Shame Is A Many Splendored Thing
And it’s in all the wrong places.
“Should America be ashamed of itself?”
Thus the lede of a Guardian article from yesterday, which the author, staying in character, answers with a general yes, before going into the particulars of the World Cup soccer match between the women’s teams of USA vs Thailand. If you, like me, don’t care about women’s soccer, you’ve still heard about the brutal score (13–0). According to the author but contrary to some (male) commentators, that’s nothing to be ashamed of (for the U.S.; Take that, Thailand! We are the champions!), but the celebration of every single goal over a team so hopelessly inferior didn’t have to be quite so exuberant. I agree. And not because they’re women, despite what the headlines want you to think. When Germany whipped Brazil 7–1 in the somewhat more popular men’s World Cup 2014, the German players stopped cheering and jumping each other by the fifth goal, while they were beating the World Cup record winner. So, ladies, looks like athletic manners can be performed by gents.
But, as I said, I don’t care. This I should be a bit ashamed of, because it’s not so much sexism as my and your indifference why the US soccer women aren’t getting paid as much as the men, although they’re much better. We can thank the commodification of sports for that.
Which brings me to some deeper shades of shame I’ve been fixated on. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a feature on John Vandemoer, now former Stanford sailing coach and first to have his sentence in the college admission scandal handed to him, amounting to — nothing. Maybe my cynicism is so advanced that this couldn’t surprise me, as the whole mess itself did not. If there’s anything I believe here, it’s that this is only part of what’s going on, and that those we haven’t heard from yet have been lucky, though luck is a bendable concept: I can’t imagine people more lonely than those whose lives consist of little but lies. Even as a cynic, though, I await a show of shame that’s either not forthcoming or is so blatantly insincere as to be lame parody. I’m under no illusion that the rest of the defendants, be they largely (and lucky for real) unnamed hedge fund dudes, or C-list actresses, will suffer much more than a slap on their Rolex-ed wrists. Nice precedent.
The WSJ piece — and let me shout out their top-of-the-line reporting on this throughout — renders a portrait of Vandemoer as a sailing enthusiast, popular coach, loving dad, once good kid whom his pediatrician still gushes about (no joke), an overall nice guy who happened to take the wrong phone call. It was from bushy-browed, leather-skinned, resourceful college consultant-cum-villain-cum-FBI collaborateur Rick Singer, whose takes on front and back and side doors put “outside-the-box” thinking on a whole new geometrical level. Passing mentions go to the interchangeable, not all sporty schemes by which mediocre kids got into their dream schools, or more precisely that of their unfulfilled parents (USC sure got a media boost, by moving its association to Stanford so much closer).
Not mentioned in any meaningful detail: The kids who worked their butts off to get into these schools but didn’t, and they’ll never know for sure why. Less tragic but still vexing, the kids who worked their butts off and did get into top schools but will walk under a mist of suspicion, and who could blame those questioning? A lot more vexing: What about the kids who attended, or still attend, fraudulently? There seems to be actual debate whether to expel them or not. I’m a fan of due process and all, but when something is so wrong, how can you insist that it’s maybe right? What does it matter whether the kids knew or didn’t (a version I find very hard to believe) what their parents were up to? I’m not heartless, quite the contrary, you’ll have to take my word on it if you don’t know me. Fact is, the Singer kids who undisputedly lack qualifications are taking up the spots of kids who have them. That this should be that hard to rectify is one of several basics I don’t get.
When something is so wrong, why don’t you make it right?
Taking a step back, why was bribing a sailing coach, selling crew coaches on girls who’ve only set foot on vacation yachts, or photoshopping kids’ heads onto water polo players’ torsos even an option, a hugely valuable one? What the @#$% does any of it have to do with higher, or elite, education? Not having gone through the U.S. system I know I’m touching sacred ground when I say that I don’t even understand why the big sports like football and basketball carry the importance they do, in many cases overriding academic credentials; at least those generate interest and viewership and, mystifyingly to me but undeniably, make for a university’s branding and fight songs. But sailing? Crew? Water polo? Even soccer, the world’s most popular game except for the USA? Gimme a break!
The system, even when worked legally, is so fundamentally flawed, so grotesque in its inequality of access (not to be conflated with outcome) that it’s no wonder no one can explain it, and I’m usually one to talk back at “white privilege.” Aside from athletics, the many ways to expend money on top of already exorbitant college costs in order to get a leg up can’t be viewed, from any angle, as anything but brazen favoritism. Legacies and Z-Lists that allow subpar applicants into venerable institutions are aristocratic in effect, and to think that this country fought a war to escape royalty, only to hold on to the concept and not even be embarrassed about it, boggles the mind. True, it’s part of their money that funds buildings, research and, notably, financially weaker students’ scholarships. But top schools are so thickly endowed, they don’t need outside money from kids who should stay outside.
If there were shame where it belongs, not where the internet decides and whom to descend upon at an ever faster turnover, this wouldn’t have happened, and when it did, the consequences would come swiftly (an airhead Instagram “influencer” losing her Sephora sponsorship hardly counts) and bring about change, starting with an education overhaul at a far earlier point. Like most changes, it has to start with mindset: Getting our heads around the truth that college, let alone elite colleges, aren’t best for everyone, and that’s okay! So many occupations, both necessary and reputable, don’t, or shouldn’t, require a college degree, at least not right after high school. The cutthroat admissions process and exploded cost of attendance will need to be curbed, or we will end up with, well, cut throats, one way or another. I’m no economist and defer to those who are for a workable answer how, but I doubt that pitting populations of kids against one another with more intricate and increasingly opaque methods of “holistic” (how I hate nonsense terms) evaluations, recently adding on an SAT Adversity Index, is the way to go.
College isn’t the answer to everything.
Of all the shameful things happening every day everywhere, but let’s stay here, why does this college thing bother me so much? Because I’m a mother, and like the next one, I have my moments of pride, of shame, too. I feel strongly about certain values and, as a result, I can’t stop judgment creeping up when other mothers trample on these values with dirty combat boots. I’ve been seeing firsthand what hoops kids have to jump through in the circus that college admissions is turning into. I’m glad for my kids and kids I know who are mastering it with their youth halfway intact, but I resent it. I resent that high school gets reduced to a pipeline to college, where admission is the Hollywood happy ending and no one knows what comes after. The demands increasingly placed on high school kids are snuffing out their lightness of being, and as mother I can’t but resent that. So, when some celebrity mom with more money than she deserves or knows what to do with blogs pseudo-righteous girlpower-babble (hey, Felicity!) or bitches like a spoof of Dynasty (hard to do, Lori; for some delicious dishing, you really should read this) and then turns around and dollar-heaves her daughters into not even that great schools, but the best they could get away with, I chafe. Their daughters didn’t take anything away from mine. But I seethe on behalf of all moms with real values, and their kids who work hard to get ahead, and I’m repulsed that, in all likelihood, the cheaters won’t face much of the music. Yes, it was all kinda intense for a couple of days, and while I have no sympathy, I do pity them, especially the kids. What message to receive from your parents!
If shame were part of these people’s emotional palette, I’d add “what disgrace to live with,” but I suppose they’re free from that, which in a way is remarkable. They’ll all weasel their way back.
So, to answer the dear Guardian’s question, should America be ashamed of itself? I’ll say no, not all. Too many, yes. But then, Sir Elton John is ashamed of your country, I hear.
