The Press Box - Some Admissions-Scandal Schadenfreude | Damage Control

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Federal agents arrested 50 people this week, including the actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, for allegedly bribing people to get their children into elite colleges (2:35). What does this story say about class mobility and the United States' obsession with college (19:42)? Hosts: Kate Knibbs and Justin Charity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer podcast network. With NFL free agency in full swing, the ringers football crew is covering all the major offseason moves on the Ringer NFL show and on the Ringer.com. Also coming this week, we're introducing our new sports rewatchables podcasts running across the network where we break down the most rewatchable games in football, basketball, baseball, and wrestling. Already up on the Bill Simmons podcast feed, you can hear Chris Ryan, Joe House, and Bill Simmons discuss game six of the 2016.

Western Conference Finals between OKC and the Golden State Warriors. You can check these out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Kate Nibbs. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites, and divides us. We're going to talk rather passionately and extensively and exclusively about Operation Varsity Blues, which is an FBI sting operation that swept up

50 prominent millionaires, including the actress's Felicity Huffman and Lori Lachlan, in a very strange college admissions scandal. Right, so we're going to talk about celebrity parents, celebrity kids, meritocracy, class warfare, and good old-fashioned schadenfreude. I'm glad you said that word because I don't know how to pronounce that. Schadenfreude. These parents are a catalog of wealth and privilege. They include, for example, CEOs of private and public companies, successful securities and real estate investors, two well-known actresses, a famous fashion designer, and the co-chairman of a global law firm.

Based on the charges unsealed today, all of them knowingly conspired with Singer and others to help their children either cheat on the SAT or ACT and or buy their children's admission to elite school's students. through fraud. This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud. There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I'll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either. So we're talking about an FBI sting operation named after a fantastic film, Operation Varsity Blues.

I've never seen it. Really? No. Oh, I recommend watching it. thing. You know, it's, it's, I don't want your life. What? What was that? Do you know that? No, I do not at all know what that was. It's the classic quote from varsity. That we all know and love. Yes. Anyways, check it out. We're talking about this sting operation because it's like the most damage control story ever, or at least since Fire

Festival, because it's got everything. Greed, power, money, YouTube influencers, corrupt college sports teams water polo celebrities behaving very badly uh water polo but also tennis my alma mater is implicated georgetown university and the tennis teams are implicated in this this is great i've been meaning to ask you how it feels to be a fraud yeah to be a fire fraud in my own right did you scam your way into georgetown uh listen i had to i had to bribe a teacher like 300 thousand dollars to pass high school calculus you know what I mean like by the time college admissions came around I was out of you know I was out of money you know what I think the statute of limitations is up on this I played water polo in high school I never bribed anyone to get into college let me be

clear I got in an old fashion way but I earned extra money no I earned extra money by writing my water polo coaches college essays. No. Yeah. Are you sure of this? I mean, you didn't look that up, right? The actual statute of limitations. This is like 10 years ago.

I don't think anyone's going to be searching. So I have, you know, participated a little bit in a academic fraud scandal. We undermine our credibility at the very top of this episode. No, I'm being honest. Oh, okay. That's fair. This is I'm laying it all on the table. Okay.

So, but let's just summarize briefly. what happened. So Operation Varsity Blues, they arrested around 50 people who were either orchestrating or participating in some way in a pretty wide-ranging and strange college admissions scandal. So basically, there was this company called The Key and it would charge wealthy parents a substantial sum of money between 15,000 up to like 250,000. And the parents would be paying to get their kid a guaranteed spot in the school of their choice. And the way that they would, they would do a couple things. They would bribe certain standardized testing people to either someone would take the test for their children or they would correct the children's answers. So that would boost their

score and then they would also bribe people who worked in the administration or on the student athlete side of certain colleges. USC came up a lot in this indictment. And basically all of these people would work together so that these rich kids would fraudulently earn a student athlete recruitment college acceptance because if your scores and GPA are slightly lower than like the average. If you're being recruited for athletics, there's more wiggle room. So, hold on, can we focus on the amounts here?

Because 15K to a quarter of a mow. Why? Why? I think. Why? Exactly. Why? I mean, I don't, there hasn't been a clear breakdown of the prices.

This is to get in. This isn't even to like attend a year. Yeah. This is to get into. I think it does. depends on how long of a shot it was for the kid. I'm trying to phrase this politely. Why?

Why are you trying to phrase it politely? I feel like they're probably in a press lock. They're not listening to this. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, so I don't know. And maybe just how, I think it was how much effort it would take to make this kid look acceptable to the school. And some of this stuff was completely insane. Like some of these kids were getting their faces photoshopped on.

to college athletes. Right. They wouldn't even play the sport that they were supposedly good enough at to be recruited. Right. Yeah. There was some wild shenanigans happening. And so one of the reasons this story has grabbed national attention is because two fairly famous actresses are involved, Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, who is best

known as Full House's Aunt Becky. So there's this sort of celebrity parent side. And do you know Felicity Huffman? Are you a huff head? No, I'm not a huff head. That's the thing. When this story broke and God, when this story broke on Tuesday and the internet was just madness, it was chaos. And all these people were like, oh my God, Felicity Huffman and Lori Lachlan, and I was just like, I kept seeing photos of them and lead images of stories.

I have no idea these people are. I felt so out of the loop. Did you watch Full House? No. Okay, well, that's your issue. Because Lori Lachlan really hasn't been in anything else. Okay. But she was, like, Aunt Becky wasn't a major character in Full House, but she was very well-liked.

Like, I don't know. So she's sort of one of those. I'm trying to think, like, who to compare her to. Maybe Kirk Cameron or something. She's like a D-list 90s celebrity. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. But her daughter, oh, this is another fascinating part of this story.

Lori Lachlan's daughter, her professional name is Olivia Jade, and she's a very famous YouTuber. Right. She went to USC. She was one of the kids who, like, she did not earn her spot, basically, according to the indictment anyways. and she's been really leaning on this whole, I'm a college student thing, and she's been doing SpawnCon with like Amazon as her partner about college dorm decorations

and doing a lot of YouTube videos about like what life is like as a college student. Right. And it's like her channel is very style and fashion forward. And yeah, I've seen some of her videos where they're like getting right, you know, the video will be like how to get ready to go out to a college party.

Yeah. I was talking to our co-workers, Alyssa, and Lindsay, and we were saying, like, all of us have sort of seen her videos in the past and not really realize she was Lori Lockland's daughter. Just she does a lot of makeup tutorials. I recognized her more easily than I, like, instinctively, I was like, oh, I know who this young woman is before I could put together who Lori Lockland was. Yeah.

Well, there you go. So you're coming. at this from like the young person's approach. No, but that's the thing. It's like fraudulent, right? Because like I totally grew up with the generation of people who watched full house. But I think I was watching like Martin and like the nightly news or something. I don't know what I was doing.

And then Felicity H. H. So she's married to William H. Macy, who we're a big fan of his acting at the ringer, I think it's fair to say. Katie Baker, one of our staff writers, actually just interviewed him for a totally different story. because he plays a lead role in the show, Shameless. He's like a pretty prominent actor, and he is married to Felicity Huffman, so this is their kids. But he is not named in the indictment, strangely,

which, like, has led to some speculation that he snitched. Oh, we think he's, because to me I thought the theory was, like, this is classic misogyny, like throwing the woman under the bus. But we think he snitched. I didn't know that. I don't know. That's just a theory. Okay.

Interesting. I think it's a plausible theory, but I suppose we'll find out. Like, she's in custody. Right. Where is he? Right. He's probably in witness protection. And Lori Lothland's like in Mexico or something right now.

Like she wasn't home when they came to her house. Right. So Aunt Becky may or may not be on the lamb. Right. This story. This is already Damage Control's Mueller investigation. Mueller investigation. Okay.

So we've set that up that the celebs, and there are also some CEOs that are implicated in this as well. But really it's the celebs that I think blew this story into. I wanted to actually ask you a question that touches on this because the celebrities have, they're the ones whose names are in the headlines here. I don't know where they fall on the, horrible people involved index?

Like, who do you think is the most culpable person in the story? Because I don't necessarily think it's them. Yeah, I mean, I definitely feel more, hmm, if it's a skeviness scale, the skeviest are the actual people who run the businesses where they do this, right? Like, that's the most skeevy in of the spectrum. And then the least skeevy in is obviously like the kids themselves, even though there's a lot of, sort of dramatic irony to Olivia Jade and her mini tweets about how she didn't even want to go to college. Oh, yeah.

And doesn't like college and is a professional YouTube star and doesn't need a college education. I don't know. At least you look at her and you're like, oh, man, that sucks. Like you just got out it as having to have gotten scammed into USC by your parents. And now all your classmates are going to look at you. Yeah. I feel bad for her. I mean, I'm sure she'll be just fine, but I don't think, I feel sorry for her.

I, see, this is my, where I'm not sure what I think and I wanted to talk to you about. I agree that the parents are less skeevy than the people who arranged this operation, but I actually think that the most skeevy party in this story are the schools. Yes. Because they're, like, yes, the key, which is the name of the company. is doing something that's clearly unethical and bad, but they're doing it because of how the school, of the corruption at these institutions. Totally, yes. Like, they're taking advantage of institutional corruption, which I think is the big, that's the reason why this story is actually important because it's just another stark example of the myth of meritocracy and all of the ways.

ways in which elite institutions are deeply corrupt. Yeah, totally. It's just I struggle with that because I feel like I still need a fuller picture of what happened in more of these cases. Because I totally were you coming from. But it's also one of those things where, yeah, I think a lot of people would agree, I think, frankly, from various political angles, people would nonetheless broadly agree that. college admissions, especially like at the sort of quote unquote top tier of American universities, becomes very like fraught and disputable and almost, well, arbitrary is not the right word because if anything, it's like the opposite.

It's arcane. And if you had like the person in charge of admissions from any like Ivy League school really, sit down and explain to you how their admissions process ideally works. Like, they could only do it using a bunch of gibberish and, like, college manual talk that, like, in no way can really represent how a college should or does go about, like, I don't know, like, populating an incoming class. Like, I don't know. There's just something self-evident about the fact that how colleges choose who their

incoming classes are is just broken and kind of, like, you know, like. inscrutable and probably like sausage making. I don't know. It's just something grotesque in sort of the process outlined in a lot of the court documents. Especially like you were talking about with the Photoshop. It's so outrageous. I think that's the issue. It's like we've known for so many years that the college admissions process, like, you know,

if you give enough money, you're going to be greasing the wheels to let your kid in. There's a bunch of like legacy admin. and yada yada. There's a lot of that. This is like offensive because of that and because of how outrageously like trashy and baroque it is. Right, right, right, right. That's the thing because it's sort of, like when you're talking about photoshopping

your kid into a sport that they've never even played. It's also funny. I mean, it's right. It has the dual thing of on the one hand, it's funny. But on the other hand, being that janky, it feels like that. would suit something where the stakes are exceedingly low. Like it's almost like a comet. It's like a Jim Carrey movie bit.

Well, but it's about something that they're only doing this in the first place because they care way, like wealthy people whose kids don't even need to go to college, care way too much about college. And that's why they're photoshopping their lacrosse playing Johnny into like a tennis uniform. Oh, one of the things that really has confused me a little. bit about this story is, okay, the internet exists. Are you telling me that college recruitment

offices would be like just willing to look at one random, like, janky photo and be like, sure, this person is an athlete? Like, couldn't they, didn't they Google them? They could have done Google image search to look for, to see that it was Photoshop. You know what I mean? I'm just, I'm a little perturbed by how easy it was to trick these. You're right. Yeah. The more you think about it, it's like all we have to do is Photoshop one photo. Yeah. One single photo. I think they were getting like some falsified testimonies, but not enough that just Google searching the situation, doing like half an hour of research could have easily disproved. Right. It's a little. Multiply that half hour of research by the number of

people that they vet for these schools. Is that the answer to that, I guess? Like they just don't have the resources to okay I guess so but like college sports is yeah you're right because we are right we're talking about like right people who aren't just getting into college but they're getting into college by way of yeah and like I know that water polo I mean obviously it's the best sport but it's not necessarily the most popular what are you talking about in my in my heart it is I was I was a hardcore water polo player in high school.

Wait, you played water? I thought you were joking you were joking me this whole time. No. Oh. I was not recruited. And now I see why you're upset by the story. A lot of things are making lessons. I was not recruited by any colleges, but I do love water polo.

And you're upset about that. No, I'm fine with it, but whatever. My point is, water polo is really popular. USC is, it's not, it's a big deal there, man. Water polo is cool there. So the coach, the fact that the coach could just like put a photoshopped kid playing water polo and somehow that allowed them to get on the college recruitment list, like it's especially mind-blowing because we're talking about a sport that is popular in that context. Correct. Should it be more globally popular?

Yes, but I suppose I'm getting sidetrack. Yeah, we're getting sidetrack by water polo. I would also respect this way more if like the kids themselves were photoshopping themselves because at least, Then it's like you're showing initiative. Like you're really scamming in a way that shows some real initiative. Yeah. And, you know, self-perpetuation on your part. But when your mom's doing it, get the fuck out of here.

That's so embarrassing. This is Photoshop out of here. But enough about Waterpolo. It's never enough about Waterpolo. But, okay, let's go on. Should we get into the meat of the story? Yeah. Yeah.

So this is a pretty fun story, right? Yeah. It's wild. It's got bad, ridiculous parenting. It's just a generally unflattering story for everyone involved. Like, this whole investigation is very Shakespearean justice. And this is just in like the first two days of us even knowing what the hell is going on. But it also just seems to be this ideal story for a news media that seems like in the past

year has definitely been obsessed with scams and talking about late capitalism and socialism. And then it's just like this is the ultimate celebrity class class warfare story. Because otherwise, you know, you come to me and say, oh, there's some college admission scandal. Rich people had an advantage over everyone else because they were paying people off. I say, okay, but I say that's bad. And we should talk seriously about that, especially considering how much. many how many conversations about college admissions are about race and about other stuff that is not nearly as influential as money is. But that's been true of college admissions for a very

long time, right? But then Operation Varsity Blues comes along. And it just seems so extreme. It's revealing the absurd. And I would argue inefficient lengths that these wealthy families would pursue in order to get their kids, a college education that the kids don't even really want or need. Like, Olivia Jade is the, as far as the actual students involved in all of this go, Olivia Jade is like the most famous example so far. Yeah, I think she's the only one we know who they are. And she's the only one that people sort of reacting to this story are focusing on.

Yeah, and I think a big part of the focus is that she very publicly talked about how she doesn't give a shit about school, like a lot. Right. And this is before, this is, I should say, and she's a public figure on social, like, YouTube. And even before she got into college, I believe she was tweeting about how, like, I don't really want to go to college. And her mom is also tweeting about, like, how she wishes she would do better on school and, like, spend more time focusing on. on exams and stuff like that. And it's funny because it's just like, I don't know, Olivia Jade's successful.

Yeah. She's young, but she's not, like, she's backed by a wealthy family. She has a thriving new media career. There's just something bizarre in watching a wealthy family scramble so desperately to make sure that their kids

kid gets into USC, it feels so disproportionate to the actual importance of Olivia Jade or any of these kids actually going to USC. It's really, that's something that's very interesting to me about this story because I suppose I would have more sympathy or more understanding if there was any indication that the parents wanted their children to receive an actual education or children. to be actually honing and developing critical thinking skills. Yeah. The fact that they went about getting them into college this way sort of makes that seem unlikely

because you're not giving your child critical thinking skills by cheating for them. So what the hell? I don't understand why. Like it seems like they must have wanted the prestige associated with attending a four-year university here. I can't think of any other reason because it's like, okay, obviously you're not actually super invested in your child learning things the hard way and thinking for themselves.

Right. And in fact, some of the court documents to me just look like they, if anything, to seize on what you're saying, I feel like I'm reading the correspondence of parents who did not interact with their kids at all between the age of three and 17. And it seems like at eight, their kid turned 17. And all of a sudden the parent was like, oh, my kid has to go to college. I'm going to like send a lot of desperate emails and throw a lot of money around now. But otherwise, like everything about this and everything about how like impulsive and sloppy that they're being instead of trying to get their kids into college. And maybe I'm being presumptuous saying this. It just, I read, I read this stuff and think, these people sound like bad parents. They sound, they sound like parents who did not pay any attention at all to their kids' education before they needed to pony up a quarter million dollars to get somebody into college.

I wouldn't go that far, but this was certainly a terrible parenting choice. Okay. Like, for sure. And I don't know if it's that they didn't pay attention. I haven't looked into it, but I would wager that a lot of these kids went to really good elite private schools. I think that they're ignoring their child's academic deficiencies. Yeah.

Trying to work around them. But for what extent. Because as I was saying, like to what extent it's not, this is not the behavior of someone who really wants their kid to learn, like, lesson, life lessons. and really, like, is yearning for their child to do the work. It's someone who wants their child to go to a prestigious school for the prestige factor. And it's really bizarre.

In the case of, like, Olivia Jade, it's like, why? So her mom is Lori Lachlan. Her dad is, I don't know his first name, but he is Mosimo, like that target line that's ubiquitous. Like, they are super wealthy. She is, she already has a career. I don't know what career she would even get from going to college. Like, I love college. I loved my experience.

I think it's good. Well, that's because we went to Georgetown. Go! I didn't think it's for everyone, though. I don't think it's for everyone, though. And I think unless you really want to be studying what you're studying, you've got to look at why you're there. I know a lot of super successful people, including like several prominent journalists, like, who didn't go to college. Like, you don't necessarily need to do this.

Right. It's everyone's paths are different. This girl seems to have a path that absolutely doesn't necessitate it unless she, like, really, I could see if she was like, I really, really want to study drama or I really, really, really want to study, like, I want to get an MBA or something to further my YouTube business. Like, I could see that, but it's like she doesn't need it. So it's, I think the really galling thing is just how empty and hollow this reveals a lot of college experiences to be. It's like, oh, it's just for the prestige. It's just for the name.

And even in all the desperation to get these kids into the colleges, it never really comes up like what these kids would ideally even be studied. Like, even the fact of what you just explicitly use the word study. Yeah. And that's not something that the parents ever talk about. any of this. They're not talking about, well, I just really think that my daughter should have the opportunity to study X at Yale. It's just, I think my daughter should be the sort of person who gets to say that she went

to Yale. Yeah, that's all it is. It's wild, though. And I don't know, I guess the thing that's fascinating about it and why this needed to be a celebrity slash millionaire story to be as interesting as it is. is because, like, you've taken the people who should be among the Americans who have the least reason to buy into the idea that they need to, like, if you're middle class, you're working class, you have all sorts of pretty substantial reasons to buy into meritocracy. Whether you believe the rhetoric of meritocracy, you have, you have reasons to say, I'm going to play by the rules of this. And I'm going to suck up the student loans, and I'm going to buy into the cult of Yale and the Ivy League.

And I'm going to send my kid to college because I need that class mobility for my kid. Yeah. And the status symbol will actually raise your status. Right. Like it has a return. Yeah. These people don't need that. Yeah.

Like what is the credible return on that degree for Olivia Jade? I really think it's just like a nice little ego boost, a nice little prestige thing to say. Yeah, but it's a nice little ego boost that you have to spend four years. Like, it's not even... Rich people are different, Charity. I know, they're different, I guess. I guess. I mean, one other good thing about this story is that it really reinforces my belief that a lot of people who went to the Ivy League are just dumbasses.

So it's nice. It's nice for me. I suppose what I'm fascinated by, right, is this idea that, okay, this is America. People are like somewhat economically mobile and I think wealth and life and, you know, raising later generations of nibzes or charities. Like that stuff looks different depending on whether you're working class, middle class, upper class, whatever. And yet, the thing that does seem to unite all classes of Americans is specifically that obsession with sending your kid to the right college. Right. And that's what makes this story seem so not only bizarre, but seem so debasing, is that no matter, I'm not saying that being like an actor who is mostly known from a television show from a,

quarter of century ago is like the highest of the high. But it is deeply strange to me seeing that people who have more money now than I'm going to earn for a couple decades, like in total, are still captive to the same anxiety about, oh my God, my kid has to go to this college. I'm literally willing to pay the value of a home just to make sure they get in. And I should take some sort of heart in the fact that wealthy people are insecure about their status too. But I don't know. If anything, it just makes me think, like, wow, Lori Lachlan could not fathom a world in which she just looked at her daughter and said, you know what? You're right.

You're young. You're very successful for your age. What if you just didn't go to college? Like, why is that such a mind-blowing thing in the American imagination at this point? That, like, she maybe just didn't need to send her kid to college. It maybe just wasn't worth it to do any of this, even if the FBI didn't knock down our door in Senator Guantanamo. I think it is, as you were saying, that college is so integral to our ideas of class mobility and, like, this idea that you can better yourself in America. and even if she financially is fine,

I think there's still this appeal of this is what you need to do to be like an upper middle class and up person. There's a prestige attached to it graduating from college, especially in elite university. And also I should say like this represents the lower end of the spectrum, like these de-less celebrities. is this, what the really rich people do is just donate a wing. Right. They've been getting away with it. I feel like these people got caught because they were, they did it wrong. They weren't rich scammers in a classy enough way to get away with it.

Right. Well, I think especially because so much of, you use the word prestige, I would almost say, because think about it, there's a prestige attached to being a, not even a, you know, a quote unquote self-made. millionaire or a successful entrepreneur. I don't think it's just prestige. I think it's authority. There's something about, like, even if you come from the wealthiest possible family, the reason you go to Yale is to get the credential that says,

I am a part of the ruling class, basically. Like, I am a part of the upper echelon of this society. And that is true in ways that will be true regardless of whether, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taxes me at 99.6%. And I'm left with $50,000 in my bank account. But I'll always have a degree from wherever. Okay.

You know what? This just made me think of. Did you watch the show Gilmore Girls? I watched the first season of Gilmore Girls. Okay. I kind of think that Gilmore Girls accidentally is like a very interesting critique of that idea. Because for most of the show, they're obsessed. with getting the daughter Rory into Harvard and then she goes to Yale.

And it's like a huge, it's basically one of like the driving plot points is that she has to go to one of these super elite schools. She goes there. Well, it turns out she fucking sucks at her job in the end. Like she's not successful. I don't know if they meant this as a way to implicate these elite institutions. But anyways, it kind of does. Gilmore girls. Weirdly subversive.

Oh, my God. But the fact of going to college so that you can learn some field and then enter a profession and be good at it, that's just that. That's clearly not the point. It's clearly to just be like, I went to one of these percentile schools, which means that when I apply to this law firm, you know what I mean? It's a sorting. It's like the damn sorting hat. Yeah. It's not.

I know. I mean, I haven't really experienced. that in my career, like I don't really think anyone has ever cared where I went to college in journalism. But I know that in other industries, you know, an MBA from Wharton matters. Like, these things do matter, unfortunately.

Right. I think that, well, okay. Which is why people buy in. Right, but that's also why Trump needs to go to Wharton, right? Even though, again, realistically, Trump probably did not need to go to Wharton, one. Also, like, clearly. Do you learn anything there? No.

Right, exactly. But it was totally probably a waste of time for Trump and everyone who had to interact with Trump when he was at Wharton and anybody who had to try to teach him anything. But he had to go because, again, it's that certificate. It has nothing to do with, oh, I learned ex at Wharton. It's my brand is really important real estate mogul. and I need this certificate of credibility more than I need any actual education. And I need it to legitimize the idea that, like, I am a part of this echelon,

this like ruling echelon of American society. I think another reason why this story has sort of captured the imagination is because of college as the American dream, but also because, like, we have an entire generation of people who took out crazy student loans. Like, our cohort were really saddled with student loans in a way that, like, the boomers and GenX weren't quite. Yeah, they should be arrested, boomers and Gen. Especially Gen X. So it is, I think that's one of the reasons why stories involving college have such resonance for, like, you know, know, the 20 and 30-somethings now because it's a lot of us are still, like, it's, it has really

shaped our financial lives. And so it's shaped our entire lives, like the fact of having these student loans, like, they're prohibitive. They're prohibitive. I mean, yeah, I know, it changed the course of my life for sure to, to be paying off student loans throughout my 20s. It really, it changed everything. I didn't do internship. because I didn't know how to make the minimum payments while doing those internships, like, et cetera. And I went to a Canadian college, so I have less student loans than most people who went to private schools in the States.

Like, it's... How is college not a bubble? How is this not a thing that we all look back in 30 years and be like, yeah, you know, that period in the U.S. where people went to college and it all fell apart? And took out 80 grand for like... Right. How is it... Is that going to...

happen? Do you think, well, I don't want my kid to go. I want my kid to be Olivia Jade. I'm not going to be a momager. I'm not going to be a momager. I'm not going to try to turn my kid into a YouTube star. If I had a kid, I'm going to declare this some damage control now. That sounds like hell. No, no, but I'm just saying, if you gave me the choice between my kid having the student loan debt that I started out with or my kid being a YouTube celebrity, me personally, even knowing everything I know about how toxic YouTube culture is, among other online fandom, like streaming fandom cultures, I would still rather my kid be Olivia Jade than me. That's dark. I mean, the world is dark and the future is bleak.

Oh, man. I don't, I don't know if I would want that. You think Bernie Sanders going to fix this? He's going to fix this. Is anyone going to fix this? I've already seen like Elizabeth Warren talking about the FBI investigation. And I do wonder how it's one of those things where on the one hand, this is a silly story about wealthy dumbasses and celebrities.

Yeah, it is like a really good reminder of how insane the college system is now. Right. I don't know if, I don't know if it's going to get fixed. Yeah. But it's weird to think of it as a thing to be fixed because it's such a frivolous. story from one angle. But from the other angle, it does feel like, yeah, the reason so many of us are interested in these questions of fairness in college and meritocracy is because a lot of us, whether we liked it or not, bought into the system that is American College and are paying for

it dearly with interests now. Yeah. And it's just like, man, the whole culture from even getting into college in the first place to financing it, it feels political. It feels like a real political cluster fuck. And so I'm happy in a in a perverse way when I see people who have a far more powerful relation to this system totally face plant in the way that Lori Laughlin and William H. Macy and all these people have this week. But I do also look at it and think, no, really, college admission should probably be different, though. Yes. Also, like, it should be less expensive for the rest of us.

It should still be expensive for people who want to scam their way into college, I guess. It shouldn't have been so expensive for me. You know, I agree with, I heartily agree with you. Also, you know, why did it take a college admissions scandal featuring, you know, actresses and YouTube celebrities for water polo to be in the damn news? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. George John Tennis, I'm sorry to you too. Oh my God. I'm Justin Charity. I'm Kate Nibs. Thanks for listening. You'll hear from us again in two weeks. I hope Beth Kinefic listens to this podcast.

I know, right? She might. I hope her student loans. Okay.