The Indulged Children of the Ivy League

Yale, the school that I love, just can’t seem to get out of its own way lately. At Saturday’s football game against Harvard, something like a thousand students occupied the field for almost an hour. Where “The Game” once had a grand tradition of student pranks, one senses it will now just be another opportunity to showcase protest culture. 

To be fair, Harvard students were involved as well, but where PC outrage culture is concerned, Yale always seems to be front and center. There have been many times in recent years when I have felt acute embarrassment over the latest developments from campus. There was, of course, the “screaming girl” incident where students harassed, hectored, and threatened a prominent professor over the issue of Halloween costumes (look it up on YouTube - it’s shocking). Rather than being expelled, at least two of those students were given awards at graduation for promoting racial comity. 

There was the covering of a stone carving because it depicted a pilgrim with a musket. There was the free speech conference that two hundred students tried to shut down. I was at that one. On a more personal level, there was the undergraduate woman who accused me of patriarchy for holding a door for her at my last reunion. 

Incidents like those prompted me to write the satirical novel Campusland, but Saturday’s events remind me that it wasn’t satire at all.

Don’t get me wrong, the students have every right to protest, but this was the wrong place and the wrong time. By holding up the game almost an hour, they placed Yale in a position where they might have had to forfeit. Imagine being one of the seniors who’d worked so hard for this moment - a Harvard Yale game with the Ivy League championship on the line - only to forfeit? How is that fair to them, their families, and the legion of fans who paid to see the game? As it was, the delay pushed the game into darkness, finally ending fifteen minutes after sunset. It was almost impossible to see, and the refs would have pulled the plug if it had gone even a few minutes longer.

Did the seemingly jubilant, chanting protesters think about any of this? No. It was a supremely selfish act, a grand display of virtue signaling. Self-admiration practically emanated in waves from the field, along with a puerile need to be the center of attention.

What were they protesting? Climate change, but it hardly matters. It’s political theater. Next week it will be something else. Yale is in the full throes of outrage culture where protests are ends unto themselves. This is something Yale has brought upon itself. For one, there are never any consequences for bad behavior. Saturday’s children knew they could have a temper tantrum on national television and fully expect campus kudos, maybe even awards at graduation. 

For another, those students got into Yale precisely because they did things like disrupt football games with protests. The admissions office prizes social justice applicants above all. (Note to the development office: good luck getting them to give back after they graduate. They have been trained to hate the very school they attend, and feel no gratitude over the scholarships you gave them.)

The culture has to change. Yale needs new leadership and a new admissions staff. It needs to cut way back on its bloated bureaucracy. Unfortunately, none of this will happen as long as faithful alums keep writing checks. Alumni need to start asking hard questions because the school they think they’re giving money to is not the one they knew. 

It’s very sad, indeed.

Exclusive Story: Anthony Weiner Used Drones to Spy on Hillary Rival

In 2015, Anthony Weiner used drones to spy on Jeb Bush's presidential campaign.

I have known about this for some time, but my source only agreed to let me tell the story just now. 

Here's what happened. In the summer of 2015, Jeb Bush had a fundraiser in the Hamptons at someone's personal residence. At the time, he was widely viewed as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. One hundred and fifty or so guests gathered on the lawn for the event. As Bush began to make his remarks, a drone appeared about twenty feet over the crowd's heads. It was a substantial one with four propellers and a camera, and it made a fair bit of noise.

Jeb made a crack that it was probably "Hillary spying on us," and the crowd laughed. The host and his family debated getting a shotgun to deal with the problem but decided they weren't sure of the legality. After a few minutes, the drone exited. Two of Bush's staffers followed out the driveway and down the road a bit. There, they saw two men load the drone into a station wagon. 

One of them was unmistakably Anthony Weiner.

If you are fuzzy on the grand timeline of Anthony Weiner's personal descent, 2015 was after he'd been caught on at least two different occasions sexting with women on Twitter - Carlos Danger, remember? - and also after he had his mayoral campaign implode. It was prior to the underage sexting that got him sent to the big house. Basically, he was in the wilderness, both socially and politically, with little to occupy his days, although he was still married to Huma Abedin.

He needed a way to find redemption, a purpose. Was it by doing black bag ops for Hillary?

One can imagine how the video footage might have been used by the Clinton campaign. "See Jeb Bush Hanging Out with His Billionaire Buddies in the Hamptons!" (Never mind that Hillary raised money there as well, and probably knew more billionaires than Jeb.)

The idea that Weiner might have run this operation without the express approval of both Hillary and Huma Abedin seems implausible. They probably tasked him with this because he literally had nothing else to do and was eager to win back any sort of role for himself. (We've all seen how self-deluded Weiner could be.)

That Weiner and the Clinton machine would pull a stunt like this isn't in the least bit surprising. What is surprising is that the Bush campaign knew exactly what happened and did nothing with the information. Use of a drone to spy on a political rival is scandalous, and would have been so at the time, and yet Jeb sat on it. 

Low energy, indeed.

Anyone think the Trump campaign might have dealt with the situation differently? Republicans nominated Trump precisely because he was the counter-puncher they craved after decades of Republicans who always knew their place. 

Like Jeb.

If this had happened at a Trump campaign event, "Dronegate" would today be part of the national lexicon.

Does this story have current relevance? Certainly not for Weiner; he is a man of irrelevance and will be for the rest of his life. But Hillary Clinton still inserts herself into the national conversation and some think she might run again. Of course, she would deny any of this, but maybe Weiner himself is just desperate enough for public attention (of any kind) that he might just own up to his dirty tricks.

Shame on the Yale Daily News

Sometimes I fear Yale has jumped the shark. As an alum who still wants to love the place (and will always love the experience he had), it makes me profoundly sad.

Today, the Yale Daily News printed a column of breathtaking excrescence. Vile and racist. You can read it yourself here. Written by a senior named Isis Davis-Marks, it starts off, "Everyone knows a white boy with shiny brown hair and a saccharine smile that conceals his great ambitions." It goes on to suppose that the "white boy" grows up and one day Isis will see him at something like a Senate confirmation hearing.

And then. "I'll remember a racist remark that he said, an unintentional utterance that he made when he had one drink too many at a frat party his sophomore year. I'll recall the message that accidentally left open on a computer when he forgot to log out, where he likened a woman's body to a particularly large animal. And, when I'm watching him smile that smile, I'll kick myself thinking I could have stopped it."

She (I'm assuming gender here - probably a microaggression) goes on to concede that not everyone at Yale is evil. At least not those from oppressed, non-privileged classes, anyway. She is still very upset ("indelibly") by the Kavanaugh hearings. She wants all accusations of sexual misconduct at Yale made public.

Then Isis decides the real problem lies with Yale's values:

To be honest, I’m not sure what the solution is. This expands beyond vocalizing problems about sexual assault: The core of this problem has to do with our values. The problem isn’t just the Yale administration; it’s Yale students. We allow things to skate by. We forget. We say, “No, he couldn’t have done that,” or, “But he’s so nice.” No questions are asked when our friends accept job offers from companies that manufacture weapons or contribute to gentrification in cities. We merely smile at them and wave as we walk across our residential college courtyards and do nothing. Thirty years later, we kick ourselves when it’s too late.

Is this where I point out that Yale is probably the most progressive place on the planet? And do many Yalies go into defense contracting? Never met one, myself.

She ends with this haymaker:

But I can’t do that anymore — I can’t let things slip by. I’m watching you, white boy. And this time, I’m taking the screenshot.

Wow. Could you imagine if someone said, "I'm watching you, black boy. I know you're going to (fill in crime here)?" Oh my God, what a shit storm. Without a doubt, people would by tossed out. But as long as racsim/sexism is aimed at non-oppressed classes (read: white males), no biggie. Nothing to see here.

But here's what really gets me going. The Yale Daily News has refused to publish any online comments on the article. Not one. I myself have submitted two, and both were apparently rejected. An article this incendiary, and we are expected to believe there are no comments? My guess is they are surprised, because Yale is an ideological echo chamber, and Isis's piece, within the bubble, is fairly conventional thinking.

That's the way it is in Campusland.

Campusland Cover Art Is Here

Gotta say, they did a nice job.