They call it a merger, but let’s not kid ourselves. Tina Brown will be running the show and is sure to offload the remaining deadwood at Newsweek and dispense with its un-navigable website. I sort of imagine Vanity Fair — the East Coast edition. Costumed members of Congress in large group photos by Annie Leibovitz. More slam pieces on Sarah Palin. And, of course, lots and lots of ads. The Daily Beast is editorially eclectic — running from the left-leaning anti-Israel rants of Peter Beinart to the conventional media wisdom of Howard Kurtz to the sharp essays of Mark McKinnon. And, for old times’ sake, she may throw in the conspiracy meanderings of Seymour Hersh, just in case the New Yorker crowd wants to take a peek now and then. So it will certainly be a less dreary and predictable publication than the newer Newsweek or the old Newsweek, for that matter.
Yes, her own politics are predictably left, but she has, at least in this round of her career, not imposed the sort of ideological rigidity that has branded the Huffington Post as the left’s cocoon (where nary a non-liberal opinion can be uttered). But what they say in a Tina Brown publication is much less important than how they say it. And how they dress.
It may not be a better class of journalism, but it will certainly make a splash and might well be commercially viable. Besides, I look forward to all the stories on politicians and their pets and to getting an inside look at the lavish homes of our elected leaders.
I spent a year in the “real world” between HS and college. One of the best decisions I ever made.
Figuring a way to pay your own bills really is one of the most valuable lessons a person can learn. 18 is plenty old enough to start.
It would be a wonderful thing if the Idols of Harvard, Yale etc. are toppled- or, at least, not worshipped as they have been by parents and kids who think the only track to great success in the world depends on passing through their gates.
Also, might we finally start- though we won’t if Christ the King is elected- to talk about how not every young person in this country needs to go to college. To put it more accurately, not every high school graduate is academically capable of doing college work.
Six months of trucking school and the down payment on a Peterbilt tractor will start paying off right away.
Particularly in view of the fact that college costs are higher this year than last, it is a good idea for college-bound students and their parents to look at all the available options.
While what you learn at tOSU is probably not much different than what you learn at the Ivies (except the couch buring and abuse of visiting football fans which you would learn only at tOSU), the connections you make at the ivies cannot be discounted. There are reasons to go to a top rated school other than the differences in education, and who you meet there is a huge one. Harvard alum tend to look after their own and that also cannot be discounted. The job market post college for Harvard alums and say OSU alums right out of college is just not the same.
If you can afford only Ohio State, but get admitted to Ivies, Chicago, Williams, Stanford, MIT, etc., you are unlikely to pay tuition. Top private schools will just eat the tuition if your parents can’t pay.
It’s Bucknell v. Penn State or Illinois v. Northwestern type trade-offs where you need to consider finances as a reason to attend one over the other. Or 4 years of in-state tuition at UCLA v. 2 years at Santa Monica College before transferring to UCLA.
Someone has to get David Thomson to read and comment on this.
Imagine getting jobs and applying for scholarships to get through college. Some of us did it exactly that way. In fact, a whole lot of students were doing it that way when I was in college. So at this point, the belt-tightening has caused us to regress all the way to the primitive deprivation of … 1980.
The Left is always complaining about tobacco companies targeting vulnerable teens with advertising, but none are as shameless as the top universities. Students and the parents go into debt up to their eye teeth to go the top schools and for what, to get out of school, get their first job and they find themselves doing the same job and getting the same pay as someone who went to a state school for a third the cost.
The advertising of the top schools is the biggest fraud out there.
When roughly 50%-60% of all incoming freshmen NEVER finish college, the push for MORE enrollment seems ludicrous. Yes, universities are expensive, and sending your child to college is a huge financial burden on families. What we are seeing is essentially 50%-60% of familires being bamboozeled with the notion of higher education. It’s about time this country started paying more attention to those people that actually keep the country running, those people with what amounts to “associates” degree in training, whether they have a degfree or not: IT professionals, mechanics, emt’s, electricians, and dare I say it? plumbers.
Higher Education is important, but it’s not something that EVERYONE needs. Whats more important is the technical sector. We have a shortage of these types of workers. That should be our focus.
Come on, Lincoln, be a bit smarter.
A cheapo Toyota is 99.99% the car a Mercedes is. (If you measure only reliability, the Toyota maybe 125% the car a Mercedes is.) Does that mean Mercedes is shameless for trying to get people to buy a car that costs 3x what Toyota charges?
If all you care about is getting something at the absolute cheapest price, then pretty much everything sold in America is being pushed by shameless hustlers.
Obama’s souffle has gone pooft. He’s lucky he only has a few days left. Outside his true believers a whole lot of people would probably prefer he just fade away if he isn’t going to come forward. Basta!
The Country is not congenitally flawed and Obama’s dirges soothe the hearts of youthful folly, haters and the enervated.
By the way, McCain’s Health Care proposal is yummy. Bringing health care options to people outside the limits and burden of one’s employer is what’s needed, at least in part, to make it competitive and bring costs down. An excellent spokesperson is needed to explain this to people. What will scare most people is that the cost right now is so high that fear of emerging from the protection of their employer on this issue is paralyzing.
In 1987, I was working a minimum wage job without health insurance and per my Father’s prodding and offer to fund, I called Blue Cross and Blue Shield and got a policy similar to a Blue Million policy -no restrictions on choice of physician, $500/deductible- and paid $45/month. Refused my Dad’s help because I didin’t really need it, not if I lived according to my means. Also, even though it may be your Dad, it’s better to dig deep down and remember that taking advantage of a benefactor when you don’t really need to will only result in arrested development. A benefactor is always a reminder of your disabilities and inferiority. It’s this disposition of the will that makes a man with a prosthetic leg run a race. Any other formulation results in an enigma absurdum, which is what the philosophy driving socialism amounts to.
I was 19 years old when I took my oath of Citizenship. I emigrated to the States with my parents in 1958; I was 2 years old. I had to renounce my allegiance to Italy which hurt a little but not enough to depress a tremendous sense of pride or to make me blind to what I was gaining.
My naturalization papers are so very precious to me. When you look at my picture it’s hard to know what my ethnic background might be, most people would guess Native American and that pleases me to no end.
As Mark Steyn wrote earlier in the week, Sweden, Norway, France, Italy get to be who or what they are because America is America. When someone finds a better construct than Country as we understand it, Nationalism as we understand it, please, pull up a chair and tell us all about it.
Don’t let my Dad and Mom’s America -America that was and remains a Dream that leads to a Love Affair- decline or fade away like an Old Soldier. Obama will be the First President of American Decline; not by misfortune but by design.
The End of History, however studiously presented, is an age old fantasy that every truly oppressed peasant wryly smiles at during his morning walk to his daughter’s Newsroom to get his morning paper and a cup of coffee.
Tried to include this link with first post but it wouldn’t take.
The Obama Souffle
To anyone who’s kid did not maket make it into a Ivy League school as a freshman, if they go to a lesser school and make good grades there they might be able to transfer in to an Ivy in sophmore or junior year.
The degree is the same.
A lot of people believe that smart people are academically inclined. The Ivies float on this belief, and their graduates truly believe that they are more capable of ‘thinking’ than are the rest of the world.
So, I ask you: do you really want to hire a stupid person to fix your plumbing? And what is so great about finding work in a cube in a large organization, where you get to sit at a computer all day, and during your lunch hour you rush over to the gym to get some physical exercise??
Finally, what is the point of spending your 20′s in school? Talk about a waste of your life (unless you are a scholar, and love libraries… which I do, but lemme tell you that is not a life for everyone, thank gracious)
It won’t matter to the Ivies until somebody figures out that if the average shmuck should feel “patriotic” for paying taxes, the average Ivy League school should have the undistributed portion of their endowments heavily taxed, also in the name of patriotism.
Right now, private colleges receive more federal and state subsidies than an armored division. In the name of “fairness,” let’s take the punchbowl away.
In 1969 I spent a year at Okla. State, the agriculture and practical science school, on a small academic scholarship. The next year I went to OU, the arts and professional school and found the quality of instruction far inferior to the less prestigious ag school. (I dropped out and got my degree in 1994 at UBC in Vancouver where the quality of instruction was mixed. My daughter got a masters in Journalism at Columbia, but has difficulty separating assumptions from facts. Of course, she went there expressly because she knew it was the best place for credentials, not education. I suspect this is a pattern.
Jenny Poo,
Everyone knows that you lacked the family connections, money, test scores, and general intelligence to bribe or scam your way into an Ivy League institution and that you’ve spent every waking moment since plotting to stick it to the Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, etc. set ever since.
Do you really have to be so continuously blatant in the expression of your raw hatred and your Ivy League Derangement Syndrome?
Nice theory, Sol, but here’s the hole in your bubble. I had all of that crap and a Harvard College degree to boot. After having put my three kids through a variety of colleges and graduate schools, I now know the truth. Jenny Poo is spot on. What gives a “Harvard” degree its kick isn’t the education but the value that lemmings like you (and formerly, me) ascribe to the credential. In short, “Harvard”–or Yale, or Princeton or the rest–aren’t educations, they’re brands, memes for the suckers who ponied up for overrated goods, or worse, who accord prestige to others for having ponied up for overrated goods.
I’m mad because as a late adolescent, I realize now that I was swindled. But I suspect you’re not a late adolescent. So what exactly is your excuse? Or are you just another goat in that “herd” of independent thinkers?
Judith,
Transferring into an Ivy is much tougher than getting in as a freshman. When I was an undergrad, the numbers of transfers was said to be limited to a few more than the numbers of freshmen and sophomores who transferred away.
That’s a tiny handful. In fact I never met anybody who transferred to/from an Ivy. Maybe it’s easier nowadays, but I doubt it.
Cash,
It’s the hypocrisy that I take umbrage with. If taking advantage of clueless teenagers is wrong, then it shouldn’t matter who does it.
But the Left doesn’t have a problem with it if it’s done by the Left. It’s only “exploitation” if it’s a non-Leftist entity.
Dick,
I’m sorry that your Harvard degree did not guarantee you the annual seven-figure income that Mother and Father had so promised. Of course, had you learned a wee bit about basic work ethic, general decency, and the joys of success through merit (rather than a monthly trust fund check) you, like hundreds of millions of other Americans, could have achieved success and happiness.
Yes, Dick, one can truly be happy without a trust fund and an offshore bank account. I know, that’s probably a socialist idea, but one practiced by countless Americans. Of course, you’re not one of THOSE Americans. You do not want to be with THEM. Instead, you favor consorting only with others with the RIGHT way of thinking.
Dear Sol (ol’ chap):
True, I wasn’t born with a red diaper. But the only thing the ‘rents promised was the coming of the Moshiach. Everything else was gratis, on loan, there for those who proved worthy.
Oh yeah, they also bequeathed me a collective memory, started by Avraham Avinu with stops at the destruction of the First and Second Temples, and more recently, by way of Auschwitz. And one of the things I was born cured of was a sappy naivete, the sort of attitude that predisposed me towards presidential candidates as messiahs or convinced me that at the end of the day, if I aped my colleagues politics and lifestyles, they’d be more willing to accept and “like me,” kind of, let’s sweep the Jewish thing under the rug. There are better examples of assimilation and self-hatred than the liberal Jew, especially on today’s campuses. (“Oh, I’m not like all those Zionists, oh, no, not me. I’m for the rights of man. Now can I have tenure?”)
“Stiff necked” is the preferred adjective. And if I do have an offshore account, it’s because I’ve inherited the ancient attitude: as a Jew, I’m never quite sure what the morrow may bring.
I don’t know what your particular background is, but if Jewish, you may want to consider an offshore account for yourself.
@J. Rowland: excellent point about technical training and it’s interesting how much, in theory, how much tech training and preparation could be taught to students IN HIGH SCHOOL so that you would have high school graduates who are trained and employable with their public education. Instead, high schools have turned away from technical or even “practical” classes (Home Ec, anyone? Shop?) toward “communications” (how to write a resume, how to hold a fork) and other non-academic, non-skill courses.
But: it was interesting how “college affordability” has become a consistent mantra of the Obama campaign- we heard much about that in his acceptance speech and Michelle, of course, has complained about those pesky college loans for a while. In fact, the government has fueled college tuition inflation by making cheap money available to students for every institution from acupuncture school to the Ivy Leagues. The vast majority of college attendees are not getting their money’s worth, if the Dept. of Ed. stats are any good. One study cited in DOE’s report on higher education showed that only 50% of college graduates could comprehend a newspaper editorial.
Shopping around for value will do good- the schools that actually offer an economical education will get the enrollment, the others will have to compete.
Lincoln,
The real scandal is law and business schools. Whether the school is good or bad, national reputation or unknown, tuition is about the same. But top 5 schools generally offer great returns on investment, especially b-schools. Nothing like being a poor sap with a JD from a 3rd tier school who is unlikely to earn an income sufficient to justify his investment of time and money.
Dick,
You remind me of my late-uncle, a lifetime shareholder in Victim, Inc. and always a resident of Victimland. Always he was under attack. Always “they” (fill in anything between the quote marks that suits you) were coming to get him.
About my now-departed-uncle, my late-father always used to say, “Not bad, paranoia-wise, for a real estate lawyer who never left Cleveland until 1993.”
Oy vey!
Instead, like my late-father, I worry far more about the Bibi What A Yahoo’s and their Yigal Amirs. I find myself bothered by the Shelly Adelsons and their pals who wish to turn the West Bank and Gaza into a series of gated communities. These types ask others to provide the fear. They’ll be only too happy to offer the gates, the series of homes spanning 2,400-square-feet with four bedrooms and three baths, and all the other amenities that make I’ve-Got-Mine-You-Don’t-Have-Yours living so enjoyable. At a 40 percent premium, of course.
And, schmuck or not, I make my living in real estate! Nothing wrong with a big house or making a few bucks. I heartily encourage it.
Thanks to my father, I’ve had at various times the privilege – yes, the privilege – of sitting in a meeting room AND of digging a cesspool, of cashing a rather intriguing check AND of building every single roof on the houses of a particular drive. I learned something called perspective that sadly escaped your education. I learned how to get along with people AND make a buck. I learned how to work with communities AND get things done.
Always I played by the rules, as that was what my late-father insisted. Never bring shame to the family, he said, and there are no greater forms of shame than chicanery for money or the use of the past to manipulate others in the present. Sadly, you, like too many others in Likud, failed to learn these rules. Truly a pity. Both would have cut down immensely on your ulcers.
My late-father loved this country, his religion, and his family, and he passed down that love and respect for all three to me, his son. He tried, as I try, to reason with those, like you, in Likud and your litany of think tanks and “pseudo-intellectual” operations in our nation. Some in our family believed the constant scenario of “Doom Is Tomorrow” that you sell. A few, sadly, still do. But I, like my father before me, do not. And, like him, I will not stay silent in the face of your endless drivel.
You see Yigal Amir and Bibi What A Yahoo as heroes. I see the former as a pure assassin who cannot endure his self-imposed life in jail and the latter as a cheap charlatan in a $3,000 suit. Neither is my religion. Neither is Israel. Neither is freedom. Neither should ever be allowed to set foot in this nation.
Instead, give Bibi What A Yahoo, Dick Cheney, and that powerless Iranian fool with the big mouth and even bigger ego each a BB gun with a couple of hundred rounds, stick ‘em in a broom closet, and whichever stubborn fool survives gets the West Bank and Gaza. My father made this suggestion in his final days. Never have I earned a more appropriate method. Or a more humorous one.
Meanwhile, I suggest you contact your offshore banker. Who knows? The may have taken your money in the past few hours. A permanent victim like yourself never knows.
haha ^^ nice, is there a section to follow the RSS feed