My wife showed me an article from Teen Vogue that appeared on her Facebook feed, Fox News Readers Are Really Upset About Malia Obama Getting Into Harvard.
Of course, they only focus on race, because identity politics have to identity politics.
There were some racist comments, and those are ugly and unjustifiable. What Teen Vogue doesn’t address is what makes them hypocrites.
Malia Obama grew up in the White House, a privilege only a handful of children in recent history have had.
Her dad is one of the most famous and beloved people in the world, with his own cult following in Hollywood and politics. He is worth an estimated $12.2 Million and makes $400,000 per speech. He and his wife are Harvard law graduates.
According to the New York Time Malia chose to attend Harvard.
Malia Obama, his older daughter and perhaps the nation’s most scrutinized and sought-after college applicant, has opted to attend Harvard Universitybeginning in the fall of 2017, apparently disregarding her parents’ counsel that she need not choose a school with a big name and reputation…
Harvard has long been a destination for the children of American and foreign leaders as well as those of celebrities and the ultrawealthy; its police force even has a three-person dignitary protection unit.
Malia did not have to go through the application process that other college students go through, she was invited to attend the most prestigious college in America. Talk about privilege.
What will her future look like?
Let’s look at her Clinton doppelganger.
Chelsea Clinton went to Stanford for college. She was hired by McKinsey & Co., one of the world’s most prestigious consulting firms, with no experience or business acumen. She then went to Wall Street to be a chemical industry analyst despite having no experience or education in engineering or chemistry.
Then she got a $600,000/year job with NBC to do make work special reports.
She then went to work for the Clinton Money Laundering Foundation.
Now she makes $65,000 per speech to say nothing.
She has had a top 1% life handed to her because there are people in business who love Bill Clinton.
Malia will go to Harvard. She will probably go to law school, maybe Harvard, maybe Columbia. When she clerks for a judge, it will be a Liberal on the Supreme Court or a judge appointed by her dad. She will get some six-figure salary to do make work at a prestigious law firm who does a lot of work for the goverment.
If not that, than in some other way Obama cultists will make sure Malia is taken care of for life.
All this time, the working and middle class Americans who have been fucked sideways by Obamacare and Obama’s other terrible economic policies are going to continue to be underpaid and under employed because of her father’s policies. They are going to have a tough time with upward mobility, and an ever harder time sending their kids to college.
Malia Obama is perhaps one of three of the MOST privileged people on earth (only Sasha and Chelsea Clinton can compete) but Teen Vogue wants to forget that because she’s a victim.
Malia’s privilege doesn’t negate her blackness and these commenters quickly reminded us all that she and all black people are still perceived as inferior by some, even when we earn acceptance into the nation’s best colleges.
This is the hypocrisy of the Left. The 50 year old white guy, who was making $55K as a foreman at the factory until it went under and now is a Wal-Mart greeter in some small Rust Belt town is more privileged than the daughter of the President who will be given everything in life, because she’s black.
If there was anything I could do to fight privilege, my own form of “Social Justice” here it is:
Never hire anybody who attended an Ivy League school. Dumpster every resume from a “prestigious” (Berkeley, Brown, Oberlin) university*. Give the kid from a middle tier state school a chance. He or she will probably work twice as hard and be twice as dedicated given the opportunity.
*I will make an exception for my Alma Mater and a few highly regarded similar tiny technical institutes like Harvey Mudd and Embry Riddle, since they know what they are doing.
Thank you very much for such a great post. It’s shocking how no-talent Chelsea Clinton and her ilk skate through life with every door opened for her. Most of us have a different experience.
I do differ, however, with one line:
“Dumpster every resume from a “prestigious” (Berkeley, Brown, Oberlin) university*.”
Can’t agree with you there, my friend. I went to a small undergrad college, but then did a stint in the Navy and got into Berkeley (a public school, not private) in 1988 with an academic scholarship. I worked my butt off to get there, and I met plenty of others like me at Cal. Yes, there were kids of privilege there, but their paying out-of-state tuition probably helped fund the scholarship I got from the university.
Things may be different now, but I look at everybody as an individual. The jobs I’m interviewing candidates for would never appeal to the likes of a Clinton or Obama offspring, anyway.
I’ll continue reading this blog, because your posts are thought-provoking and informative. Thanks for all you do.
Bob (a loyal reader)
Maybe I should add a caveat on graduation date from a “Prestigious” university. What I have seen in the last two years at places like Harvard, Princeton, Mizzou, Oberlin, etc., with the protests, campus riots and alike had demonstrated to me that there is nothing left at these institutions in terms of quality of education. When a protest erupted over an email about Halloween costumes at Yale, because a bunch of students got offended that the dean of Silliman wasn’t going to police what kids were wearing for “cultural appropriation” the value of a Yale education fell to zero in my eyes.
As little as 10 years ago, sure, I would have agreed that these schools still had value. When Oberlin gets shut down by students because they are offended that the cafeteria serves sushi that is inauthentic and therefore is white supremacist (yes, that happened) is there any wheat there to separate from the chaff.
Students at Berkeley did $800,000 in damage to the campus because they couldn’t ignore a gay conservative.
It was so obscene right now, I wound’t let my kid go to one of those schools if he got accepted.
A Berkeley diploma from 1988 has value, a Berkeley diploma from 2015 and newer isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
Like Bob G., I, too, went to a *very* “name” school, but I got there on academic performance, and got through there on scholarships and loans. Unlike Bob G., I didn’t go to a lesser school first. Today, while there has been a bit of a shift in their admissions policy (with which I have expressed vociferous disagreement), there appears to be far less sjw crap at MIT than at any high-end school with a significant liberal-arts side. While I’d probably trash resumes showing non-technical degrees from “prestige” schools, I’d probably be a little less negatively selective for engineering grads.
If still consider them on probationary status.
When a definition of Privilege supposes that a 19 year old white male high school dropout from Appalachia has more privilege than the Obama’s daughters, then that definition is flawed.
It’s also ridiculous and insulting for the Obama Lickspittles to assume that the Obama girls are somehow in the same boat as a 19 year old black girl from the projects.
I went to a state university because that was what the family could afford. In engineering at least, after your first couple of jobs, where you went to school matters less then your job experience. Yeah, if you went to a prestige school you got a better starting salary, but after the first few years not so much. I do know that some companies favor a given school, especially if the CEO is an alum. However that only applies if you want to spend your life in that company.
@J Kb: Riddle grad here with a MAS. I’m upper management for a company and I don’t know if I would hire many Riddle grads anymore. Same for UND. So much has changed in the last 10 – 15 years unfortunately. Same entitled crap I see from Ivy League D-bags. All the swagger with little to back it up.