What is it with the big neocon political families? From Michael Goldfarb (via):
In a Friday afternoon news dump, the administration quietly announces that my sister Rachael Goldfarb will be serving as Counselor to the Undersecretary for Agriculture. Meanwhile, over at NewMajority.com, the appointee’s father has written a devastating critique of the Obama health care plan.
I’m guessing the sister isn’t actually a neocon, but still.
Update. This is a classic (via commenter JK):
“I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.
“The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon’s domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.
“With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. ‘I oppose it,’ Irving replied. ‘It subverts meritocracy.’ ”
Ash
BWAHAHAHAHA @ a “devastating” critique of anything at New Majority.
Hunter Gathers
Inferiority complexes must be genetic. Along with hatred of the unclean Muslims.
AhabTRuler
I mean, there’s no way you can argue that it is limited to neocons. Even academix (the ‘x’ makes it sound more science fiction-ey) sometimes work in the same depts/schools/institutions as spouses or family members.
JK
h/t http://m.rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/28/campos-to-the-manner-born/
Ash
@JK:
Oh god, the irony burns.
Dennis-SGMM
@JK:
What could be more meritorious than having the right parents?
El Cid
If God didn’t want you to have had the right parents He would have given you different ones. Also, Shut Up.
KRK
I’m not clicking on a Weekly Standard link, so maybe Goldfarb clarifies this, but there are 7 different Agriculture Undersecretaries, so using “the Undersecretary for Agriculture” ventures into “Department of Law” territory.
His sister was actually appointed Counselor to the Ag Undersecretary for Research, Education, and Economics. She was Podesta’s assistant when he was Clinton’s Chief of Staff, so probably not a neocon. But this isn’t exactly a huge promotion either.
Nylund
Ah yes, the American dream: success comes to those born into it.
Martin
I know it’s fun to point at the wingnuts and laugh at how stupid they are, but lets remember that in spite of this tidal wave of evidence, Democrats in Congress continue to insist on engaging them in good faith.
In the olympiad of stupid, the wingnuts still lose out to us.
ruemara
This may explain my lack of success despite merit. I and many other hard working inner city kids who paid their way through school often wonder where the merit went. Now, we know. Bill Kristol sucked it all up.
Leelee for Obama
El Cid, Ash and Dennis-I’m suing! You all read my mind and posted my very pithy comments!!!
The Grand Panjandrum
William Kristol was one well connected parent away from wearing a paper hat and a nametag.
Tim P.
The lack of self awareness here just doesn’t seem possible..
Dennis-SGMM
@Leelee for Obama:
LOL! In my case it was just the payoff from the law of averages.
Batocchio
I’ve heard that Kristol story before, but it can’t be repeated enough. It captures their mindset perfectly.
mcc
What exactly would a neocon agricultural policy entail?
andrew
@Tim P
actually, the lack of self-awareness seems hereditary…
A. Hidell
Nepotism and cronyism help wire DC for conservatism. Merit and facts are the enemy of the person who got ahead because of who their parent knows.
JMN Is Now asiangrrlMN's Official Stalker
In fairness, Bill Kristol probably would have gotten into Harvard on merit. My father was an assistant professor when Kristol was a graduate student at the Kennedy School. He says that Kristol was very, very smart and a very good student. Also a hell of a softball player, which is (or at least was in the 1970s when I was attending the annual picnic) extremely important.
My father has no idea what happened to him after that, since he says that there is no resemblance between the Bill Kristol of then and the Bill Kristol of now.
Dr. Morpheus
I teach at a local community college. One of the classes is “Social Problems” and during a lecture on class and poverty I made the statement, “…it’s not like poor people choose their parents.”
Out of the back of the room came an angry woman’s voice, “Yes they do! It says so in the Bible!”
It came from a woman in her mid to late thirties whom I knew was a single mother of four that lived in a very small town (< 500) and who peppered her speech with fundamentalist catch phrases every time she spoke up in class.
And now you know why the Republican base has no problems with Kristol and others hypocrisy. They are the chosen, the “Elect” and it says so in the Bible.
ricky
JMN @ 20
In fairness, who are we to believe, your dad or Bill’s?
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@mcc: What exactly would a neocon agricultural policy entail?
Salting everyone else’s fields so that your food source is the only one, meanwhile forgetting to plant anything in your own.
NobodySpecial
She probably IS a neocon, actually; there’s pretty good anecdotal evidence about fruit not falling far from trees as far as conservatives in government go.
JMN Is Now asiangrrlMN's Official Stalker
@ricky: Probably both. I’m not saying that Irving Kristol didn’t use pull. I’m just saying that Bill Kristol had a lot going for him besides good connections. That just makes it worse that he turned out the way he did, of course.
gex
@Hunter Gathers: It’s all about the meritocracy you know. Anyone, through enough hard work, can be born into the correct family to get one of these prestigious and influential gigs.
mai naem
@JMN Is Now asiangrrlMN’s Official Stalker:
He may or not have made it in on his merits. First, we don’t know how smart he was as an undergrad(being at Harvard no doubt gave him opportunities that non-Harvard undergrads just don’t have) and secondly, there were probably at least a hundred other people who were as qualified as Kristol was. His dad possibly gave him the extra push he needed. BTW, how smart is Kristol being that he’s been wrong about pretty much everything he’s written.
Brendan
FWIW, I actually have a family member who attended Harvard at the same time as young William, and seems to have remembered him as simultaneously loudmouthed, shallow and very intelligent.
Jager
I met a guy, who shortly after our introduction, told me “I was the youngest account manager at XYZ Company!” He didn’t know, I knew, his old man was the college roomate and life long friend of the CEO of XYZ company and had secured the job for sonny-boy! Happens in business as well as politics. A few years later he joined his father’s company in the number 2 position, the announcement was weeks after I had dinner with his old man and listened to a disertation on nepotism and how bad it was for business, morale, etc, etc…these fucks never think the “rules” apply to them! BTW, Sonny Boy’s wife is Chinese-American, I ran into him shortly before the prop 8 vote and of course he is anti gay marriage, I told him that until 1947 he couldn’t have married a chinese woman in Ca…he said “Why?” I replied, “Exactely!”
Nutella
Bill Kristol has a PhD??? Do you supposed his daddy ‘secured’ that for him, too?
Mike G
Bill Kristol has a PhD??? Do you supposed his daddy ‘secured’ that for him, too?
Perhaps the same way Chimp got his MBA.
Harvard seems pretty cozy with handing out degrees to legacy mediocrities.