ALEX BENSKY WRITES:

I wonder if you saw the front page of today’s Times. I’m sure it is sheer coincidence that the photograph illustrating the article on yesterday’s pro-Israel parade happened to have a large pro-Palestinian poster in the foreground. Just luck of the draw, I suppose.

I’m also enjoying their series on the pressures on high school students who are trying to get into college. Apparently if one can’t get into a private, prestigious college–Ivy League, Stanford, Seven Sisters, and the like–one’s life is ruined.

Now, I’m no one to talk since two of my degrees are from branch campuses of state universities and the simple country law school that gave me a degree is also a public institution. Apparently people condemned to, say, the University of Tennessee, or my obviously loser niece and nephew who went to the University of Washington, will lead lives of quiet desperation.

I’m sure the Times has no consciousness of the point they’re making, any more than Clinton did when he said he wanted a cabinet that “looked like America” and then went out and named people from elite and expensive private universities.

Cheer up, Alex. At least you’re not from poverty-stricken Sweden.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers writes:

Tell Alex Bensky that I only hope his loser nephew and niece only lead lives of “quiet desperation” and that they don’t, instead, follow the practices of the disappointed in the Middle East and begin strapping explosives to themselves and blowing up in the midst of, say, a Renaissance Weekend meeting of the elite (or maybe a Trilateral Commission meeting). [Why do they hate us?] As a graduate of a Big Ten (Eleven?) school who got his doctorate in a very little-known discipline at a directional school (and who has taught almost exclusively in state directional schools –a Northern, a Southern, a Central, and now an Eastern), I got more than disgusted with a couple of Harvard PhDs who typically crapped up their survey instruments to the point that it was not at all obvious what they were trying to test (try asking 60-80 year-old farmers {after 8PM} questions with multiple clauses containing obscure words and see what kind of responses you get).

For an egalitarian society (?) with a left wing that insists on leveling schemes, it sure is funny who ends up in the power positions, no?

Yes. At a law professors’ meeting on affirmative action some years ago, I suggested that the best way to hire more scholars of color would be to get rid of a lot of tenured senior faculty. After all, most of the older white guys actually benefited personally from discrimination, while the young white guys we discriminate against now didn’t. Not surprisingly, it didn’t fly. Similarly, a visiting professor at Harvard was approached by students who urged that he decline Harvard’s offer of a permanent position in protest against Harvard’s inadequate diversity policies. He suggested that it would be a more touching statement if they quit law school in protest of such policies. The students declined. Most of those “leveling” schemes involve leveling other people so that the levelers can feel good about themselves.