Posted by
Katy Grimes on Thursday, April 09, 2009 3:25:36 PM
A friend at work uses the expression "Privileged Mediocrity" to describe that small group of people who control everything that affects our lives: Government agencies, Wall Street, Politics, and of course, the liberal media.
I take it one step further and throw affirmative action into the heap. Since the late 1970's, so many of the mediocre meatheads who find themselves working in government, politics and media, went to college under false circumstances: they only got there because of Affirmative Action and that old level playing field. Had there need no affirmative action, they would have either gone to a trade school, gone right to work and if they were determined to get a college education, they would have attended Community College. Instead, with mediocre grades, they filled up top-notch colleges and universities, taking the places of kids who had the grades to get in but could not because they were too white, too anglo-saxon, lacking "ethnicity."
Affirmative Action has always perplexed me. The last thing I would ever want, is anyone thinking I did not earn my way - that I was gifted a position because of my ethnicity. I only went to state college (like Sarah Palin) because even with a very high GPA coming out of high school, I got no points for my anglo-saxon parents, or my anglo name and Irish-Welsh heritage. Berkeley wasn't accepting anglo kids with 3.9 GPA's. But if my name had been Swift Antelope, or Enriqueta Ramirez or Shaniqua Johnson, I would have "earned" a place.
Our President was the recipient of Affirmative Action benefit, right into the White House. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama admits that he used marijuana and cocaine as a teenager, and was only a mediocre student. Obama graduated high school the year before I did. A mediocre student from a high school in Hawaii went to Occidential College, transfered to Columbia and then Harvard.
California schools are jam-packed with professional, entitlement students who receive BS grants just for having an ethnic background, but are middle-of-the-road students. They fill up the universities, graduate and get jobs with the state. The entitlement continues. As mediocre students, they fill up colleges they were not qualified to attend. And many of the kids who did qualify to attend, are pushed out because they are white.
Community college is where the majority of the mediocre students need to be if they truly want to be educated. The level playing field is killing this country. And if President Obama is any example, America is in trouble.
I am an employer. I see what the colleges are producing. And I am the mother of a very bright college-age son. How is it that he earned a full-ride $300,000 scholarship to the United States Naval Academy - arguably one of the most exceptional educational institutions in the country - but was turned down by UC Berkeley? He is of anglo-saxon heritage. However, every one of his friends with any legitimate ethnicity in their heritage and mediocre grades, was acetped to UC campuses all over the state. And to add insult to injury, they pay very little of the cost of the education. (and trust me, we are glad he's not at Berkeley)
Gone is the pride of earning for so many. There are parents who have taught their kids that to earn their way to success will bring greater rewards, but the masses are standing around their their hands out.
Privileged Mediocrity is what is running the country right now. Affirmative Action got them there.
In doing research for this column, I discovered some information about President Obama's affirmative action education:
Here are some troubling facts about Obama's intelligence:
Even though he applied to college in the heyday of race preferences, he had to settle for Occidental College. He then transferred to Columbia where he took no classes from distinguished professors.
It is common knowledge that "minority" admits to HLS are 2-3 SDs below the nonpreferred
Obama published nothing at U Chicago Law, yet he was offered a tenured position there.
Per the Wall Street Journal September 11, 2008, "Obama's Lost Years," Obama graduated from Columbia University (to which he transferred after his first two years at Occidental College in California), with a degree in Political Science without honors, so had a GPA less than a 3.3. His roomate Sohale Siddiqi indicated Obama itially felt alienated, felt "very lost," and used drugs to get high, which could have led to low grades initially. The roomate indicates that he then turned serious and "stopped getting high." Obama transferred to Columbia because he was concerned with urban issues. Based on his overall undergraduate GPA of less than a 3.3, Mr. Obama's admission to Harvard Law School may reflect affirmative action statutes, low grades early, then higher grades later (purely speculation) and/or other factors.
How many other mediocre but ambitious people have traveled the same path? And why do they always end up working for the government?
more reading:
And don't forget Michelle Obama:
As Linda Chavez pointed out last summer:
Michelle Obama’s life is a case study in affirmative action....
At every step of her career, race has been central to her own identification and upward mobility. Judging from the quality of thinking and writing exhibited in her Princeton thesis, Michelle would not likely have been admitted to Princeton (and later Harvard Law) had she been white. And of course affirmative action opened up jobs, first in a prestigious law firm and later as the vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago medical center-earning $300,000 a year. She made it her first task at the hospital to steer more contracts to minority contractors. “She revised the contracting system, sending so much business to firms owned by women and other minorities that the hospital won awards,” the Times says.
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