Comments on: Your Myopia’s No Good Here http://www.edrants.com/your-myopias-no-good-here/ a blog in ever-shifting standing Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:15:38 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: maitresse http://www.edrants.com/your-myopias-no-good-here/comment-page-1/#comment-245275 maitresse Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:57:09 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=7673#comment-245275 god, every time I read something by this guy I am gobsmacked. how is it that editors keep giving him assignments?? he seems not only wrongheaded but irrelevant and dated. god, every time I read something by this guy I am gobsmacked. how is it that editors keep giving him assignments?? he seems not only wrongheaded but irrelevant and dated.

]]> By: mirIAM http://www.edrants.com/your-myopias-no-good-here/comment-page-1/#comment-245274 mirIAM Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:58:07 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=7673#comment-245274 I was nodding my head in agreement with the author, until I came to the obligatory putdown of George W Bush. John Kerry is a smart decent man--Bush is a dope. What the author is saying is that elite schools separate people into two categories: the elect and the un-elect. Fine as far as it goes. But he himself separates people into two categories: progressive (good) and conservative (bad--and stupid). No wonder he can't talk to that plumber. He's a bloody snob. I was nodding my head in agreement with the author, until I came to the obligatory putdown of George W Bush. John Kerry is a smart decent man–Bush is a dope.

What the author is saying is that elite schools separate people into two categories: the elect and the un-elect. Fine as far as it goes. But he himself separates people into two categories: progressive (good) and conservative (bad–and stupid).

No wonder he can’t talk to that plumber. He’s a bloody snob.

]]> By: Tim W. Brown http://www.edrants.com/your-myopias-no-good-here/comment-page-1/#comment-245256 Tim W. Brown Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:45:36 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=7673#comment-245256 For years I've struggled to make the point of this article, first and foremost, to my wife, who attended an elite university, whereas I attended a mediocre one. The elitist notions discussed in the essay -- of the value of an Ivy League education -- seem to be mostly an East Coast phenomenon. There are many fewer Ivy League graduates in, say, Chicago, where I'm from, and people give a lot less of a shit about where you went to college than they do in New York. People there value pluck and talent and still believe, perhaps unrealistically, in a true meritocracy in which one succeeds based on his/her talents, not through connections that go with having rich parents that can afford to send you to Harvard or Yale. Upon moving to New York I noticed right away that many of my peers were Ivy products, and I sensed a glass ceiling above which someone of my working-class background was not allowed to rise. I've since accepted that there are many people whose starting line in life was moved a lot further ahead than mine. I let this fact motivate me to work twice as hard as they in hopes I can overcome my "handicap." Still, I sometimes feel like the subject of a recent <i>New Yorker</i> cartoon, who is reminded of his inferior status due to attending a public college. (View online at http://www.cartoonbank.com/item/125081.) For years I’ve struggled to make the point of this article, first and foremost, to my wife, who attended an elite university, whereas I attended a mediocre one. The elitist notions discussed in the essay — of the value of an Ivy League education — seem to be mostly an East Coast phenomenon. There are many fewer Ivy League graduates in, say, Chicago, where I’m from, and people give a lot less of a shit about where you went to college than they do in New York. People there value pluck and talent and still believe, perhaps unrealistically, in a true meritocracy in which one succeeds based on his/her talents, not through connections that go with having rich parents that can afford to send you to Harvard or Yale. Upon moving to New York I noticed right away that many of my peers were Ivy products, and I sensed a glass ceiling above which someone of my working-class background was not allowed to rise. I’ve since accepted that there are many people whose starting line in life was moved a lot further ahead than mine. I let this fact motivate me to work twice as hard as they in hopes I can overcome my “handicap.” Still, I sometimes feel like the subject of a recent New Yorker cartoon, who is reminded of his inferior status due to attending a public college. (View online at http://www.cartoonbank.com/item/125081.)

]]> By: Eric Rosenfield http://www.edrants.com/your-myopias-no-good-here/comment-page-1/#comment-245204 Eric Rosenfield Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:42:25 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=7673#comment-245204 Well, that explains Keith Gessen. Well, somewhat. Well, that explains Keith Gessen. Well, somewhat.

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