (for which, read: race and socioeconomic status).

Given the class-based, race-based, and relative nature of these perceptions, I am pretty sure that large swaths of people would regard my attitude toward college as just as bizarre as the NYT quid-ag view.

"Horrors! You have to settle for Loyola?!" Seems ridic to me, but I need to acknowledge how much privilege resides in even going to college at all. And then I have a sad, because I cannot fix it in any way.

as a child and as an adult, i always found that shit both hysterical and poisonous.

Yes it is toxic

oh for sure, and I also came from a family background where it wasn't really an option to *not* go to college, it just wasn't that sort of pressure cooker environment and I guess I also went to school with a lot of kids who would be the first one in their families to go if they went.

this shit is one of the million reasons I moved my family out of the USA. it'll wreck your soul.

The article now has a correction as long as the article itself.

Yeah just came here to post that. Sorry for passing it on! Great artwork though!

that correction is amazing btw and well worth the read!

"We have corrected a detail about a thigh injury, originally described as a deep gash but more accurately described as a skin rupture that bled through a fencing uniform." - I don't think I've ever read the phrase "skin rupture"? That's not clarifying at all, it kind of makes it more horrifying.