Leave it to CNN to find a new and charming tidbit on the single piece of summer Ivy League news everyone is already sick of hearing about. Apparently, Henry Louis Gates sent a bouquet of roses to neighbor Lucia Whalen as an "expression of gratitude" for calling the police, albeit mistakenly. Perhaps Gates felt a little guilty for all the racial and political brouhaha he and the Cambridge Police stirred up. After the incident, Whalen was accused by the media of racism and received multiple threats to her personal safety. At the recent press conference she held on July 29 to clarify what had been written in the police report, she defended herself by saying that she did not assume the two men in front of Gates' house were black before she dialed 911. Cambridge Police spokesman Frank Pasquarello lauded Whalen for her actions:

She did the right thing. I applaud her. She did what we tell people to do: call when you see something suspicious. She did her civic duty.

Obama himself felt a little remorseful about the entire stupid situation, so--as everyone on and below Earth is aware of by now--he invited Gates and his arresting officer James Crowley to a beer summit at the White House last Thursday to promote better race relations. But perhaps in another poor act of judgment, Whalen remained the only person in the controversy uninvited to the reconciliation picnic hosted by the Commander-in-Chief. After being asked about the gathering, which has the entire American beer industry questioning its legitimacy/promoting their products, Whalen's lawyer Wendy Murphy responded that her client "doesn't like beer anyways."

Is a gender discrimination debate heating up to add to the racial profiling fire?

One of the hot new blogs on the interblag--especially in my hometown--is Spotted: D.C. Summer Interns. Basically, every summer brings a new batch of college interns to Washington to work on and around Capitol Hill. And every summer, the interns screw up the city for D.C. residents with their arrogant behavior, clueless actions, and passion for getting smashed. The D.C. Interns blog is for the locals to strike back by chronicling the infuriating behavior of these interns, many of whom only got their menial labor positions through family connections rather than merit. Obviously, some of these interns are Ivy Leaguers.

We know that Ivy League students can utter idiotic statements. And the posted incidents (or interncidents) are quite ridiculous, such as thinking the U.S. Capitol is the White House and expecting Starbucks to make his coffee orders gratis. But as of today, only one anecdote lists the offending intern as an Ivy League student.

Last summer in an East-Coast Senate office, we had an intern from a prestigious Ivy League school, who definitely fit the bill as a "smart dumb kid." Proving the phrase "you never know who you're going to see, so watch your behavior," he was spotted after work at a Nationals game. It was apparent that he had a bit too much to drink, but what happened at the game is not the point, it's how he got home. Said intern was living in Rockville for the summer. The next morning when I told him I saw him at the game the night before, he chuckled in an embarrassed fashion and went on to explain that he took a cab home after the game...not the Metro which was still running after the game ended. Apparently his friends paid the cab driver before they left, but he went on to pay again at the end of the trip. He did not discuss or even dispute the fare, and paid the cab driver not $25 (which is still a bit much), but $135!

In his defense, the best way to get through a Nationals game is to be completely wasted.

As most of the posts relate spontaneous occurrences and overheard idiotic statements, the alma maters of the offending interns are not often stated. Fortunately for us, one Ivy Leaguer has outed himself in order to defend his lack of manners in the House cafeteria. Unfortunately for Harvard sophomore Matthew Young, his explanation does little to improve his image. 

No, actually, I understand swine flu is not transmitted through pork or pigs thanks to my Harvard education. :P

Nope, I didn't ask for my money back.

No, the "Lade Serving at the Counter" did not apologize and did not ask "what can I do to fix this." She asked in a very belligerent tone, "whaddya want me to do about it SIR?" 

And I replied accordingly, "I hope you don't serve this to Members of Congress!"

It's nice of Harvard to offer a class titled "Things That Can't Give You Swine Flu". If only Lena Chen had taken it.

Remember wingnut and condiment expert William Jacobson? Back in May, he wrote a post on his blog attacking President Obama for asking for "a spicy...or Dijon mustard" on his hamburger. This Harvard-educated lawyer accused Obama of elitism--because nothing's more elitist than inquiring about a product produced by Kraft. Jacobson's post sparked laughter in the entire political blogosphere, causing him to link to all the people laughing at him, resulting in more laughing and more linking until the entire internet imploded. The end.

Oh, and he's got a faculty job at Cornell.

Since "Colonel Mustard" first earned his nickname, he has continued to write more wacky posts about how Sotomayor is racist, Hillary is disappeared, Wonkette is Trig's real mother, and so on. But it is Jacobson's post from last Friday that really demonstrates the peak insane form he showed in early May. It is titled "If Palin Were President Now" and it is every bit as magical as you would expect.

By speculating what would happen if Alaska's Point Guard were the current Commander in Chief, Jacobson is operating under the assumption that John McCain won in November and died soon after. Of course John McCain is still alive in real life, meaning Sarah Palin would still be VP and have all the time she wants to shop in Georgetown. I don't know why Jacobson thinks McCain would have died in the past eight months. Maybe he's confusing him with Ed McMahon.

Because this is just speculation, Jacobson can write whatever he wants without any sort of proof or justification or logic. He can say that in her first six months as President, Sarah Palin would have fixed the economy, reduced the national deficit, sent Optimus Prime to kill Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and won the Boston Marathon--even if all of it only could have happened in Jacobson's recurring wet dream. And when people take him to task, he doesn't have to explain himself. After all, it's just speculation. Just like when TMZ claims Diana Ross is the father of Michael Jackson's kids.

William Jacobson, if you are reading this, please realize how much embarrassment you are bringing to the university that employs you. Not because of your political beliefs, but because of your failure at simple reasoning. You say that if Sarah Palin were President now, the country would be in much better shape. That is simply untrue. You failed to realize that Sarah Palin would never be President now, because she would have quit last week.

It's not surprising that 70 percent of Supreme Court Justices seated since 1950 attended some Ivy League institution—Harvard and Yale have the best law schools in the country. When George W. Bush had to make up for the embarrassment that was Harriet Miers, he went with Samuel Alito, a graduate of Princeton and a Yale Law alumnus. President Obama continued the trend by nominating Sonia Sotomayor last May, betting she would have an easy time getting confirmed with alma maters identical to Alito's. Except for the fact that Alito was a conservative student who hated the liberal Princeton administration and Sotomayor was a liberal student who hated the conservative Princeton administration.

The hearings start next Monday and with endorsements from the ABA, the Fraternal Order of Police, and former FBI director Louis Freeh, Sotomayor is likely to be confirmed as the first Hispanic Justice and the 1,000,000th Ivy League graduate on the Court. This is despite drawing fire for supposedly claiming a "wise Latina" would make better decisions than a white man. Analysis of the Senate Judiciary Committee's sympathy for Princeton grads after the jump.

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Harvard Law graduate and Cornell professor William Jacobson is a member of an exclusive club, as he is one of the few arch-conservatives to make a home in Ithaca. Before this week, Jacobson was one of the lesser-known members of this group that also consists of Ann Coulter and the blind guy staunchly opposed to anal sex, even though his initials spell "A.S.S." But this week, Jacobson catapulted himself through the ranks of the Big Red Staters, thanks to his shocking expose of liberal media bias in MSNBC's coverage of President Obama's trip to an Arlington burger joint on Tuesday.

Mitchell even noted that Obama left a $5 tip in the tip jar. But she didn't mention one arugula-like fact, and you couldn't hear it on the MSNBC video because Andrea and her correspondent Kelly O'Donnel (they needed two people to cover this story) were talking so much.

NBC's regular news reported Obama's order as follows: ""I'm going to have a basic cheddar cheese burger, medium well, with mustard," Obama said. "Do you have spicy mustard? I'll take that."

Actually, the quote was "you got a spicy mustard or something like that, or a Dijon mustard, something like that" (at 0.55 of the unedited video below without Mitchell's talkover).

Obama ordered his burger with DIJON MUSTARD! Bet he had to seek John Kerry's counsel on that.

If anyone knows elitism, it's a Harvard Law-educated Cornell professor who worked for many years as a lawyer in Rhode Island.

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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.

Welcome back to the Great Ivy League Snob Off. Let's meet the contestants:

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.
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It is a truth universally acknowleged, that an Ivy Leaguer in possession of a career boon is in want of a catty fight with her peers. And what better place for that hiss-match to unfurl than the op/ed pages of the campus daily. Witness The D columnist and ex-opinion-editor Zachary Gottlieb, comemorating classmate Vanessa Sievers' ascent to the Office of Grafton County Treasurer:

I come not to praise Vanessa Sievers, but to bury her. Sievers, now a national flash in the pan, democratically won the local election for county treasurer.

“But Zach,” you might say, “Sievers even has a restricted Facebook profile, just like a real county treasurer would [one that I will continue not to be able to view after this article]. And you can barely see that her widely used photo with eponymous election poster was taken in a frat basement. And while Democratic pong tournaments fall outside of the realm of small-town finance, they will make county board meetings a hell of a lot more interesting: ‘I sink, you drink and delegate $300,000 for local road maintenance.’”

Ok, so Gottlieb's objections aren't so much the stuff of Ivy brat bitch-match, as they are measured concerns about democratic fairness: Read the rest of this entry »

While most politically ambitious students aim for summer internships on Capitol Hill, Democrat and Dartmouth junior Vanessa Sievers, perhaps wanting to be something more than your run-of-the-mill D.C. administrative lackey, decided to run for treasurer of Grafton County, N.H.

Sievers bested Republican incumbent Carol Elliott for the part-time position, winning 21,389 votes to Elliott's 20,803 - a margin of 586 votes. Sievers' victory testifies to the difference college students can have on an election. (According to the Valley News, "Sievers' largest margin of victory was in Hanover, home to Dartmouth, where she defeated Elliott by 2,438 votes.")

What is more fascinating than Sievers' win, however, is the backlash it aroused from her competitor. In a post-election interview with the Valley News, Elliott, who is 68, surmised that her loss came from "'brainwashed' college students who voted for the Democratic ticket and asserted that most 'real people' backed her candidacy." She also referred to Sievers as a "teenybopper", which is not only ageistic but imprecise - Sievers is 20.

America's collective crush on Obama finally consummated last night. At 11PM EST, approximately 30 seconds after the polls closed in California, the television networks called the presidential election for Obama and effete intellectual young folks came streaming out of dormitories the nation around and—

Ohmigod. Question 2 passed! It's legal to smoke pot at Harvard!!! (sort of)

Now where was I? Oh, right. Orgiastically celebratory young people, pouring into the street at universities like Penn (and recorded by the Daily Pennsylvanian):

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Happy Election Day! While you stare vacantly into your television waiting for the country to choose one leader or another, here's a bunch of election-related YouTubes that may or may not be fun.

First up: Cornellians rap about rocking the vote:

After the jump: Under the Button parodies that obnoxious "Don't Vote" video, and cute kids impersonate the candidates.

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