Today’s example of the DFL’s exposed intellectual id is Nicholas Dolphin of (where else) Minneapolis, who wrote a letter to the editor in the Strib – featured, naturally, as their “letter of the day” about a week ago.
Mr. Dolphin wrote:
State Rep. Kurt Bills, newly endorsed by the Republican Party in the U.S. Senate race, is quoted as saying “we sent a lawyer, a community organizer and a comedian to Washington, D.C., and we get an economy that looks like it does today.”
The line is cute, “quippy” and closely follows the Republican playbook established years ago by Karl Rove. In football, it is called a misdirection play.
At the risk of saying “I know you are but what is Kurt?” that is, itself, a misdirection. Not only did Rove himself not invent that “play”, Mr. Dolphin would divert the conversation from Mr. Bills’ point, which was “Have the efforts of the lawyer, the community organizer and the comedian made your life better than it was four years ago”?
That’d be a laughable premise, wouldn’t it? Obama, Klobama and A-Frank have presided over an economic debacle!
But that’s apparently not the real subject to Mr. Dolphin::
In politics, it says that when your qualifications are nowhere near those of your opponent, go personal and cute while avoiding actual résumé or accomplishment comparisons.
The avoidance/misdirection here is the omission of the qualifications of that lawyer (Sen. Amy Klobuchar), community organizer (President Obama, who’s actually a lawyer, too) and comedian (Sen. Al Franken).
“Accomplishment comparisons”.
“Qualifications”.
Heh.
We’ll come back to that.
The three possess undergraduate degrees, respectively, from Yale, Columbia and Harvard. Klobuchar’s and Obama’s law degrees come from the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively. And none of these individuals received a legacy admission.
Depending on the source, the lowest-ranked of those five degrees is Harvard Law, at No. 5 nationally. Franken, with his undergraduate degree from the No. 2 undergraduate university in the United States (No. 2 in the world) is really pulling down the average here.
Well, isn’t that special.
Look – the very best thing that an Ivy League or Tier 1 education says about someone is that between the ages of 14 and 25 (give or take a few years either way) they understood the importance of playing the paper chase well enough to punch all the academic, extracurricular and social tickets it took to impress an Ivy League or Tier 1 admissions committee enough to admit them, and to get the scholarships, loans and aid it took to get a shot at spending four to seven years getting sufficient grades (adjusted for Ivy-League grade inflation) to get access to that most coveted benefit of the Ivy League education; the alumni directory. And that is the very, very best thing it says; in most cases, it bespeaks family social connections, generations in the upper-middle class, family wealth, or political correctness. Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those, but none of them imply any special merit…
…and that’s just with a brand-new graduate. After one has gotten that precious diploma copy of the alumni directory, the only question any rational person cares about is “what have you done lately?” People who barber on about their Ivy League diplomas after age 25 resemble Andy Bernard from The Office more and more with every passing year.
And those who do it on their behalf? That’s just sad.
Because in this, an election year, the only question that matters is “What have you done for us lately?”
Do Obama’s degrees from Columbia and Harvard make his multiplication of our national debt, turbucharging our spending and embarkIing on a regulatory and tax course that will sooner than later cripple our private sector and send us briskly down the Greek and Spanish path seem like good ideas?
Does A-Klo’s time at Yale and U-Chi make her sotto voce vote for Obama’s medical device tax – which is already hammering Minnesota industry, and we ain’t seen nothing yet – anything but a disaster for the state she “represents?”
Have Franken’s Harvard degree and decades as smug snarksmith evolved him into anything but a reliable legislative ticket-puncher on the road to ruin?
Have all their degrees made your life any better than it was four years ago?
Because that is the only question anyone should care about today.
And it’s Mr. Dolphin that’s doing the misdirecting – because while none of Obama, Klobama or Mr. Smalley’s degrees have helped any of us one iota, they sure do look impressive!
Bills’ alma mater, Winona State University, is a nice local school that doesn’t attract the same caliber of student and whose graduates would be better served not denigrating people whose academic accomplishments dwarf their own.
And leaving aside the misdirection, Mr. Dolphin has done Minnesotans one sterling service here; he’s highlighted as clearly as anyone ever has the smarmy authoritarianism of “progressivism”. You mere peasants with your degrees from state schools should shut up and pay your taxes let your betters do your thinking for you, doncha know.
Mr. Dolphin; Abraham Lincoln was self-taught. Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College. Most of the world’s great achievements (outside of medicine and hard science) came from people who did things, rather than waved their degrees around.
I’ve come to the opinion that an Ivy League degree should be, if not a disqualifier for higher office, at least a hurdle to be overcome with some counterbalancing achievement in life since graduation.
And that’d be a hurdle over which Obama, Klobuchar nor Franken have all stumbled, fallen and face-planted.
Sounds like Seeuueentee whining about Palin and community college, nevermind that Lincoln didn’t go to college.
Wait a second here. You mean Winona State isn’t a part of the Ivy League? That means my degree from a state school is meaningless! I wish the admission rep would have told me that before I wasted four years drinking beer and chasing skirts in pursuit of a meaningless Bachelor’s Degree. However, I spent far less money for a meaningless degree than Franken or Klobuchar.
They may have an address in the Beltway, pretending to be “significant,” but I got to drink more beer. Who won?
Nahhhh!
I wonder if Dolphin thinks poorly ofTim Penny is an idiot. He is also a WSU grad. as is Michele Bachmann.
Well, Dolphin probably thinks I’m an idiot. Lemme try that comment again.
I wonder if Dolphin thinks poorly of Tim Penny or considers him an idiot, because Penny is a WSU grad. As is Michele Bachmann.
Thank goodness Sen. Vanilla Fluff is so well educated. You need a lot of intellectual firepower to get legislation named for dead children passed and signed into law.
And the Harvard law grad’s policy, Obamacare, is going to downsize the Harvard undergrad’s (as the Wall Street Journal noted this morning – Sen. Al Franken, D-Medtronic) states crowning jewel, the medical device industry.
I wish these people and their theories would stay in academe`.
That is a corollary to my principle of generally not voting for a lawyer unless the position requires it – like judge or attorney general.
Betty McCollum – DFL St. Paul – is a Saint Kate’s grad, which surprises me, I thought from her politics she’d be a Macalester grad, where Walter Mondale actually did go. Mark Dayton went to Yale but everybody knows he was a legacy admission, so by Dolphin’s rules as stated in his article, Dayton doesn’t count. Colin Peterson went to Moorhead and Jim Oberstar was a Tommie. Keith Ellison went to Wayne State. Bill Luther and Wendy Anderson went to the U of M. Rudy Perpich – our longest serving governor – went to . . . you ready for this . . . Hibbing Junior College. None of them are IV league school, either. So except for an Affirmative Action admission and a guy whose highest and best use of his talents was stand-up comedy, Democrats are Dummies, is that what you’re saying, Nic?
I quite agree.
The appropriate response to Mr. Dolphin’s missive is hollow, mocking laughter and a golf clap.
Franken? Is he kidding? Franken’s undergrad degree is in poli-sci. Didn’t he admit he spent most of his time at Harvard smoking dope and demonstrating? A humanities undergrad degree from an ivy league college is not a sign of academic achievement, it’s a sign that you are a wanna-be snob.
Bush had a Harvard MBA, and Bachmann has a post-JD degree from William & Mary. Her legal education is superior to Obama’s, and she was not an affirmative action admission.
Obama’s backers at Harvard Law — Larry Tribe and Charles Ogletree — have both been through plagiarism scndals. They passed off the work of sloppy undergrads as their own. Their defense was that, basically, it wasn’t good form to accuse them of plagiarism, what with their stellar reputations & all.
Obama’s own words, in a letter to HLR:
I must say, however, that as someone who has undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action programs during my academic career, and as someone who may have benefited from the Law Review’s affirmative action policy when I was selected to join the Review last year,, I have not personally felt stigmatized either within the broader law school community or as a staff member of the Review.
http://thesophic.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/obamas-1990-note-to-the-harvard-law-record-as-someone-who-has-undoubtedly-benefited-from-affirmative-action-programs-during-my-academic-career/
Read the whole letter; and you’ll see such intelligent writing as :
I would therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen’s extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow undeserved.
Can you tell what tense that sentence is written in? I can’t.
Obama wrote it, not as an undergrad, but as a Harvard 3L and president of Harvard Law Review.
“The appropriate response to Mr. Dolphin’s missive is hollow, mocking laughter and a golf clap.”
Yep. But this is the best I can do in writing.
The Obama letter to Harvard Law Record has vanished from the Record‘s website, but the wayback machine has it:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110717140823/http://www.hlrecord.org/2.4475/record-retrospective-obama-on-affirmative-action-1.577511
“The Obama letter to Harvard Law Record has vanished from the Record‘s website”.
Just like his transcripts and academic records. Oh, wait, they are just sealed. Never mind!
I just marvel at the left wing moonbats giving their dear leader a pass on this and take the word of the lame stream ministry of propaganda that he has all of these degrees, an IQ that is off the charts, etc. If one of us applies for a job and claims a degree, we have to prove it by providing transcripts. Why doesn’t he?!
I would therefore agree with the suggestion that in the future, our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate that someone with Mr. Chen’s extraordinary record of academic success might be somehow unqualified for work in a corporate law firm, or that such success might be somehow undeserved.
I am fascinated by the mangled understanding of language that could produce this sentence. What is the subject? The tense drifts around between present and future. Is “would” in our concern in this area is most appropriately directed at any employer who would even insinuate meant to show insistence or show a hypothetical? Obama seems to think that academic success is the only qualifier “for work” (why not “to work”? Aghh! My head is spinning!) in a corporate law firm? What is so special about working for a corporate law firm that academic success is its sole qualifier?