You may remember that we discussed the scamming ways of Harvard 2L David Mainiero last October. Mr. Mainiero has now taken his show to Above the Law, where he is on ATL's team of "expert contributors". I expected better of you, Above the Law.
Above the Law is almost as foul a toilet as many a law skule. It's no surprise that they welcomed this Mainiero jerk to their throng of aristocratic scumbags.
I don't know, Elie has done a pretty good job of covering the LS scam. They probably would laughed at this idea four years ago, the way Jackass Marshall still does.
Fluff pieces to promote their services. There are few (no?) legitimate experts who advocate attending law school these days, and those who do often have a hidden or not-so-hidden agenda; selling admission consulting services, putting warm bodies in seats to help pay another year of professor salaries etc.
Which is why this site works so well. Nobody here is hawking anything, and nobody here has any financial interest in maximizing the number of students attending law school.
I think it would help the movement if we got away from the "lemming/snowflake" thing. It makes us seem like jerks, while the actual jerks come across as "kind and supportive."
No attorney would begin his or her closing argument with, "Members of the jury, if you seriously can't figure out by now that my client is not guilty, then you're all a bunch of dumbasses."
We're not dealing with jury members in a courtroom, though. We're dealing with lemmings, a peculiar species of type A, above-average intelligent personality where availability of objective information - at least as presented currently - has failed to quell unbridled optimism and result in rational behavior.
They are not jury members who are neutral and viewing all the evidence in a fair setting under rules. These are people running headlong into a radioactive zone because a charlatan told them about a pot o' gold if they can be the best. Under the circumstances, calling them stupid lemmings is entirely appropriate.
I would love it if 0Ls had to sit on a jury and listen to a "trial" about law school with a law dean on one side and a scamblogger on the other with the rules of evidence applying after full and fair discovery. I would pay money to sit in the audience, and pay double to cross-examine Dean Douchebag and his sidekicks in the admissions department.
Of course the scam artists come across as kind and supportive, just like the quacks who want to sell you laetrile and a coffee enema. They cover their lack of substance with an inviting bedside manner.
5:35 is 100% right. The people who use the term "lemmings" are only hurting themselves and don't understand what it takes to change someone's mind, especially when you're telling them something they don't want to here. It takes more to convince someone than just being right.
ATL also publishes the expert, incoherent ramblings of one Frank H. Wu, Dean of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Did you know he was on Oprah once?
And I quote, "For a long time, I was young. Now, however, I am old enough to have contempt for the young. It turns out I am not alone. Anyone approximately my age laughs when I inform them I have reached this milestone. Despite their desire that we all lighten up and their conviction we are peers, youth today — like youth of any era — take umbrage at this remark. What can I say. They have no sense of humor. When I participate in the blogosphere, I wonder if the world is about to end. The lament about internet discourse has become cliched. It is angry, communicating hardly anything more than grunting. Even those who wish to be meaningfully provocative cannot compete."
What can I say? One group's contempt for the other group is justified, but not vice versa. Also, someone should edit your articles, Dean, seriously.
The Boomers pretend to greater accomplishment and intelligence than the Gen X 'ers or Millennials, but I see little evidence of that.
What is Wu even talking about? He has contempt for the youth, but why? He says we have no sense of humor vis-a-vis his contempt of us. Why should his contempt of us strike us as humorous? Is it funny to be treated with contempt by a person whose one-percenter lifestyle you finance?
"It is angry, communicating hardly more than grunting." What is the antecedent of "it"? Does "it" refer to the "cliched lament" that internet discourse is angry, or does "it" refer to angry "internet discourse" itself? One cannot tell, because this man cannot write, which is a pretty good indication that he also cannot think.
Under his tutelage UCH has dropped 10 or 12 spots in The Rankings he cares so much about. As is being discussed at JD Underground right now, UCH is in the running for worst employment statistics of any ABA accredited law school.
Wu is going to need everyone to go to law school in order to make his entity solvent going forward. UCH is every bit as tuition-dependent as the 4th tier nothings. UCH has 30MM in rated bond debt, and who knows how much unrated debt. Endowment? Doesn't appear so.
While Wu holds himself out to be a Dean who understands the structural problems in the industry and will respond, the reality is he is just spinning a precipitous decline already well underway.
Being old and senile myself (at least in the view of the admini$trators of my law school—in particular the dean, who told me that at my age I'll find it hard indeed to get a job as a lawyer), I imagine that his "humor" was a comment on aging rather than on young people. Nonetheless, it was still anything but humorous.
As you said, he cannot write prose worth a tinker's damn. His paragraph is all over the place.
Wu was born in 1967, and therefore is not a baby boomer. That doesn't affect my own contempt for him in the slightest. Contempt for baby boomers is twisted and ignorant; contempt for obnoxious scamdeans is a noble and elevated emotion.
The whole scamblog movement has been a great humanitarian effort that has already saved thousands of students from poverty and misery. Just imagine the lasting freedom and happiness that would result if Wu's formerly "prestigious" debt trap were to close forever. Let's keep up the pressure on this guy. He's a fake reformer who's still profiting from ruined hopes and futures. That's why he deserves our contempt.
So he's actually of my generation. He's still contemptible.
There's nothing wrong with contempt for baby boomers as a generation. It is they who ate up the subsequent generations' seed corn—and are still eagerly devouring everything like a plague of locusts. It is they who are keeping us down by hogging the jobs (and giving the few openings to their millennial children, bypassing Generation X), racking up monstrous public debt, depleting the public coffers (think of Social Security—the trust fund will be dry by the time I retire), and making housing and university unaffordable, all while cutting their own taxes and sanctimoniously lecturing us about bootstraps. It is they who never stop yapping about the supposed greatness of their generation, which merely takes credit for the achievements of its elders.
So, yes, I do contemn the baby boomers, and I won't apologize for that.
Certainly you are free to have contempt for whomever you choose, but I would suggest that having contempt for an entire generation is evidence of a person who is bitter and unhappy and will likely never be happy. That is one of the negatives about the scam blogs. . . they tend to make malcontents of people, almost justifying their irrational negativity towards other people and institutions. Its all well and good to avoid law school, but to go through life with such a horrible attitude . . . hating and blaming everything and everyone for your troubles . . . well it sure will impact that right to pursue happiness won't it? The winners of life make lemonade out of lemons. The losers are bitter and resentful and blame everybody for their lots in life but themselves.
9:06, your point about "all or nothing thinking" is taken, but at the same time it is possible for one to (1) make lemons out of lemonade with their life while (2) still demanding accountability from those who wantonly hand out lemons to the detriment of many, and demanding justice for those so harmed. No contradiction there.
In fact, the lemon-distributors have actively counted on the shamed silence of their marks for decades. Consequently, there is a lot of pent-up animosity that is only coming out now in recent years, and that is also to be expected given history.
9:06 here: I don't disagree with your point at 9:29. I acknowledge the financial industrial complex, the educational industrial complex, the military industrial complex has caused lots of harm to lots of people and may yet bring our country down . . . but, most of us, including the baby boomers, have been victims one way or the other of the greed and narcissism of many of these institutions. Its not just the baby boomers vs. Generation X or the Millennial. Its the oligarchy vs. the rest of us. Many people are hurting these days because of the scum on Wall-street destroying the economy . . that includes many of the boomers. My point is that this is the state of humanity . . and all you can do is make the best of your personal situation and strive to be content with what you have. We all are in the position of somebody somewhere is trying to scam us and take what we have for ourselves. That is capitalism at its worst.
Are you talking to Dean Wu? He stokes the generational fire. He calls it a "milestone" to be contemptuous of the "youth." Did he become contemptuous of the youth because of the sour lemons they served him? Hardly. We all know how the man gets paid. He sees younger generations as a means to his ends.
I'll revise my attitude towards older generations right after a majority of them start advocating that they relinquish the country-killing entitlement programs they voted themselves, funded by the labor of younger generations. Among them, social security, medicare, and federal student loans. You see, we don't care about the nominal loss of these programs, because it is all a loss to us. To participate in them is only to embrace taking from the next generation.
The older generations have imposed a tyranny of the majority on younger generations.
And here's the dirty little secret: kids today work far harder for far less than their parents did. The level of skill they must possess to negotiate the world is far higher. What level of skill did it take to earn a living wage in 1950 versus today?
Here's an example for you of the difference. Kids today have to be constantly vigilant, iconoclasts who are virulently independent, ready to put away the constant propaganda directed at them and consult statistics, seek out alternative media, lest they get defrauded by the rapacious, lying scum who indeed want to SELL them a lemon.
When the older generations line up to take one on the chin for their children and grandchildren, then they'll be redeemed in my eyes, but not before.
9:06, it is I who expressed contempt for the baby boomers. And, yes, I'm bitter and unhappy. For good reason. You might be bitter and unhappy, too, if you were in my shoes.
W E B du Bois said: "We are come to a time when the sins and mistakes of the whole group must be considered and judged, not simply small localities or single individuals."
@ 8:22 Life is going to do you one better than "considered and judged." Full blown collapse of the structures that enriched them is more like it - structures upon which their wealth is still dependent.
Why are so many scammers running around to any publication that will publish them like their damn hair's on fire and that's the only way to put it out? It's almost over.
Michael Burry - the guy who got the first used credit default swaps to short housing derivatives - opined that you can tell when a bubble is about to pop, because fraud is introduced to keep it growing. Large amounts of increasingly bold fraud portend the end.
Seems like what we have here is a guy who went to HLS and soon discovered that he hates the law and would rather slit his wrists than spend his life in practice. So now he's scrambling around trying to find some other way to cash in on the distinction of being admitted to Harvard.
By the way, that god-damned Queen of the Open Road was on the radio today, squawking about racial bias in some taxi-style service. She lamented that people could damage others' reputations from afar with irresponsible allegations.
She reminded me of a story about a pot and a kettle.
I think there is a one-to-one correlation between LawProfs who need to be "heard" in every medium possible; and narcissism on the other. When someone dares criticize the quality of the so-called "scholarship", the response is "off with their heads!"
The Queen of the Open Road is Exhibit A. She's gunning for a permanent gig, however, so expect to hear (1) lots of bloviation, and (2) hypocrisy.
Gotta get that tenured position, you see, because who wants to actually have to work for a living? Queens deserve no less.
Oh, she'll definitely get tenure, even though she should be told to hit the (open) road. When was the last time that one of the legal hackademy's little darlings was turned down for tenure?
Actually, there's a window of opportunity here, and a certain race-baiting academic predator may not acquire the revenue stream (called tenure) for which she has already mortgaged her future. Racial capitalism usually doesn't pay off without government support, and her reckless investments in supposedly prestigious degrees could very well destroy her life. That's nothing new; it's already happened to many of her former classmates and students.
I noticed recently that a certain university in the Rocky Mountains has a huge law faculty that's gotten larger within the last few years. It also has a huge entering class, and hasn't adjusted to the new realities of the legal credentials market. If their enrollment were to fall off soon, and if they had to quit granting tenure for a while, then a few untalented and inexperienced law professors would have to seek employment elsewhere. So tenure isn't the inexorable machine for monetizing shaky credentials and half-baked ideas that some people imagine it to be.
That race-card-playing princess's wedding was celebrated in the pages of the New York Times. She comes from great privilege. If she were fired tomorrow (hope springs eternal, n'est-ce pas?), she'd go on living a cushy life.
1:11, One can only hope that various Rocky Mountain Universities are holding off on granting tenure, given all the financial uncertainty out there. Folks at the top gotta get paid first, especially Deans.
7:40, the truth shines through. Cushy-princess has clearly never had any REAL problems in life, as her skin is paper-thin and she expects everyone to dote on her prescious scholarship. No, her problems are all first-world problems, as evidenced by her over-the-top, reactionary "ethics" complaint for being slighted. No one puts baby in the corner, remember that.
Mainiero appears to be using a "Top 14 or bust" approach. That way he can gain paying customers and dissociate himself from the most obvious scam institutions. The real problem there is that once he promises Harvard or NYU, his clients don't want to admit defeat or waste their payment, so they settle for Brooklyn or Northeastern. It's an insidious process.
One of the best scams out there is to sell "preftiege". In reality, you are either born with it or you're not, but that doesn't stop the preftigious from trying to sell prefitege as if it is a commodity. Only after the mark has shelled out thousands of dollars do they realize you can't buy preftiege, as it is in actuality inherited via the modern equivalent of the Divine Right of Kings.
Indeed. Much of our lot in life is determined at the time of conception.
Time was when things were different. Today, though, hereditary nobility has reasserted itself with a vengeance. Law school provides an excellent illustration: nowadays it's really only for rich kids.
Sorry, I'd never heard of Game of Thrones; I had to look it up just now. I haven't watched television since I was a teenager; I've turned averse to it, perhaps because it was used as a substitute parent for those of us in Generation X.
If you want prestige, take a hint and buy it elsewhere at a lower price. Buy a coat of arms and put it in your hallway. Read a few books and get a mail-order PhD from a Bible college in Tennessee. Write a paper and get an online MA in legal studies. This would all cost less than Mainiero's services alone would cost.
Than you won't have to borrow $250,000 so you can get your JD, take the bar exam, and pretend to be important for a few years. Once you got laid off, no one would be impressed anyway.
Wait - why would you expect better of ATL?
ReplyDeleteAbove the Law is almost as foul a toilet as many a law skule. It's no surprise that they welcomed this Mainiero jerk to their throng of aristocratic scumbags.
DeleteI don't know, Elie has done a pretty good job of covering the LS scam. They probably would laughed at this idea four years ago, the way Jackass Marshall still does.
DeleteFluff pieces to promote their services. There are few (no?) legitimate experts who advocate attending law school these days, and those who do often have a hidden or not-so-hidden agenda; selling admission consulting services, putting warm bodies in seats to help pay another year of professor salaries etc.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why this site works so well. Nobody here is hawking anything, and nobody here has any financial interest in maximizing the number of students attending law school.
Follow the money, people. Just follow the money.
100% with Charles Cooper.
DeleteI think it would help the movement if we got away from the "lemming/snowflake" thing. It makes us seem like jerks, while the actual jerks come across as "kind and supportive."
No attorney would begin his or her closing argument with, "Members of the jury, if you seriously can't figure out by now that my client is not guilty, then you're all a bunch of dumbasses."
We're not dealing with jury members in a courtroom, though. We're dealing with lemmings, a peculiar species of type A, above-average intelligent personality where availability of objective information - at least as presented currently - has failed to quell unbridled optimism and result in rational behavior.
DeleteThey are not jury members who are neutral and viewing all the evidence in a fair setting under rules. These are people running headlong into a radioactive zone because a charlatan told them about a pot o' gold if they can be the best. Under the circumstances, calling them stupid lemmings is entirely appropriate.
I would love it if 0Ls had to sit on a jury and listen to a "trial" about law school with a law dean on one side and a scamblogger on the other with the rules of evidence applying after full and fair discovery. I would pay money to sit in the audience, and pay double to cross-examine Dean Douchebag and his sidekicks in the admissions department.
Of course the scam artists come across as kind and supportive, just like the quacks who want to sell you laetrile and a coffee enema. They cover their lack of substance with an inviting bedside manner.
Delete5:35 is 100% right. The people who use the term "lemmings" are only hurting themselves and don't understand what it takes to change someone's mind, especially when you're telling them something they don't want to here. It takes more to convince someone than just being right.
DeleteATL also publishes the expert, incoherent ramblings of one Frank H. Wu, Dean of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Did you know he was on Oprah once?
ReplyDeleteAnd I quote, "For a long time, I was young. Now, however, I am old enough to have contempt for the young. It turns out I am not alone. Anyone approximately my age laughs when I inform them I have reached this milestone. Despite their desire that we all lighten up and their conviction we are peers, youth today — like youth of any era — take umbrage at this remark. What can I say. They have no sense of humor. When I participate in the blogosphere, I wonder if the world is about to end. The lament about internet discourse has become cliched. It is angry, communicating hardly anything more than grunting. Even those who wish to be meaningfully provocative cannot compete."
What can I say? One group's contempt for the other group is justified, but not vice versa. Also, someone should edit your articles, Dean, seriously.
Being from Generation X, I am quite old enough to have contempt for baby boomers.
DeleteBy the way, that's the same scam-dean Frank Wu who wrote that stupid article "Why Law School Is for Everyone" five years ago.
The Boomers pretend to greater accomplishment and intelligence than the Gen X 'ers or Millennials, but I see little evidence of that.
DeleteWhat is Wu even talking about? He has contempt for the youth, but why? He says we have no sense of humor vis-a-vis his contempt of us. Why should his contempt of us strike us as humorous? Is it funny to be treated with contempt by a person whose one-percenter lifestyle you finance?
"It is angry, communicating hardly more than grunting." What is the antecedent of "it"? Does "it" refer to the "cliched lament" that internet discourse is angry, or does "it" refer to angry "internet discourse" itself? One cannot tell, because this man cannot write, which is a pretty good indication that he also cannot think.
Under his tutelage UCH has dropped 10 or 12 spots in The Rankings he cares so much about. As is being discussed at JD Underground right now, UCH is in the running for worst employment statistics of any ABA accredited law school.
Wu is going to need everyone to go to law school in order to make his entity solvent going forward. UCH is every bit as tuition-dependent as the 4th tier nothings. UCH has 30MM in rated bond debt, and who knows how much unrated debt. Endowment? Doesn't appear so.
While Wu holds himself out to be a Dean who understands the structural problems in the industry and will respond, the reality is he is just spinning a precipitous decline already well underway.
Wu is an economy-sized douche.
DeleteBeing old and senile myself (at least in the view of the admini$trators of my law school—in particular the dean, who told me that at my age I'll find it hard indeed to get a job as a lawyer), I imagine that his "humor" was a comment on aging rather than on young people. Nonetheless, it was still anything but humorous.
As you said, he cannot write prose worth a tinker's damn. His paragraph is all over the place.
Wu was born in 1967, and therefore is not a baby boomer. That doesn't affect my own contempt for him in the slightest. Contempt for baby boomers is twisted and ignorant; contempt for obnoxious scamdeans is a noble and elevated emotion.
DeleteThe whole scamblog movement has been a great humanitarian effort that has already saved thousands of students from poverty and misery. Just imagine the lasting freedom and happiness that would result if Wu's formerly "prestigious" debt trap were to close forever. Let's keep up the pressure on this guy. He's a fake reformer who's still profiting from ruined hopes and futures. That's why he deserves our contempt.
So he's actually of my generation. He's still contemptible.
DeleteThere's nothing wrong with contempt for baby boomers as a generation. It is they who ate up the subsequent generations' seed corn—and are still eagerly devouring everything like a plague of locusts. It is they who are keeping us down by hogging the jobs (and giving the few openings to their millennial children, bypassing Generation X), racking up monstrous public debt, depleting the public coffers (think of Social Security—the trust fund will be dry by the time I retire), and making housing and university unaffordable, all while cutting their own taxes and sanctimoniously lecturing us about bootstraps. It is they who never stop yapping about the supposed greatness of their generation, which merely takes credit for the achievements of its elders.
So, yes, I do contemn the baby boomers, and I won't apologize for that.
Certainly you are free to have contempt for whomever you choose, but I would suggest that having contempt for an entire generation is evidence of a person who is bitter and unhappy and will likely never be happy. That is one of the negatives about the scam blogs. . . they tend to make malcontents of people, almost justifying their irrational negativity towards other people and institutions. Its all well and good to avoid law school, but to go through life with such a horrible attitude . . . hating and blaming everything and everyone for your troubles . . . well it sure will impact that right to pursue happiness won't it? The winners of life make lemonade out of lemons. The losers are bitter and resentful and blame everybody for their lots in life but themselves.
Delete9:06, your point about "all or nothing thinking" is taken, but at the same time it is possible for one to (1) make lemons out of lemonade with their life while (2) still demanding accountability from those who wantonly hand out lemons to the detriment of many, and demanding justice for those so harmed. No contradiction there.
DeleteIn fact, the lemon-distributors have actively counted on the shamed silence of their marks for decades. Consequently, there is a lot of pent-up animosity that is only coming out now in recent years, and that is also to be expected given history.
9:06 here: I don't disagree with your point at 9:29. I acknowledge the financial industrial complex, the educational industrial complex, the military industrial complex has caused lots of harm to lots of people and may yet bring our country down . . . but, most of us, including the baby boomers, have been victims one way or the other of the greed and narcissism of many of these institutions. Its not just the baby boomers vs. Generation X or the Millennial. Its the oligarchy vs. the rest of us. Many people are hurting these days because of the scum on Wall-street destroying the economy . . that includes many of the boomers. My point is that this is the state of humanity . . and all you can do is make the best of your personal situation and strive to be content with what you have. We all are in the position of somebody somewhere is trying to scam us and take what we have for ourselves. That is capitalism at its worst.
Delete@ 9:06
DeleteAre you talking to Dean Wu? He stokes the generational fire. He calls it a "milestone" to be contemptuous of the "youth." Did he become contemptuous of the youth because of the sour lemons they served him? Hardly. We all know how the man gets paid. He sees younger generations as a means to his ends.
I'll revise my attitude towards older generations right after a majority of them start advocating that they relinquish the country-killing entitlement programs they voted themselves, funded by the labor of younger generations. Among them, social security, medicare, and federal student loans. You see, we don't care about the nominal loss of these programs, because it is all a loss to us. To participate in them is only to embrace taking from the next generation.
The older generations have imposed a tyranny of the majority on younger generations.
And here's the dirty little secret: kids today work far harder for far less than their parents did. The level of skill they must possess to negotiate the world is far higher. What level of skill did it take to earn a living wage in 1950 versus today?
Here's an example for you of the difference. Kids today have to be constantly vigilant, iconoclasts who are virulently independent, ready to put away the constant propaganda directed at them and consult statistics, seek out alternative media, lest they get defrauded by the rapacious, lying scum who indeed want to SELL them a lemon.
When the older generations line up to take one on the chin for their children and grandchildren, then they'll be redeemed in my eyes, but not before.
People try to put us down
DeleteTalkin bout my generation
Just because we get around
Talkin bout my generation
Things they do look awful cold
Talkin bout my generation
Hope I die before I get old
Talkin bout my generation
9:06, it is I who expressed contempt for the baby boomers. And, yes, I'm bitter and unhappy. For good reason. You might be bitter and unhappy, too, if you were in my shoes.
DeleteW E B du Bois said: "We are come to a time when the sins and mistakes of the whole group must be considered and judged, not simply small localities or single individuals."
@ 8:22
DeleteLife is going to do you one better than "considered and judged." Full blown collapse of the structures that enriched them is more like it - structures upon which their wealth is still dependent.
Why are so many scammers running around to any publication that will publish them like their damn hair's on fire and that's the only way to put it out? It's almost over.
Michael Burry - the guy who got the first used credit default swaps to short housing derivatives - opined that you can tell when a bubble is about to pop, because fraud is introduced to keep it growing. Large amounts of increasingly bold fraud portend the end.
Pardon me while I throw up.
ReplyDeleteSeems like what we have here is a guy who went to HLS and soon discovered that he hates the law and would rather slit his wrists than spend his life in practice. So now he's scrambling around trying to find some other way to cash in on the distinction of being admitted to Harvard.
Hey, stop talking about Elie Mystal! He didn't do anything to you!...
DeleteBy the way, that god-damned Queen of the Open Road was on the radio today, squawking about racial bias in some taxi-style service. She lamented that people could damage others' reputations from afar with irresponsible allegations.
ReplyDeleteShe reminded me of a story about a pot and a kettle.
I think there is a one-to-one correlation between LawProfs who need to be "heard" in every medium possible; and narcissism on the other. When someone dares criticize the quality of the so-called "scholarship", the response is "off with their heads!"
DeleteThe Queen of the Open Road is Exhibit A. She's gunning for a permanent gig, however, so expect to hear (1) lots of bloviation, and (2) hypocrisy.
Gotta get that tenured position, you see, because who wants to actually have to work for a living? Queens deserve no less.
Oh, she'll definitely get tenure, even though she should be told to hit the (open) road. When was the last time that one of the legal hackademy's little darlings was turned down for tenure?
DeleteActually, there's a window of opportunity here, and a certain race-baiting academic predator may not acquire the revenue stream (called tenure) for which she has already mortgaged her future. Racial capitalism usually doesn't pay off without government support, and her reckless investments in supposedly prestigious degrees could very well destroy her life. That's nothing new; it's already happened to many of her former classmates and students.
DeleteI noticed recently that a certain university in the Rocky Mountains has a huge law faculty that's gotten larger within the last few years. It also has a huge entering class, and hasn't adjusted to the new realities of the legal credentials market. If their enrollment were to fall off soon, and if they had to quit granting tenure for a while, then a few untalented and inexperienced law professors would have to seek employment elsewhere. So tenure isn't the inexorable machine for monetizing shaky credentials and half-baked ideas that some people imagine it to be.
That race-card-playing princess's wedding was celebrated in the pages of the New York Times. She comes from great privilege. If she were fired tomorrow (hope springs eternal, n'est-ce pas?), she'd go on living a cushy life.
Delete1:11, One can only hope that various Rocky Mountain Universities are holding off on granting tenure, given all the financial uncertainty out there. Folks at the top gotta get paid first, especially Deans.
Delete7:40, the truth shines through. Cushy-princess has clearly never had any REAL problems in life, as her skin is paper-thin and she expects everyone to dote on her prescious scholarship. No, her problems are all first-world problems, as evidenced by her over-the-top, reactionary "ethics" complaint for being slighted. No one puts baby in the corner, remember that.
Mainiero appears to be using a "Top 14 or bust" approach. That way he can gain paying customers and dissociate himself from the most obvious scam institutions. The real problem there is that once he promises Harvard or NYU, his clients don't want to admit defeat or waste their payment, so they settle for Brooklyn or Northeastern. It's an insidious process.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best scams out there is to sell "preftiege". In reality, you are either born with it or you're not, but that doesn't stop the preftigious from trying to sell prefitege as if it is a commodity. Only after the mark has shelled out thousands of dollars do they realize you can't buy preftiege, as it is in actuality inherited via the modern equivalent of the Divine Right of Kings.
DeleteSee also, law schools.
Indeed. Much of our lot in life is determined at the time of conception.
DeleteTime was when things were different. Today, though, hereditary nobility has reasserted itself with a vengeance. Law school provides an excellent illustration: nowadays it's really only for rich kids.
10:24 do you think- and this is pure conjecture here- that this is why we subconsciously enjoy Game of Thrones so much?
DeleteSorry, I'd never heard of Game of Thrones; I had to look it up just now. I haven't watched television since I was a teenager; I've turned averse to it, perhaps because it was used as a substitute parent for those of us in Generation X.
DeleteIf you want prestige, take a hint and buy it elsewhere at a lower price. Buy a coat of arms and put it in your hallway. Read a few books and get a mail-order PhD from a Bible college in Tennessee. Write a paper and get an online MA in legal studies. This would all cost less than Mainiero's services alone would cost.
ReplyDeleteThan you won't have to borrow $250,000 so you can get your JD, take the bar exam, and pretend to be important for a few years. Once you got laid off, no one would be impressed anyway.