Jared always looks like he's expecting a poison tipped umbrella to bump into him. pic.twitter.com/yk0RtoeYJB
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 24, 2017
This should probably be classified as a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure it is. Rich Cohen, in Vanity Fair:
… It’s unclear if Jared Kushner ever really read the Observer before he bought it. He first noticed the paper while waiting for the Boston shuttle at La Guardia, his attention caught not by the articles or reviews but by a list: New York’s power Seders. He later told Gabriel Sherman he considered reading the paper—something an owner probably should do—to be unpleasant homework, a chore. “The articles were way too long,” Kushner told Gurley. “It wasn’t visually stimulating, and I thought that people today are more responsive to shorter, easier pieces like they get on the Internet. When you want to do something long, deliberately do that, but for the most part, stay within the mold and give the reader what they are looking for with minimum effort. Reading shouldn’t be hard.”
What probably made the Observer attractive as an investment was the price. Ten million dollars! For a newspaper in New York! What a cheap way to move into the city, change the meaning of Kushner from private dick and Jersey motel to pink broadsheet. Arthur Carter, who was losing about $2 million a year on the paper, told Kushner it wasn’t really for sale. After all, who was Jared Kushner? A 25-year-old N.Y.U. grad student, an intern at private-equity firm Square Mile Capital, a child. Jared persisted; Carter relented. Jared made his pitch in Carter’s apartment, explained how he intended not merely to keep the Observer going but to make it profitable. “I’d brought Clive Cummis, one of my father’s lawyers, who is well respected and wears a bow tie and has gray hair,” Kushner says in The Kingdom of New York. “I figured he’d give me some sense of credibility with Arthur. We sat down, and I put down on the table a check with the full purchase price and a signed contract, and I said, ‘Listen, I’m ready to go.’
Owning the Observer made Jared interesting, powerful, a figure of fascination—I don’t know what it is, but something about you has changed. He was written up in society and gossip columns, discussed in a giggly tone as if he were a Kennedy or a member of a boy band, as if he had that kind of hair that covers one eye. In a single move—no one is sure if he planned it this way—Kushner had gotten into the big action. He found himself in a new crowd, at a new kind of party. Men’s Vogue. Vanity Fair. He stood in back, raising a glass, greeting men and women who dominated the dream life of the city. Bloomberg, Giuliani, Trump. Rupert Murdoch took the young publisher under his wing, becoming a kind of adviser. In this way, Jared Kushner swam into a previously unreachable stratum, a strange sea filled with exotic creatures, moguls, magnates, models. Not long after the purchase, he started dating Ivanka. They met at a business lunch. It became serious—because it made sense. Young, good-looking people, offspring of madly driven fathers, inheritors of gaudy real-estate traditions. It was an old story. A debased nobleman courting the daughter of a wealthy factory owner—each gives, each gets. He brings money, hustle. She brings beauty and the famous name, nothing in old America but aristocratic in the age of reality TV. Jared met the patriarch, got the look-over. Imagine it. Kushner and Trump in the morning of a great partnership, Table 1 at Trump Grill, regarding each other like rat and terrier in one of the pits of the old Five Points…
*****
I called several current and former Observer employees and asked them to be interviewed for this story. Just about all agreed to talk, but none would talk on the record. A couple of people insisted that our communication move to encoded app. I asked a friend why everyone seemed so spooked. “People are freaked about Trump,” he said. “Trump is all about loyalty and is vindictive; Jared is his de facto favorite son; the Kushners are also all about loyalty . . . so people are also freaked about Jared. They project a lot onto him. He’s like the heir apparent in a Mob family that happens to run the whole country. So there’s the big question: Is he Sonny or is he Michael?”Here’s what I asked: What about Fredo?…
*****Jared ran the Trump campaign’s Internet operation. Some say that his work was crucial to victory—the boy-genius thesis. Others say Kushner was essentially ballast. “We’re talking about a guy who isn’t particularly bright or hard-working, doesn’t actually know anything,” Harleen Kahlon, the digital maven who worked for Kushner at the Observer, wrote on Facebook. She said he “has bought his way into everything ever (with money he got from his criminal father)” and that he is “deeply insecure and obsessed with fame (you don’t buy the N.Y.O., marry Ivanka Trump, or constantly talk about the phone calls you get from celebrities if it’s in your nature to ‘shun the spotlight’).” Kushner, she concluded, is “basically a shithead.”…
*****According to The Wall Street Journal, members of Trump’s legal team recently suggested Kushner give up that choice office and return to private life. Because, of all the inner-circle advisers, Jared had taken the most meetings and seemingly had the most entanglements with all varieties of Russian. Also at issue “was Mr. Kushner’s initial omission of any contacts with foreign officials from the form required to obtain a security clearance,” the article explained. “[Kushner] later updated the form several times to include what he has said were more than 100 contacts with foreign officials.” A statement was drafted to spin Kushner’s would-be resignation—it went that far, according to the Journal. It must remain in some executive-branch file, a suggestion of the future that did not happen but may happen still. The statement expressed regret for a political eco-system so poisonous it can make even a naive sit-down with some helpful Russians seem sinister. Of course, anyone who has studied Trump knows he’d never send Kushner into the outer dark. It’s hard enough to dump a golf pro. How do you exile a son-in-law?…
Baud
The Observer always shows up on my Google news feed pushing the rigged primary angle.
Ruckus
Is this the same Rich Cohen that Betty wrote about below?
zhena gogolia
@Ruckus:
No.
Ruckus
Also
Like father in law, like son in law.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
Thanks!
TenguPhule
Polonium is too good for Jared.
Radium on the other hand….
Raoul
I anticipate something operatic in the future. Favorite son-in-law, who happens to be both ‘a shithead’ and an idiot strategically (aka ballast, as said in the quoted article), married to beautiful ice queen with divorced parents, who has her own ‘job’ at the WH. Investigators bearing down on all this. What could possibly go wrong here?
What couldn’t??
TenguPhule
@Raoul:
All of the involved parties wind up dead, usually from their own actions?
dr. luba
The first generation creates a business, the second builds and expands it, the third destroys it. Or, as Andrew Carnegie said, “It is only but three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.”
Suzanne
I know that I should be over this by now, as my 20th HS reunion will be in the spring, but I am still just so unbelievably pissed that rich shitheads like Jared Kushner got into Harvard and I didn’t.
hellslittlestangel
No wonder The Orange Better One likes Jared. He’s his Mini-Me.
Teddys Person
So, Ivanka married her father. Gross.
Major Major Major Major
I will have to read that later.
OT: twitter is thinking of doubling its character limit for English-language users! This shouldn’t be important news but, alas, is. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/09/twitter_may_double_its_character_limit_freak_out_or_nah.html
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: My God. The tweetstorms will now be like the blizzards on Hoth.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: I didn’t get into Harvard either. I got over it.
Baud
@Suzanne: At least you’re not too good for us now.
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: their data people apparently think it won’t result in people using the whole 280, just more people tweeting in general.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
More sh*t, same thunder mug.
dmsilev
@Raoul: If it ends like Don Giovanni, with Don Trump being dragged down to Hell to pay for his sins, I will definitely watch. Except I don’t really think Trump has much of a singing voice.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Are they stupid?
Omnes Omnibus
The latest from Liberal Redneck.
Corner Stone
@Major Major Major Major: This seems like a faulty premise to me. But I only skim twit feeds, don’t post them.
eemom
@Ruckus:
fwiw, his own father is as much of a scumbag as trump, just not as famous.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: they’re extrapolating from how people use it in Korea, China, and Japan, where you get what would in English be a ~240 character limit because the characters have so much more meaning.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev: I’d happily listen to him screaming if that was the outcome.
efgoldman
@Gin & Tonic:
I didn’t even try, and probably could have as a legacy (albeit, without a rich progenitor.)
Lurking Canadian
@TenguPhule: If they all want to throw themselves into a volcano, I’m OK with that, too.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: Little one must be asleep, eh?
Luthe
@Suzanne: He didn’t get in; Daddy gave Harvard a whole lot of money and the admissions people miraculously found a spot for little Jared.
Besides, Harvard is a cesspool of rich shitheads. You wouldn’t have liked it anyway.
gene108
@Suzanne:
Meh…I still got issues with middle school…
Kind of wish I’d gone to my reunions…maybe I’ll go to my 30th, when it roles around in a few years.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
140 characters must be especially cumbersome in Germany. There are single words nearly that long.
:)
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: If u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb w hi pa!
eemom
@Suzanne:
You coulda been a contender, if you’d brutally murdered a little child and become a history scholar in prison.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: I know German has one of the lowest morpheme densities per tweet, I don’t remember if it’s the lowest.
gene108
@Corner Stone:
With Wampa monsters!!!
Mike in NC
Jared is such a sniveling little creep.
SiubhanDuinne
@Raoul:
Yup. I have said from the beginning that this entire … THING … is operatic in scope. Nixon in China can hardly compete with the Trumpian dramatic arc.
We don’t yet know exactly how it will play out, but I’m already casting it. Thinking Placido Domingo and Anna Netrebko as Donald and Ivanka. Either Jonas Kaufman or Juan Diego Flórez as Jared.
ETA: Bryn Terfel as Mueller. Also added first names above, as not everyone here is opera buff.
frosty
@Gin & Tonic: I didn’t get into Cal Tech. I’m better for it.
frosty
@gene108: My HS reunions have been fun up until 2009 when Obama drove many of my former classmates mad. Perhaps I shouldn’t have answered the guy who said “You voted for Obama!!!” with “Hell yes, best President in my lifetime.”
Doug R
@gene108: And I thought it smelled bad on the outside…
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Andy Kaufman is dead.
;)
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I knew Kushner was stupid, but every day is a new revelation to me about just how stupid he is, and the amazing, stunning sheer breadth of his stupidness. He’s a renaissance man of stupid.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Special guest star Rosie O’Donnell as Steve Bannon.
normal liberal
@Suzanne:
I am reliably informed that the undergrad experience at Harvard is pretty meh. (My college advisor had a son there; she was quite acerbic about it.)
I didn’t apply because my interview so completely pissed me off. Weeks later when I got a recruiting letter from them (“we think you could be Harvard material!”) I took great pleasure in responding that their Radcliffe chick had already killed my interest.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Hah! I added first names in an edit. Jonas Kaufmann, German operatic tenor, is the guy I had in mind :-)
Corner Stone
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
AWESOME!!
burnspbesq
@SiubhanDuinne:
You’re gonna need some comic relief. Nathalie Dessay as Huckabee Sanders.
And you need a trouser role for Renee Fleming. Bannon?
Frankensteinbeck
Kushner skims the first paragraph, comes up with his Brilliant Hot Take about the issue, and goes off to tell someone who can’t get away. Every time I hear about him, including having seen him speak, I revise his intelligence down. He is truly a dumbass.
And I notice I am not the first person to say that.
trollhattan
@TenguPhule:
Maybe he can paint clock dials in prison.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
It can be a not necessarily operatically challenging role, like Frosch in Die Fledermaus.
Corner Stone
I love Roy Moore. He is fucking nuts.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Oy vey. Election date is December 12.
SiubhanDuinne
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
He has raised stupidity to an art form, and synthesized it into a science. The stupidness of his stupidity is beyond stupid. Within the next ten years, all dictionaries are going to illustrate the entry for “stupid” with photos of Jared Kushner. And when you look up “Jared Kushner” on Wikipedia, you will be linked/redirected to the entry for “stupid.”
p.a.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Why aren’t more stupid rich people taken advantage of by their money boyz? or are they? and I just don’t know because I’m not in that
orbituniverse?japa21
@NotMax: Beat me to it. What an idiot.
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: I’m over not getting in. I’m ***not*** over the combination of not getting in and rich dumbass dickhole Jared Kushner getting in.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
I’m hoping in lieu of putting his hand on a bible he literally humps the ten commandments while taking the oath of office. That would be a great start.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Corner Stone:
I want him in the Senate as a proud Republican and unrepentant conservative.
Every time he opens his mouth, he repulses away suburban voters outside Philadelphia, Charlotte, Tampa, Orlando, Columbus, Cincinnati…
NotMax
Thinking of starting a petition to change Alabama’s motto to The What The Hell Is Wrong With These People state.
Mary G
Trump just tweeted to Moore to WIN IN NOVEMBER! and all of twitter is dude, the election’s in December, ya moron.
Suzanne
@gene108: I went to my 10-year, since Mr. Suzanne talked me into it, but I’m definitely not going to the 20. The planning committee are all Mormons who not only do not want to drink, they do not want to have any alcohol at the events at all. Umm…..fuck that. I am by no means a big drinker, but most of those people are boring, horrible, or both, and I would need social lubricant in order to make it through.
Or I could not attend and go out and enjoy myself instead.
Doug R
@Frankensteinbeck: Wearing a flak vest over a blue blazer says all kinds of things, none of them “I am a genius.”
normal liberal
@Suzanne:
He didn’t, as someone noted above, his slot was purchased by Daddy. Apparently the Trump offspring had a similar set-up at Penn. People used to try to be subtle about that racket, but shame no longer has any traction.
ETA credit to G&T.
Shana
@Luthe: I read that 41% of the incoming class is legacy.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: I want DougJ to win, even though RM may be more entertaining.
Suzanne
@normal liberal: I know how he got in. There’s no difference, though. Whether someone bought his slot or he got in on his own, the result is the same.
NotMax
Turns out the old saw is spot on:
Less is Moore.
SiubhanDuinne
@burnspbesq:
Ooh, I like Dessay as SHS, although maybe Debbie Voigt as Huckabee Sanders and
Dessay as young Barron? Renée would be fine as Melania. For Bannon, I was thinking more along the lines of Susan Graham, but NotMax’s thought of Rosie O’Donnell in the part makes my mouth water. Let’s get it composed and see what the Fach looks like for each role.
Mike in NC
In tonight’s episode of “The Vietnam War” it was revealed that 58% of Americans in 1970 approved of the shooting of students at Kent State University by the National Guard. Great to know how little has changed in this fucked up country and now we have Trump/Pence to show for it.
p.a.
@normal liberal: The non HYP Ivies generally badmouth the undergrad experiences there as lacking in contact with full profs. Of course, it’s about rep, networking, and the schools’ resources. Isn’t Columbia the real oddball? with like 8k undergrads and 20k grad students?
Shana
@trollhattan: Only if the clock dials have that radioactive stuff on them.
Frankensteinbeck
@SiubhanDuinne:
Trump was never bright, but I think mostly he’s senile. Kushner is just that fucking stupid. Yes, let’s move the government’s computer infrastructure to the cloud! Jesus Chist, what a maroon.
efgoldman
@Gin & Tonic:
Yup. Mommy and Daddy are taking her on the T tomorrow to the Children’s Museum in Boston.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously in these parts that a former colleague of mine regularly referred to Alabama as “Land of the Six-Toed Sisters.”
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G: Trump’s White House welcomed the president of Spain today. Except Spain doesn’t have a president; Mariano Rajoy, the Prime Minister, was actually visiting.
efgoldman
@gene108:
One of the few benefits of being a service (Army) brat is, you don’t spend enough time on any one school, with any one group of kids, to build those kinds of lifetime resentments.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: I like the Science Museum, but she’s probably a bit young.
Lyrebird
@Suzanne: Just think, you’d’a been sitting next to sh-theads like Kushner! Maybe they did you a favor.
Full disclosure: I do know some really awesome people who attended, but when I visited classes, there were plenty of blockheads around.
Lyrebird
@Gin & Tonic: I think she’s 4 — good age for the bees in the wall and the wave maker and the gravity tubes!
ETA: but I hear the Children’s Museum has grocery shopping… how this is such a source of entertainment to children who will make an actual shopping trip into an hour-long torment I do not understand, but it’s not like anyone asked me.
Ruckus
@eemom:
Oh I know. Maybe if even one of their fathers had been better humans, or even human, this fucking mess wouldn’t be quite so bad. Two families, all shitstains.
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Me likey.
Citizen_X
@TenguPhule:
So, like Hamlet, but with nuclear weapons?
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: Go out and enjoy yourself. I think I’ve mentioned, the last time I had any contact with any fellow students or teachers from my high school, or set foot on the grounds, was at the conclusion of graduation.
Doug R
@Shana: That 41% is from a survey that more than half of incoming freshmen completed. CNBC reports the legacy rate is 29%, still not good.
Affirmative action for the rich. When’s a rich white guy gonna catch a break?
Davebo
@Luthe:
Harvard is an investment bank that hands out diplomas on the side.
Lyrebird
@Gin & Tonic: HEY weren’t you the one complaining about my awful ASCII Cyrillic? (meaning to make you laugh) That’s pretty excellently awful, and now you’ve made my head hurt back. Even Steven
Redshift
@p.a.:
I presume they probably are, and their money guys are smart enough not to kill the host, or gain a reputation that would prevent them from getting hired by the next stupid rich person they want to fleece.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: I went to my 10 year. An awful lot of people trying to impress one another. I did manage to surprise a bunch of people – no one expected that I would have been in the army. I haven’t bothered to go back to any of the others.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Didn’t even bother attending the graduation (and had zero desire to do so). Was already in a different state at a summer job a week beforehand.
Gin & Tonic
@Lyrebird: That used to be on an advertising placard in the NYC subway.
Shalimar
@eemom: Not a fan of rehabilatation, obviously.
Ruckus
@gene108:
You youngins, my 50th is in 2 1/2 weeks. I’m going because there are a few people that aren’t conservative assholes and I liked them then as well. I’m looking forward to ignoring the conservative assholes. that ought to be fun.
p.a.
@Omnes Omnibus: I actually remember the gist of a comment from my hs graduation speaker, an alum. A very accurate paraphrase is: if you’re not ready to move on from here, you’ve done it wrong.
efgoldman
@Gin & Tonic:
I’m old enough to remember when the Science Museum was in the small brown stone building by the locks between the river and the harbor.
But no, she’s got no experience with museums.
As unbelievable as I find it, there’s no equivalent to the Children’s Museum anywhere in the DC area.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
And that may be his best quality.
Gravenstone
@Shana: Radium. And be sure to teach him to use his tongue to wet and shape the brush so it stays tightly pointed.
Lyrebird
@Gin & Tonic: Ah. Thanks.
Anyone else ever get the “sad because of low degree” spam while completing grad school? Sounds the same.
Anyhow, redundantly speaking, I credit your taste in museums! Whenever I’m in Boston, if I take the red line, I nostalgically wave to the Museum of Science and smile at the Citgo sign.
Davebo
@Ruckus:
Did my 35th last weekend. Took the one HS friend I still stay in touch with to tell me who everyone was.
The best revenge is aging well!
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I believe that takes actual skill. So no.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: I’d have thought you were old enough to remember when it was in Back Bay.
Ladyraxterinok
@dr. luba: See Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks take on the theme.
Ruckus
@Davebo:
The outside doesn’t look all that old, which it fucking is, but the insides haven’t aged as well as I’d like. I was thinking I could grow old gracefully, but this straight down hill shit is not for the weak.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
Think he’ll ride into the Capitol on a horse, waving a gun?
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
efg is old enough to remember when it was in London.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I was going to go with efg remembers when Back Bay was a bay, but you win.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Mmm . . . Netrebko!
eemom
@Shalimar:
I am a fan of rehabilitation. That’s not that case. Read the record.
ui
@Gin & Tonic:
Not quite. I do remember when the Children’s Museum was in a mansion on the Jamaicaway, though.
Calouste
@Gin & Tonic: IIRC the official title of the Prime Minister of Spain translates as something like President of the Council of Ministers. It might be protocol that he is addressed as Mr. President, although of course in the third person he would be referred to as Prime Minister in English.
efgoldman
@Ruckus:
“Gettin’ old ain’t for sissies” – Bette Davis
Manyakitty
Everything about Jared is less bad if you imagine him with Gilbert Gottfried’s voice.
Omnes Omnibus
@Manyakitty: I still see him as a sleazy extra in American Psycho.
Davebo
@Ruckus: Tell me about it. Pulled a muscle somewhere around my right rib 3 days ago and it still kills me to get into the car.
japa21
@Ruckus: My 50th was 2 years ago. Didn’t go. Got a Christmas card from one of my classmates. Told me I didn’t miss anything. It was just a bunch of old people.
normal liberal
@p.a.:
I went to a Seven Sisters school, so the polar opposite of the Ivies. I think there were about 10 graduate students on campus when I was an undergrad.
I wonder what the ratio is at MIT.
Matt McIrvin
@efgoldman: True, though Natural History and Air and Space both have some areas with hands-on stuff intended for littler kids.
Back when the National Museum of American History was called “the Museum of History and Technology,” they had some Boston Museum of Science-type exhibits with buttons you could push, etc. I don’t know if any of that is still there–haven’t been in there for a very long time. The Maryland Science Center in Baltimore is much more MoS-like.
Gin & Tonic
@normal liberal: “In fall 2016, there were 11,376 students enrolled at MIT: 4,524 undergraduates (40%) and 6,852 graduate students (60%).”
mainmata
@dmsilev: Trump is remarkable in that he has absolutely no awareness of popular culture* or art, music, etc. (Obviously, excepting his own reality TV, which is not culture but rather a form of depravity.)
normal liberal
@Gin & Tonic:
More balanced than I would have guessed. My perception is probably skewed since everyone I knew at/from MIT was a grad student.
MoxieM
@Suzanne: You can let it go I promise none of us thinks the less of you. … The standard joke in the Westy suburbs of Boston is to clock how many minutes (or seconds) it takes a Harvard grad let you know they “went to school in Cambridge,” Urg. My mom went to Radcliffe (no ladies in Harvard in those days); my dad went to Yale (and ended up Deaning there); I chose neither. No how No way. See, knew they were snake pits, ahead of time.
boatboy_srq
Millenial superficiality in a nutshell, with a dollop of budding slumlord just for seasoning.
MoxieM
@normal liberal: Me too! Me too! Wellesley grad; Smith mom. (Radcliffe daughter even). the continuity is a wonderful thing, the education better, and they aren’t (in my case) legacy admissions. Go 6.5 Sisters!!
MoxieM
@efgoldman: Lots more exhibitions aimed at younger kids now. I worked there for a brief while, and was impressed at how much they had improved that over the experience when my kid was that age (20+ years ago). One really nifty one is they’ve transformed the main lobby *where the solar glider used to hang?) into a very interactive exhibition on habitats of the Charles River basin, since pple are about to really be able to swim there soon, dear god.
boatboy_srq
@Raoul: Operatic? Sure. But only if Salieri composed.
Omnes Omnibus
@MoxieM: A friend of mine from college came from a long line of Harvard people. When he told his grand father that he wasn’t going to choose Harvard, the old man asked (in horror) “Yale?” When told “No, a tiny LAC in Wisconsin,” he was completely fine with it.
boatboy_srq
@normal liberal: Same as it ever was. Mum had a similar experience with Radcliffe back in the day. She wound up at Wheaton (MA, not IL, and shame on you for making me stipulate that) and had a wonderful time and a good education. And that was in the nineteen-mumble-mumbles.
mainmata
@Gin & Tonic: MIT is a pre-eminent research school so that ratio is totally unsurprising. I suspect all the major pubic and private universities that have serious research programs have similar or even greater undergrad/grad ratios. I went to a highly selective liberal arts college with a tiny but highly respected graduate program (back when state assistance was a real thing) but did my PhD at a British university (they call it a DPhil, which makes more sense) with many more graduates than undergrads. It’s all about a concentration of research capacity sufficient to attract enough funding. I see no problem with that. A bigger issue is developing research networks between universities, community colleges and even tech schools to leverage broader knowledge management and learning.
Matt McIrvin
@Lyrebird:
They’re in control, of course! On a real shopping trip they have to behave while the adults determine what happens.
There’s a chain of little children’s play areas called “Imagine That!” with various pretend and dress-up areas, indoor climbing structures, musical instruments, etc. We used to frequently take our daughter to the one in Lawrence when she was a preschooler, and the grocery-store area in there was always one of her favorite places. Just piling all the plastic food into the cart and taking it out again and messing with the toy cash registers was endless fascination.
There are actually a bunch of other great children’s-museum and science-museum type places in New England. The Discovery Museums in Acton are nice, and the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire in Dover, and the SEE Science Center in Manchester, NH. I recall for a while we got some kind of reciprocal organization membership with the Children’s Museum of NH that got us into a whole bunch of these places for free or discounted prices, including the Boston Museum of Science–it was a real bargain.
MoxieM
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s hilarious, and rings so true. My father confided to a friend’s BF on a Yalie tour (he was long gone from the Admin there by then) that he had mixed feelings about Women’s Admission. Now, I adored my dad. However. That statement did. not. fly. (For one thing my sister–who went to art school) would have been in the first graduating class. My poor doomed brother had a banner over his crib that said For God For Country and For Yale. Me, as I said, said, fuckit! I’m bailing on this form of mental illness. Of course I became a sociologist because that’s kind of obvious, right? We must study the ways groups use power to abuse others, and maintain their advantages. hmmmmm.
Omnes Omnibus
@MoxieM: He went back home to Salem, got an MA from BU, and now teaches at St. John’s. It was a bizarre little rebellion.
catclub
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I heard that about Trump, why a senator like that [from Alabama, by God] would make difference is a mystery to me.
joel hanes
@Suzanne:
The 10th and 20th suck.
By the time the 30th rolls around, you’re grownups and are just glad to see the ones you’re glad to see, and don’t care very much any more about the ones you’re not glad to see.
Go to the 30th and subsequent, find the people you want to see, and blow the “festivities” together, early, for a venue where you can enjoy talking to each other. You don’t owe the rest of them anything except registration.
I did the 45th a couple years back; the good parts were great, and the dull parts easily avoided.
Ladyraxterinok
@SiubhanDuinne: Just recently started watching opera clips on youtube, so recognized the names. Started with Faust (in 58 saw Mets touring company in Houston with Jerome Hines as Mephistopheles). Have become entranced with much of what I have seen.
normal liberal
@MoxieM:
I was one of those goody-two-shoes Mount Holyoke women, so of course I’m shocked you let you daughter go to Smith. (Kidding. Mostly.)
What do you think of the giant campus center/dining hall they’re building at MHC? I was in South Hadley a couple of years ago for a reunion, and was a little startled at how enormous it will be. Not to mention expensive.
Edit: wait, was it your mother who went to Smith?
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
I haven’t been to any HS reunions, nor any college class reunions. My collegiate career was confused by getting drafted back in 1970 after failing the draft birthday lottery in 1969. HS was horrible, surrounded by people who didn’t want to learn anything. I have one friend in my home town who wasn’t in my graduating class.
Can’t believe you care that Jared bought a place at Harvard, I didn’t apply as I was sure it would be too much like HS. Cliques based on family income and spending patterns.
50th reunion next year. Here’s what’s interesting, I’m in the phone book, same state, never been invited to a reunion. Maybe I’m just remembered as a prick, don’t know, don’t care.
normal liberal
@boatboy_srq:
My sister-in-law went to the IL version, and my grandparents lived in the town. The SIL was back there recently, as a speaker, and kinda freaked them by being a liberal Presbyterian minister/academic who writes about the urban church. I understand your unhappiness at having to specify.
normal liberal
@MoxieM:
I started at Mount Holyoke the same year the first Amherst class with women was admitted. Those poor girls went through hell, not just with other students, but with nasty, childish and obnoxious faculty.
MoxieM
@normal liberal: It’s lovely. But their new Science Center is even more impressive, designed fractally, women architects, and all the ‘sister-things’ It’s a standout. My Kid toured MH, Smith, Barn(y)ard, and BrynMawr. MH was too country-mouse pretty-ruffles for her; Barnard she really liked the bright lights/big city until she stayed over and met some students–not a good fit! (she didn’t go to Chapin or Spence); BrynMawr has sadly deteriorated to a satellite campus of Haverford as far as we could tell :( But she thought Northampton was snazzy. It is! I live here now… (It’s kind of a blanched bougie backwoods bubble, aka snowglobe.) But it seemed like a funky urban place to a kid who grew up with cities. And yes Smith! parties! and getting naked for Convocation! and (heavens we didn’t do that at Wellesley.) All in all a pretty good place to do college. The bring in 30% of each entering class from families who are new to a college experience and fully fund them, and spend serious time and money trying to give them a grounded orientation that will actually be helpful once school starts. They are biting into the endowment to do it, and I like that.
Ladyraxterinok
@p.a.: Often grad student experience much better than undergrad. True of my son and me, he as undergrad very unhappy at school I loved as grad student years earlier.
gbbalto
@Suzanne: From everything I have seen you post, it sounds like Hahvahd missed out, not you. Too bad for them!
Ladyraxterinok
@Omnes Omnibus: Went to 20th, 1 planning meeting each for 55th and 6oth.
normal liberal
@MoxieM:
I’ll have to get in touch with my Bryn Mawrter friends for their take on that. I lived in Philadelphia for quite a while, and traded Seven Sisters oddities with all the Bryn Mawr alums. One of my friends was the Traditions Mistress there her senior year, an actual elected position.
I used to shop in Northampton, but didn’t really spend much time at Smith. I would live there in a heartbeat, but it’s a little late to up sticks and relocate back to New England.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ladyraxterinok: To be fair, my family moved back to my mom’s hometown in Wisconsin right before I started high school. I only knew the people for four years. It wasn’t until my junior year when I was in the IB program that I got to know most of my “sort.” Not enough for a lifetime relationship. At least with college, everyone chose the same school. I went to a well-regarded but not famous LAC. Choosing gave us all something in common.
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
Betty knew what the fuck she was talking about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: Bette.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Went to my 10 yr HS and it was a hoot. Was supposed to be a dressy affair, suits/tie at the minimum. I said fuck it Levi’s/dress shirt. Other half was mortified but didn’t want to buy a fancy dress so I told her to go comfort. She did. Within 15 min all the guys had their jackets/ties on the chairs and every woman was without shoes. They all fit right in once they got over themselves. I’m going the same way this year, they don’t like it, they can kiss my ass. And I’ll point it out so they don’t miss.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Man you are on top of it tonight. mumble, mumble, mumble.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: You are great on substance. You also are far more willing than I am to dig deep into your experiences. I admire that, but I can’t/won’t do it.
Gretchen
I loved the part where he thought the reading level of the Observer was too hard. Make the articles shorter and a lower reading level.
Gretchen
I also loved the part where Charles thought God would forgive him, but not his sister. He hired a prostitute to tape his brother in law having sex with her and show the tape to his sister and ruin her marriage. His sister took the tape he made to the FBI. He wasn’t wrong to take action to ruin his sister’s marriage. She was the one who was culpable because she told the FBI about the terrible thing he had done. I will love the moment that Jared follows his daddy’s footsteps into the federal pen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gretchen: ?
Corner Stone
@Gretchen: I am getting a really strong feeling that this comment should have been on a romance fanfic/slash comment thread somewhere.
“The door opened. Slowly I turned…slowly. My bosom heaved mightily against the lace bodice. Charles moved quickly to me across the floor and caught me in his arms before I could fall.”
mai naem mobile
Ive hought Jared was stupid since he asked the Obama people if ALL the people at the WH were staying/needed. Nothing he’s done since has improved my opinion of him. There was also a snippet in some article after the election where the reporter said Kushner was at a rally was amazed at how Dolt45 had such a hold on his fans. He wanted to somehow monopolize on this crazy popularity.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman:
When I was four, I was a big fan of museums. Our weekend visits probably weren’t as much fun for my parents, since I always wanted to make a beeline for my favorite exhibits (the Egyptian corridors at the Metropolitan, the Africa & Early Mammal halls at the AMNH) and have the descriptions read to me, again.
Surely at least *some* of the many Smithsonian Museums must have stuff that could entertain a 4-year-old?
(Or is my experience a good reason to keep the kid away from such esoteric pleasures?)
Spaniel
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Are you telling me those news articles about him being the brains behind “transforming Government” and “will solve the Mid-East peace issues” were lies?!?
The Pale Scot
@SiubhanDuinne: And Gollum as Bannon
I gess I should change that to Worm Tongue
Vhh
@burnspbesq: Reince. No balls.
The Pale Scot
@p.a.:
Because their father’s hire dueling accountants to shoot each other down. His went to prison, and he started hanging our with Goldman bros. I’m sure Jared thought “we’re all Jews! They wouldn’t screw me”
What a schnook.
How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt
Who Killed Montana Power?
Why a couple of hundred Montanans didn’t drive to NYC with their deer rifles and “Make things right” puzzles me. It might have saved a lot of grief.
I grew up in a town that was a bedroom town for wall street, including the Sachs. Even to a gentile like me, There were jews, and then there are Jews.
The Pale Scot
@Suzanne: Put a beer filled cooler in the car trunk and hang in the parking lot.
Julia Grey
Kushner’s stupidity is also demonstrated by his purchase of the outdated building at 666 Fifth Avenue for a super-premium price. He is now unable to resell it at current market without taking an empire-collapsing bath. That has led him to try to sell it to Chinese or other international interests for above market rates plus a wink and a nod about thereby purchasing access to the Resident.
He’s just an idiot pissing away his father’s ill-gotten gains. If he hadn’t married Ivanka….
Vhh
@burnspbesq: Reince. No balls.@normal liberal: about 50/50
Duane
@NotMax:efg is old enough to remember when the exhibits were invented. (;
psychobroad
@Suzanne: Your dad probably didn’t have 250K to buy you a place there.
psychobroad
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): That is beautiful. Wish I could turn a phrase so well. <3