Ed,
As for the Audie Murphy line, Kerry came out of the Democratic Convention as if he were Audie Murphy; subsequent events have raised significant doubts about those claims, and also brought to light a number of things the public didn't know about medals in general, such as the tendency for officers to get a lot of them, or how you qualify for them, etc. I don't think most people knew that you could lobby for them, or if refused, could lobby around your superior officer to get one. It's not like the movies, is it? As for Kerry, your hero, he managed to get his 3 purples and get out of combat very quickly, then when he got stateside he wheedled his way out of his last 6 months of service as well.
So, let me see if I understand YOUR response. You are very very impressed with a Yale undergraduate degree, no matter what it really might mean. I guess that might be because you only had a corresponding relationship with those rascally bulldogs. If it wasn't the debate team, but rather the chemistry club, or the whiffenpoofs, you would have been equally impressed. Here's the key, they are all more or less voluntary clubs that require a little talent, but it's not like playing wideout for USC. The big deal at the major ivies is to get in, BUT BUT BUT, the undergraduate institutions always save room for children of alumni who happen to be famous names (for Harvard, see Kennedy, Cabot, Lodge, etc.) and big donors and those with influence. I suppose your mention of the Forbes in JK's name means he qualified somewhere in there. You see, there is diversity at those ivy covered walls, they've got a number of kids who only scored in the 85th percentile on their SATs, they just mostly drive BMWs.
Let me tell you, Ed, if you went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford or Princeton and the best law school you could get into isn't even in the top 25 in the country, you haven't really done that well. That's just the way it is. You have fallen from the top four colleges, despite every admission program in every law school standing ready and able to give you every benefit of every doubt. You think a guy from Wayne State with a B+ and Kerry's LSATs even gets considered at Cornell? Ha! But, even the Kennedys managed to get into U.Va. law school, #9 on the hit parade.
And the authorized biography says that this guy, who planned out things so meticulously in his life, just got into BC on a whim. He was, well, late. LOL. Does that compute? (Funny, same thing happened to George Bush and Harvard Business school, no, wait,it didn't . . .)
Or let's look at Yale's numbers. Every year it graduates about 1300 students. Let's assume that 20% of those graduates want to go to law school, in any given year. That's 260 students. The 50 best get into Harvard, the 30 best get into Yale, now we're down to the next 180 students. 10 each go to Stanford, U. of Chicago, U. Penn, Columbia, NYU, U. Va., Duke, Georgetown, BU, Northwestern, UNC (Chapel Hill)--now we've disposed of 190 Yalies in the top schools, only 70 are left over, but Kerry is still there. I'm sure BC is a good law school, but it is a comedown for a "brilliant student" if Kerry ever was one.
But maybe your ivy envy comes from your own rejection. I can't say I share your experience, though, but it was kind of you to ask. I don't like to get too personal but I turned down Yale for graduate school first (Harvard offered a better program in the area, East Asian History, I was interested in, although the professors at Yale were very impressive, particularly Jonathan Spence who called me to talk things over), then when I decided to go to law school, I went and did it again. Law school was a much easier decision, the hallowed halls of Pound, Holmes, Frankfurter and Archie Cox. My wife liked Cambridge, I had no good feeling about the urban blight of New Haven, and there's always the power of inertia once you are in a place. And two of the smartest guys in my section came from Wayne State and U.Mass Amherst, without the running head start your hero had. Elliot Spitzer was in my class, but a different section; Arthur Miller (yes, that one) taught my Civ. Proc. section, and Steve Breyer taught me Administrative Law (while on the federal bench in Boston).
Grades? Yes, magna cum laude, undergrad and grad. LSAT? Yes, 98th percentile (in the old 800 point scale), along with Peace Corps service and 6 languages. I wouldn't have volunteered this stuff, but since you asked.
I guess this is why I can see John Kerry's educational record with a little more perspective. It's okay, it's a good education, it's an education of privilege, but I don't see that his education is any different from Bush's, in fact, in many ways, Bush's is superior, imho.
Kb |
