Does the Ivy League not hold that prestige?
Sure, of course it does, obviously. My point was to highlight that
you were buying it... at least the argument that you were making was premised on the notion that you bought into the truth/merit of that prestige,
in this case, whereas in other circumstances, you would dismiss it as elitist smoke-and-mirrors. You're trying to have it both ways a little bit here.
As an aside, in response to your question... In my experience, its a vicious (or virtuous depending on your perspective) cycle. The prestige brings more money which raises opportunity/achievement levels, which in turns raises prestige/pride, which brings in more money and so on. The system compounds and perpetuates itself... "rich get richer" as the saying goes.
I mean sure, I'm inclined towards "money talks, merit walks."
Right, again, that is more what I thought you'd say... which seems to contradict the argument that "Harvard is supposed to be the very best of the very best". Are they "the best of the best" or aren't they? You can't hold them to the standard of being better than everyone else if you don't actually believe they are better than everyone else.
@Lexicus and others' argument (paraphrasing) is that Gay is getting a degree of scrutiny/pressure/criticism because she is black, female, liberal, at a blue state school, that a white, male, conservative, at a red state school would never receive, particularly not from the Republicans that are prominently going after her in Congress. If it was a white, male, conservative, at a red state school, folks in general, not just Republicans, wouldn't give the tiniest crumb of dogsqueeze about his academic record.
Your response to this argument (paraphrasing) seemed to be... "
No its not that, Harvard is better than those other lowly red state podunk schools. They're the best, they're the elite, so they have to apply greater scrutiny and live up to a higher standard than these backwater schools do."
So my response was "
But you don't believe that... you don't believe that Harvard is better... you think they're frauds", so you can't claim that they're living up to their higher standards, because you don't believe they have any such higher standards. That's my point. Now if on the other hand, you believe it like "everybody else", fine, but then that undermines it a little when you want to gripe about "right sort of people" and such. Do you see what I am saying?
Its like when you called me out for laying "romanticization" of the Confederacy/Confederate flag at your feet. I recognized that I do it myself, so I can't just blame you for it, not with clean hands anyway.
, but this data is harder to come by than it should be.
