November 21, 2008

Sidwell Friends School: Clinton Administration II Rolls On

I always thought that it was ironic that Barack Obama was running on "hope" and "change" because those two vague mantras are exactly what Bill Clinton ran on in 1992, what with being from Hope, Arkansas and all. (A couple of months after Clinton's election, I got an invitation to a marketing convention whose theme was "The Power of Change.") But the lack of "change" in the public facade of the nascent Obama Administration is getting pretty funny.

Obama's problem is that he's so inexperienced that he barely knows anybody other than a bunch of thuggish Chicago political operators like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel and a lot of unpresentable far leftists with whom he hung out in the 1980s and 1990s. So, for lack of a better idea, he's just plugging in Clinton Administration retreads in the top jobs. The "change" part applied to who gets to be President (and who will get the lower level jobs after the public loses interest).

Besides wooing Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, the Obamas announced today that they were sending their daughters to Sidwell Friends School, the same pricey ($28,000+) school where the Clintons sent Chelsea. Although Michelle Obama claimed publicly that public schools were under consideration, she never bothered to tour any.

As I wrote in VDARE.com a couple of years ago:

In 1977, when Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter arrived in Washington D.C. from Georgia, they had to subject their daughter Amy to a D.C. public school to prove they weren't Southern racists.

But by 1993, when Billy and Hillary Clinton rolled into town from Arkansas, everybody who was anybody accepted that the D.C. public schools were awful (even if you had Secret Service bodyguards).

So when the Clintons enrolled Chelsea in an expensive Quaker private school, Sidwell Friends Academy, they didn't pay a political price for their hypocrisy.

Howard Kurtz wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1994:

"Equally revealing was media response to the Clintons's announcement that they were sending their daughter, Chelsea, to Sidwell Friends, an $11,000-a-year private school in northwest Washington. When columnist Mark Shields praised Sidwell on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, he had to note that his children went there, as did Jim Lehrer's and Judy Woodruff's. Woodruff's husband, Al Hunt, made a similar disclosure while defending Clinton on Capital Gang. Carl Rowan touted Sidwell on Inside Washington, pointing out that his grandchildren attended the school. Howard Fineman, whose daughter was in kindergarten at Sidwell, said he "shamelessly lobbied" the Clintons to choose the school."

So don't worry about being duplicitous. Do what the Clintons and all those media liberals, white and black, did—put your children's welfare first!

But, don't you dare put the welfare of your fellow citizen's children ahead of those of people who want to sneak into our country.

By the way, all this talk about Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State reminds me of conversations that must go on these days when they're trying to cast superheroes' girlfriends in big Hollywood movies:

"How about Maggie Gyllenhaal?"

"She looks like a sad cartoon turtle. Why would the hero fall for her?"

"Okay, what about Kirsten Dunst?"

"Have you looked at her teeth?"

"Well, how about Katie Holmes?"

"Yeah, she looks okay. Let's give her agent a ... Oh, wait, no, this is too big a production to risk that her husband will stay out of the way. He's got too much energy. Better cross her off the list."

By the way, the rumor is that Bill Richardson, who had a couple of cabinet posts in the Clinton Administration (where his duties included considering Monica Lewinsky for a job) is in line for Secretary of Commerce. The reason Richardson is always up for Cabinet jobs is because he's 3/4th's Mexican (his grandfather was a raffish WASP from New England who fit in better in Latin America, where he had several families. His more straight-laced dad opened Citibank's Mexico City office long ago). So Democrats figure that appointing Richardson is a good way to pander to the the tsunami of Mexican voters that is always about to arrive.

The problem with Richardson as the perfect Hispandering Ploy is that unlike the Beltway political junkies who are always talking Richardson up, Mexicans don't pay much attention to politics, so most of them don't notice Richardson's 3/4 Mexicanness because he doesn't have a Spanish surname. So, it's a waste.

Moreover, when Richardson is actually indoors working, like he was when he spent months campaigning last year in Iowa and New Hampshire, his tan fades and then he just looks like another white guy with a WASP name, so even the few Mexican voters who watch the political news on TV won't notice they are being pandered to.

After Richardson dropped out of the Presidential race, he disappeared for a long time and suddenly re-emerged, presumably from some beach somewhere (Spring Break in Cancun?), looking like an Aztec sun god and sporting the goatee that makes him now look like the head of the nefarious villainous organization in a big budget action movie. So, unless Obama intends to let Richardson spend most of his time as Secretary of Commerce focusing on increasing American industry's sun tan lotion exports to Cabo San Lucas, he'll end up with just another paleface with an English name. (Actually, permanently stationing him in Cabo seems like an ideal use of Richardson's talents.)

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wowm the school was 11K a year in 1992 and now it's 28K? I need to open a private school.

Anonymous said...

Sidwell Friends's intense diversity according to http://schools.privateschoolsreport.com (in 2005):

Native American: 1
Asian: 92
Hispanic: 41
African-American: 184
Opressor-American: 743

The chickens have come home ... TO ROOST!

Anonymous said...

SFS has an endowment of $37 Million for 1100 kids. Do you think they IQ test for admissions? Do they take race into account to achieve balance?

Tick question fools! Race and IQ are only social constructs! They don't exist!!

Hail Victory! Hail Obama!

Anonymous said...

that is too funny. i agree that richardson's goatee is probably one of the most pathetic attempt at crafting an ethnic identify i've ever seen.

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer: Besides wooing Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, the Obamas announced today that they were sending their daughters to Sidwell Friends School, the same pricey ($28,000+) school where the Clintons sent Chelsea.

Howard Kurtz: Equally revealing was media response to the Clintons's announcement that they were sending their daughter, Chelsea, to Sidwell Friends, an $11,000-a-year private school in northwest Washington.

Hmmm... Let's see:

1993: $11,000
2009: $28,000

Call it 16 years, so

([1 + x] ^ 16) * 11,000 = 28,000
[1 + x] ^ 16 = 28/11
16 * ln[1 + x] = ln[28/11]
ln[1 + x] = ln[28/11] / 16
1 + x = exp[ln[28/11] / 16]
1 + x = 1.0601329527
x = 0.0601329527

So about a 6% annual increase in price every year for 16 straight years.

Not bad.

I wonder how long that bubble will last before it bursts.

Anonymous said...

Don’t you just love the fact that David Axelrod and the rest of the Obama crew are now on TV telling us that they want to ex-Clinton administration folks because and I quote, “Experience matters.”

Gosh, experience didn’t matter for Obama as a candidate…but the Obama folks can get away with any about face.

Anonymous said...

For a laugh, sir. :)

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f123/katiezo/mayc/snaggletooth.jpg

Anonymous said...

To be fair they could make the argument that experience in a President matters less because he can rely on the experience of appointees.

I hate Richardson’s guts after his campaign wasn’t going anyway as the “moderate” Democrat, desperately proposed leaving heavy equipment behind in Iraq so America could run away faster. No matter what you think about the War the idea of having Arab terrorist victoriously dancing on top of US Tanks on television just so this idiot could be president should make you sick.

Anonymous said...

Sidwell Friends used to be known as the Quaker school for Jewish kids in Washington. But its real virtue is that it has tennis courts right on Wisconsin Avenue, one of the main commuting routes for power Washingtonians. So an Assistant Secretary or Senator who has a kid at Sidwell can rip off a set on the way to work in the morning.

Fifty years ago, when Washington still had a Southern pace, weekend golf was the game of choice. Most people who had important jobs were far too hung-over for morning tennis.

Maybe that is why Washington functioned better under Eisenhower. Hangovers encourage shorter and fewer bills, and golf encourages humility.

Anonymous said...

From fastcompany.com

Obama and McCain Fight Over A Woman

By Jeff Chu
When D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee got a shout-out from Barack Obama in the third presidential debate on Wednesday night, she was asleep. "I was trying to watch it," she tells Fast Company. "But it was so boring. Then, all of a sudden, my phone and BlackBerry start blowing up. Someone sent me a link to the transcript, and I saw what they said, and I was like, 'Oh, good Lord!'"

It wasn't a surprise that both candidates, who have used the words "reform" and "change" about a million times in an effort to be seen as forces of reform and change, tried to align themselves with the only woman in Washington who can unmistakably be called a maverick and a reformer. Obama praised her as a "wonderful new superintendent"
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jeff-chu/inquisition/michelle-rhees-wake-call-obama-vs-mccain-education

Michelle "Nurture Yes!; Nature, No!" Rhee joins Grammy Dunham ... UNDER THE BUS!!

Anonymous said...

Steve, remember your article about a Russian who said that hypocrisy was better than mass hallucinations? That's the proper response to the Obamas' sending their daughters to DC public schools. Anyone who'd inflict DC public schools on his kids to be philosophically consistent would be psychologically unfit to be President.

Acilius said...

I supported Richardson for president, for three reasons. First, he was against military intervention in Darfur. Second, his Mexican connections would make it impossible for a President Richardson to mobilize any kind of coalition for further opening of the southern border. Third, he has proven that he is so ineffective as an executive that he would be unlikely to put more than a few of his really stupid ideas into practice.

Also, he has good ideas about cleaning up boxing. And however supervillain-ish his beard might look, he seems like a much less creepy, plastic person than any of the others did. Richardson seemed like he'd get a bigger thrill from seducing an attractive woman than from ordering air raids.

Anonymous said...

Caring about your children's education is a proper CONSERVATIVE trait. If only Palin could muster the same concern about her children.

Anonymous said...

Pretending that you care about other people's children's education is a ... stuff whiteRpeople like.

In 1972, campaigning as George McGovern’s running mate, Sargent Shriver made a stop in Youngstown, Ohio. Tip O’Neill was campaigning along with him.
After a visiting with some steelworkers after their shift ended, O’Neill teased Shriver that his brothers-in-law always were too cheap to buy a round of drinks at rallies. Shriver agreed, and invited everyone to a nearby bar. He ordered beers for "the house" and then announced “Make mine a Courvoisier!"

Anonymous said...

Do any iSteve readers buy the notion that Siddy Friendz is really a good school if one applies the iSteve patented "educational value added" analysis?

Seems like they take high IQ kids, season with some celebrity offspring, bake in the usual curricula, and serve. That the Siddy Friendz admin seems really good at bootlicking is a nice bonus, specially for Queen Michelle I.

P.S. Maybe Uncle Craig could coach the hoop teams?

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer: I always thought that it was ironic that Barack Obama was running on "hope" and "change" because those two vague mantras are exactly what Bill Clinton ran on in 1992, what with being from Hope, Arkansas and all.

Then why didn't you say so before? You have a habit of saying "I told you so" even when you haven't in fact said that.

You used to say that you didn't know how Obama would rule, with his head or with his heart.

Now, after Obama started appointing Clintonites, you say, in a knowing way, that you knew this was going to happen all along; that Obama has always played ball with the Chicago machine; that Obama doesn't really have any presentable liberal allies outside the Chicago machine; that Obama isn't going to implement an idealistic foreign policy. I suppose Obama will not push us into Darfur?

It was after the appointment of Rahm Emmanuel that you said that Jewish people are in the big leagues and Palestinean supporters are not. So of course the Emmanuel appointment makes total sense.

You behaved similarly with regards to the Iraq War. You sat on the fence during the debate on whether to go war, making critical comments about both sides. Then after the occupation commenced (disastrously), you started saying "I told you so" as though you were Pat Buchanan.