In the new "Thinking Big" blog on The Atlantic Online, blog writer Conor Friedersdorf wrote a post about his thoughts on New York and the East Coast--having grown up in California before moving east for graduate school. Before relocating to New York, most of the East Coast existed only as an idea to Friedersdorf, with one major eastern presence being more theoretical than even peppermint unicorns.
My own final abstraction was the Ivy League, a group of institutions I knew nothing about for most of my life save the fact that Harvard and Yale were among them. As late as age 26, when I began looking at Columbia University for graduate school, I never thought of it as being in the Ivy League, nor did I put Brown, Princeton or the University of Pennsylvania in those categories. I'd scarcely heard of Cornell or Dartmouth until I moved to the East Coast.
Before all you Ivy League alums start writing hate mail to Conor Friedersdorf--and in the case of Princeton grads, order an air strike on his house for grouping your alma mater with "the other five"--be aware that it is not a singular notion. In fact, there's an entire state that doesn't grasp the concept of obsessing over elitism. Read the rest of this entry »
Penn grad DJ Lubel '05 popped back into the spotlight this weekend with his video about the Ivy League swill in Murray Hill. The video references to "Jew geography" and Lehman Bros emeriti in that elevated piece of Manhattan in the 30s on the East Side. Cool, but it's worth watching for the dood-bros mooning the camera in front of the stretch Hummer at Joshua Tree.
The song's audio has actually been floating around the Internet since last year or so. NYMag nailed it when they summed up the point:
We all go to temple but we worship the dough We've got more Japs than all of Tokyo Pour me a Grey Goose and Red Bull As I take this Adderal pill Tonight I'm blacking out up on Murray Hill
The recent Cornell major-legitimacy dustup between Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann lit more than a few contempt-fueled fires. To recap, Coulter calls herself an Ivy Leaguer because she's a Cornell alum, but Olbermann is not because he's a Cornell alum. Olbermann responds on "Countdown" by stating that he is indeed an Ivy Leaguer because he's a Cornell alum and how dare you? So obviously, somebody's not getting invited to somebody's St. Patty's Day Party.
But what are Ms. Coulter's feelings about that other arch-liberal, smug Cornellian television host, Bill Maher? Well, Maher graduated from Arts & Sciences, so he's an Ivy Leaguer by her standards. The two of them yesterday concluded a three-day speaking/debate tour in three cities and The New York Times reported that they may even be "tight."
In a predebate telephone interview, Mr. Maher said that he and Ms. Coulter were good friends — “Not dating, as people try to say on the Internet, but friends” — and that he respected her resolve. “Unlike so many people in America, she was not afraid to get booed,” Mr. Maher said.
Ms. Coulter likewise said that she respected Mr. Maher’s bipartisan approach to “Politically Incorrect.” “Unlike most snoozefest political shows, Bill booked guests who didn’t all agree with one another[.]”
If nothing else comes out of this, the Maher-Coulter-Olbermann holds the slot the most polarizing, ear-splitting, and self-congratulatory Ivy love triangle so far this month. Now for the Brown alums to chance to take the spotlight. C'mon Jim Axelrod. You know you want to say something regretable.
Ann Coulter's spat with Keith Olbermann over Cornell bragging rights began the way all great battles of the mind do — Does this Rush Limbaugh make the GOP look fat? — and ends the way our comment boards do, a degenerative slinging of acceptance rates and SAT scores eventually boiling down to one guy pointing at his diploma and screaming about how smart he is.
In the first corner: Cornell grad and MSNBC gravitas junkie Keith Olbermann, who says conserva-pundit Rush Limbaugh is a know-nothing plebe who couldn't tell the Constitution from his left foot. He's so dumb, he flunked ballroom dance! (True story. Check his Wikipedia.)
In the second corner: Cornell grad and journeyman blowhard Ann Coulter, who jumps to Limbaugh's defense with an astonishingly baffling 900-word diatribe about how Olbermann is not the "scary smart" messiah his fans think he is, but an Ivy League fraud:
Keith didn't go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell. ... Keith went to an affiliated state college at Cornell, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (average SAT: about that of pulling guards at the University of South Carolina; acceptance rate: 1 of every 1 applicants).
Touché, Coulter. You hit us East Coast intelligentsia right where it hurts-- the threat of farm dirt, and athletes! This is even worse than the time we realized Obama went to some weensy school in LA* before transferring to Columbia. Her opponent reeling, the skeletor in the right wing's closet delivers a bony little knock-out punch:
Olbermann's incessant lying about having an "Ivy League education" when he went to the non-Ivy League ag school at Cornell would be like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a "Yale man."
A metaphor involving blue collar labor? Low blow.
But wait! Olbermann's still got some fight in him. After the jump: The response that may require us to banish Keither Olbermann from the Ivy League forever. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday Ann Coulter directed her incendiary commentary towards Cornell, the "plastic Ivy." By basically trashing their College of Agriculture and Life Sciences for NOT being an Ivy League school, Coulter compares Keith Olbermann's referring to his "Ivy League education" to many forms of deceit. The best of it:
Olbermann's incessant lying about having an "Ivy League education" when he went to the non-Ivy League ag school at Cornell would be like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a "Yale man."
As Coulter further muddles her own understanding of the Ivy League—originally and still just a sports conference—she raps about how alums of the "Ivy League Cornell" go on to become Supreme Court justices and stuff while the Ag School grads are basically all hicks and hockey players. So does this mean that Cornell is full of imposters playing Ivy League sports but who will eventually fail in becoming the next Paul Wolfowitz?
Not if the author of the Daily Sun's Shameless Commerce has anything to do with it. Read all about it after the jump.
In the new "Thinking Big" blog on The Atlantic Online, blog writer Conor Friedersdorf wrote a post about his thoughts on New York and the East Coast--having grown up in California before moving east for graduate school. Before relocating to New York, most of the East Coast existed only as an idea to Friedersdorf, with one major eastern presence being more theoretical than even peppermint unicorns.
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