Affirmative action for rich white people

As an undergraduate student at Michigan State University, I discovered their academic scam that enabled minorities and athletes to earn perfect grades in classes in which they learned nothing. Helping students cheat is tantamount to an admission that they cannot help them learn, and certainly can't help them achieve the sort of intellectual metamorphosis that enabled me to go from dunce to doctor.

At that time, I assumed this academic scandal was confined to MSU, but I later found evidence this practice was widespread. However, I strongly suspect that universities give more than a helping hand to politically well-connected folks, not just minorities and athletes.

What's the basis for that supposition? Caroline Kennedy has degrees from Harvard University and Columbia Law School, where she graduated in the top 10% of her class, but when she announced that she wanted to be a Senator and opened her mouth, people were stunned by what came out, such as this gem:

“We’re facing, you know, an economic crisis, the paper this morning said there’s, you know, five billion dollars of construction projects which just stopped, you know, that’s, you know — conversations a year ago, that’s — beside that, I don’t, as I said, I have conversations with a lot of people, and those are confidential.”

Derailment (thought disorder): “In psychiatry, derailment (also loosening of association, asyndesis, asyndetic thinking, knight's move thinking, or entgleisen) is a thought disorder characterized by discourse consisting of a sequence of unrelated or only remotely related ideas. The frame of reference often changes from one sentence to the next.”

Loose association of thoughts or speech can also be seen in schizophrenia.

That and other bird-brained statements from her make Valley Girls seem like rocket scientists. You could spend the rest of your life listening to ordinary Americans and never hear anything that scatterbrained. One might think that someone who graduated from Harvard and in the top 10% of her class from an Ivy League law school wouldn't sound as if she were in need of intensive remedial education. If not summer school, then what? A stat evaluation by a neurologist? Drug and alcohol screens? A CT or MRI scan to check for brain injury? All of the above?

Language is not my forte and my chronic sleep problems keep my brain from entering its top gear except once every couple of years when I have refreshing sleep, but even though I once was dumb enough to be called “slow” by my sixth-grade teacher, I'd need coaching to sound that intellectually vacuous. Even now that a broken neck makes restful sleep as likely as a date with Miss America, I'd need someone like Jared Loughner destroying half my brain before it became that dysfunctional.

Ivy League universities want us to believe they accept only the best and brightest, and they would never sully their reputations by brazenly flouting basic principles of academic ethics. If this were true, a person such as Caroline Kennedy with two prestigious Ivy League degrees should be one smart cookie, and likely even a brainy scholar if not a bona fide genius, considering how she scored in law school.

The mainstream media had the nerve to brand Sarah Palin and George W. Bush as idiots, yet they were strangely silent when Kennedy seemed less like an Ivy League Miss Camelot and more like a village idiot. It's called a double standard. Liberals often fancy themselves as impeccable arbiters of intelligence, but when they trotted out Kennedy as a legitimate Senate candidate, they gave us amazing insight into their skewed barometer of brainpower, which seems to reside on another planet. Apart from her dearth of brainpower, she has led a life so insular and coddled that I cannot imagine why anyone would think that she could relate to people who work for a living.

What might plausibly explain how Kennedy could do so well in college and yet seem so shockingly stupid? I don't think she had a head injury or abuses drugs or alcohol, so she was likely just as daffy back in her college days. I've taught medical students and doctors, and would have failed anyone who sounds like Kennedy. Communication is key for doctors, but is arguably even more important for lawyers, who must have an impressive command of written and spoken English. So how could Kennedy obtain such an elite education and go through life without doing anything brilliant even though she had decades of free time to do great things to manifest her brainpower? How could she instead make many high school dropouts seem like Albert Einstein on a Ginkgo biloba drip?

The most plausible explanation is that Harvard and Columbia helped her cheat, just like MSU and other universities do for minorities and athletes.

A public relations expert appearing on Fox (12/29/08) said that Caroline Kennedy is “relatively inarticulate.” Trust me, he was being kind. He also mentioned that “it really is sad” that she couldn't even express why she aspired to be a Senator.

On the December 29th 2008 O'Reilly Factor, Bernard Goldberg, author of several best-selling books, said, “Let's be kind and say she doesn't sound sharp. She sounds like a teenager using the words 'you know, you know, you know, you know' a million times. [...] She appears not to be qualified to be a United States Senator.”

Goldberg added that he is opposed to affirmative action, saying, “I'm even against affirmative action for rich white people, and that's what this is: this is affirmative action for a rich white woman. Some people use ethnicity or skin color in terms of affirmative action; she uses her last name.”

Considering her privileged life and how much money she inherited, she should be incredibly sharp. I've spent many years doing menial work in and around my homes: mowing grass, raking leaves, shoveling snow, clearing brush, building, painting, vacuuming, doing laundry and dishes, washing windows, and countless other things. I've also had dozens of jobs other than being a doctor. If I had her money, I wouldn't have had to do any of that. I could have instead spent that time obtaining other degrees or engaging in other intellectual pursuits that would have made me more knowledgeable and sharper than I am. You are also probably much smarter than Kennedy and, had you enjoyed her advantages, you, too, could intellectually tower over her even more.

More from Caroline Kennedy:

“And you know, I am a proud Democrat, those are the values, you know — middle class tax relief, you know, helping working families, fixing the health care system so — you know, those are the issues that I, you know, would expect — I mean, I am a Democrat, that is, you know — I am trying to become a Democratic Senator, so I don’t, um — you know, I mean there are issues along the way, uh, that I'm sure that, you know, people have will have differences of opinion on. But I support gay marriage, I support um, you know, ahhh, you know, I've got problems with you know NAFTA.”

She's got problems, alright. The more you know about Caroline Kennedy, the more you know that she does not have The Right Stuff. You know?

Read this book and find out how I went from a dunce to a doctor who graduated in the top 1% of my class in medical school.


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Incidentally, Bill Hates evidently wanted her to be involved in one of his educational grants. Hey, Bill, do you ever wonder why you get so little bang for your bucks? Had you given that same amount of money to me, I could have improved education for every student in the world. If I could go from dunce to doctor—and I did—almost everyone could do something equivalent if they used the methods I stumbled upon that increased my IQ, memory, and creativity.

Kennedy is reportedly a very nice woman, but she is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. She doesn't have enough intellectual capacity to reliably formulate a coherent sentence, let alone generate an innovative idea that might help get our economy back on track again. Only an overblown “I am a Kennedy!” sense of entitlement could have instilled in her mind the notion that she should be in the U.S. Senate instead of returning to Romper Room to learn basic language skills.

Kennedy said that she withdrew for “personal reasons.” According to various news sources, her bizarrely timed exit—she announced her withdrawal at midnight—was prompted by potentially embarrassing issues regarding her tax history, employment of a nanny, frequent failure to vote, miserly donations, embellishing her résumé, and reportedly working an average of just two hours per week as a fundraiser for New York City schools. When I heard that she hadn't paid all of the taxes she owed, I thought, “Yet another rich person who thinks that only middle class folks need to worry about paying all of their taxes.”

Her $100,000,000 fortune came from inheritance, not from brainpower or hard work (update: Caroline Kennedy Reportedly Worth Up to $500 Million). How could someone so coddled and so insulated from the real world give valuable advice to people who've spent their lives working? She is just a rich socialite who was showered with more money than she ever deserved. Had she been appointed to the Senate, she likely would have rubber-stamped every Democratic tax-and-spend proposal and never given a hoot about where that money came from: your pocket, and the pockets of your children and grandchildren. Rose Kennedy, her grandmother, said that Caroline “probably thinks it's natural for children to go off in their own airplanes.” This silver-spoon mentality explains why Kennedys have been so eager to take more of our money in taxes to fund their cockamamie ideas. The best Kennedy idea of all time took no more brilliance than robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The Kennedy family is often revered in the United States, but why? Their ascent into the upper crust began with Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., who made a fortune through what we now call insider trading and stock manipulation—basically, he screwed people out of their money. He was also widely suspected of bootlegging. So for this he deserved to become one of the richest men in America? And his descendants deserve to live like kings on that inherited money?

Caroline Kennedy wanted to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Was Caroline the most qualified and experienced person for the job? Hardly! Oh, but she is a Kennedy, and therefore America's royalty, and therefore part of the Kennedy-Bush-Clinton dynasty that is ruining our country. Kennedy's primary qualifications are that she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and born with a lifetime pass to step ahead of others in line. In my opinion, this is disgustingly antithetical to American values of hard work in which people succeed by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

Kennedy first did her best to dodge questions from the press and public, then became snippy during an interview by The New York Times. If you read the transcript of that interview, you'll see why Kennedy is so afraid of answering questions: because her responses reveal that she is an idiot! Or, uh, you know, to phrase it, you know, like Caroline, you know, um, might, you know, say it, she is, like, um, you know, not someone who, you know, uh, seems to possess, you know, enough brainpower, you know, to run an animal shelter, uh, yeah!

Kennedy also comes across as immature and coddled, who got to be where she is because she was born into the “right” family. For her to be even considered for a Senate seat makes a mockery of the legitimacy of our government. It's not how smart you are, or how good of a job you can do, it's all about money and having the right connections and diplomas. Harvard and Columbia were happy to help foist her upon the world as someone with a brain, but in doing so, they've made us wonder if their degrees are genuine or something one might pull out of a Cracker Jack® box.

I'm guessing the latter. 57 states, ya dig?

Notes:

  1. By appointing Caroline Kennedy as Ambassador to Japan, President Obama once again demonstrated how the elite favor other elite even when others are clearly more qualified.
  2. "Ambassador" Caroline Kennedy
  3. Obama's Ambassadors Are Embarrassing
  4. Caroline Kennedy’s appointment is not very Kennedyesque
  5. Boeing Board Elects Caroline Kennedy as New Director
    Comment: Yikes!
  6. November 26, 2021: Harvard Admissions Data Shows That America Loves Affirmative Action—for Whites
  7. Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run
    Excerpt: “High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. … Then there is the apparent nepotism, the dozens if not hundreds of mundane emails in which petitioners for this or that plum Washington job or high-profile academic appointment … Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another's careers, constantly. … Yes, it's all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren't part of this happy, prosperous in-group … you're out.”
    Comment: Beyond the partisan divide is the inescapable reality that the elite and their coddled children can beat you and your kids in the game of life because they despise meritocracies—a genuine threat to them—and love how old boys’ clubs exclude outsiders from the best jobs. Giving a leg up to their elite buddies means discriminating against others with potentially greater merit: perhaps you, your spouse, or children.
    But the presumption in this article—that the elite are high-achievers—is utter hogwash; there is the presidential candidate who flunked the bar exam and a long list of other manifestations of idiocy, such as Caroline Kennedy's scatterbrained quote, presented above. This explains in part why the United States is failing: because it is led by people with second-rate minds but such big heads they refuse to listen to others with better ideas.
  8. The story of a cover-up: An inside look at how far WVU officials were willing to go for the governor's daughter and her unearned M.B.A. (referring to Heather Bresch, born Heather Manchin, daughter of Governor and then United States Senator Joe Manchin)
  9. KRUGMAN: It's Not Just About Hard Work — Dumb Rich Kids Get All The Breaks
  10. Caroline Kennedy Demonstrates Valley Girl’s Grasp of English Language
  11. Say goodnight, Caroline: How JFK's daughter flubbed the audition to become the next Senator Kennedy
  12. Caroline Kennedy Making Sarah Palin Look Like A Genius
  13. Former Bankers Create A Way Of Getting A Wall Street Job — Even If You Didn't Go To A Top School
    Excerpt: “The hedge fund [interviewed an applicant from a non-Ivy League university] and "he blew everyone away. … So everyone was kind of like, 'Wow, that was a big shocker. How did that happen?' The reality is there are a lot of really smart people that go to a lot of different schools."”
    Comment: Indeed. Ivy League ≠ genius; other U ≠ drone.
  14. One factor that may help schools close racial achievement gap
    Comment: And one that won't: helping students cheat with academic fraud dispensed by schools. Doing that is a sad and pathetic admission they don't know how to significantly improve brainpower, as I did in transforming from dunce to doctor.
The views expressed on this page may or may not reflect my current opinions, nor do they necessarily represent my past ones. After reading a slice of what I wrote in my various websites and books, you may conclude that I am a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Wrong; there is a better alternative. Just as the primary benefit from debate classes results when students present and defend opinions contrary to their own, I use a similar strategy as a creative writing tool to expand my brainpower—and yours. Mystified? Stay tuned for an explanation. PS: The wheels in your head are already turning a bit faster, aren't they?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reference: Imagining dialogue can boost critical thinking: Excerpt: “Examining an issue as a debate or dialogue between two sides helps people apply deeper, more sophisticated reasoning …”

Comments (1)

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Comment #112 by Christine Lee
Contact the commenter via MySpamSponge: christineeve Contact this person via MySpamSponge
January 30 2011 06:51:54 PM

Better thought a fool than . . .

. . . open your mouth and prove it.

It's ironic that the media twists what Sarah Palin says to make her "look" stupid. Ms. Kennedy opens her mouth and is obviously stupid.

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