“I think that the fetishization of elite schools in American culture, the way in which they cultivate an image as brands, as imprimaturs of some scarce resource called “excellence,” is sad and pathological, and profoundly anti-democratic. The truth (a truth I didn’t know, or at least didn’t want to admit, in college) is that an intellectual life is available to almost anyone, almost anywhere, if they work hard enough and are given some kind of access point.” (via Guernica)
Without alma-mater-hierarchy, how will we preserve our tribal certainties? We each need to maintain a general notion of how far we are from the King; one’s school, one’s car, one’s choice of sneaker and bottled water…
(even more comically: soon after the last apparently-futile inauguration, three different Facebook frenz posted, helpfully, photos of the ceremony… from which one could calculate how far each friend had been, respectively, from the action… factoring “zoom” into the calculation)