Two Lessons in Privilege

There were two substantial tremblers along the White/jew faultline this week. In both cases a jewess published a public comment concerning higher education which triggered a viral outpouring of fear and loathing, the brunt of which has been directed at Whites.

The first was caused by Susan Patton's OPINION: Letter to the Editor, at The Daily Princetonian, 29 March 2013. The most controversial part:

When I was an undergraduate in the mid-seventies, the 200 pioneer women in my class would talk about navigating the virile plains of Princeton as a precursor to professional success. Never being one to shy away from expressing an unpopular opinion, I said that I wanted to get married and have children. It was seen as heresy.

For most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.

An Alumna’s Advice for the Young Women of Princeton: Marry My Son, by Eveline Chao, The Daily Beast, 30 Mar 2013:

In a letter published in The Daily Princetonian on Friday, Susan A. Patton, the president of the class of ’77, offered her “advice for the young women of Princeton.”

One of the more-quoted lines that immediately began zinging across social media read, “Here’s what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate. Yes, I went there.”

Patton continued: “As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market ... You will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”

There was also:

“I am the mother of two sons who are both Princetonians. My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless.”

The image conjured for most was of a rich, ‘50s housewife who dabbles in eugenics. Unsurprisingly, the blogosphere went nuts.

Patton was also called a “WASP,” “offensive,” and “sheltered.” One person said, “Thank god you didn’t have daughters.” On Twitter, @DesiderioAArnaz tweeted, “Feminism just died at Princeton.” Another user named @dylanmatt appended the link with, “A stirring call for the genetically gifted to band together and form a master race.” I myself am a Princeton alum, and when former classmates posted the link on Facebook, some speculated that it was an April Fools’ joke.

A phone call Friday with Patton confirmed that it was not.

“I’m mortified,” she said of the online comments. But when asked if she would like to clarify or change anything she’d said, she replied, “Not really.”

She also revealed a few details that might not reconcile her with feminists, but which do counter the impression given by her letter.

First, she isn’t a WASP. (“It was intended as advice from a nice Jewish mother. That’s all it was.”)

Second, she isn’t exclusively a homemaker. Patton has run her own HR consulting and executive coaching business in New York City for 20 years. She didn’t work the first five years after her first son, now class of 2010, was born, but has ever since.

And third, she isn’t married to a Princeton grad. In fact, she’s just out of what she calls a “horrible” divorce, after 27 years of marriage. “My husband’s academic background was not as luxurious as mine, and that was a source of some stress,” said Patton. “I think he felt a certain level of resentment.”

What Patton recommends seems to be common sense. An admonition to mate only with someone of the same race would make it even better. The main thing that makes any such advice controversial is jewish influence - whether in favor of womb-shrivelling feminism or anti-White anti-"racism", in both academia and media. Naturally this consideration goes unmentioned, at least by jews and especially in the mainstream media.

By several accounts the strongest rebuke came the same day Patton's letter was published. Maureen O'Connor's Princeton Mom to All Female Students: ‘Find a Husband’ is full of snark and describes Patton as a luddite with a depressing worldview. Five hours later came a sheepish update, Q&A: Princeton Mom Wishes She Married a Princeton Man, in which O'Connor suddenly appears very understanding and even sympathetic. A day before Chao wrote her piece for the Daily Beast, O'Connor had the same conversation, and cited the same "clarifications" for her sudden change in attitude:

Patton spoke by phone from her home in the Upper East Side, where she runs her own business as a human resources consultant and executive coach. She was in the midst of reading responses to her letter when I called. "I'm astounded by the extreme reaction. Honestly, I just thought this was some good advice from a Jewish mother," she laughed.

The understanding is that being a jewish mother is completely different from being a White mother. Later observers incorporate the jewish mother card into their story from the get go.

Susan A. Patton wrote to Princeton student newspaper urging female students to snag man, Mail Online:

Susan A. Patton, a proud Princeton University alumna and the living affirmation of the meddling Jewish mother stereotype, raised some eyebrows this week

A WASP could expect the recriminations and condemnations to eventually be accompanied by tangible sanctions. A jewess raises eyebrows and inspires some ambiguous finger-wagging about jewish stereotypes.

James Taranto didn't do either. Instead, he quickly rode to Patton's defense. Why? Well, Susan Patton Told the Truth. Oh, and:

It took some bravery for the young Miss Patton to go to Princeton, for she was not a legacy and was anything but a daughter of privilege. As she explained in a 2006 article for Princeton Alumni Weekly, her mother was a survivor of Auschwitz, a German death camp in Poland; her father, of Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany.

The irony here is in Taranto insisting Patton isn't privileged just before explaining how she is. He plays the camp survivor card right up front, presumably because he regards it as relevant to his point, which is that Patton is a righteous hero so these stupid/crazy/evil critics should back off.

Alyssa Rosenberg took a different tack, explaining The Real Problem With Susan Patton's s ur-Jewish Mother letter to the editor is the Daily Princetonian:

Patton’s letter is exactly the kind of thing that is tremendously clicky, to the extent that it was probably worth it financially to the Daily Princetonian to publish it even if the site ended up offline because of the massive influx of readers.

All in all, it’s a very successful, cynical execution of a well-established strategy.

Rosenberg's argument makes little sense except perhaps as a projection of her own obsession with clicks, money and cynical strategy.

Miraculously, Patton got some time to explain herself on television. When Megyn Kelly asked Patton to respond to the crux of the controversy, which is "elitist snobby Ivy League people [who] think they're better than we are", Patton did not play the jewish mother card. Instead she lied, claiming, "I'm not suggesting that anybody's better than anybody".

Except she did. In two different ways. The controversy concerns her letter where she used the term "worthy of you", and explicitly acknowledged, "Yes, I went there." She was talking about intelligence, not even race, but it was considered as such, at least at first. That changed as soon as she quickly played the jewish mother card, which is the second way she suggested somebody is more worthy.

At the heart of the "jewish mother" trope is the quite conscious concern that:

The only option in life for her children is college and (for the girls) marrying a nice Jewish boy (often parsed even more with "A nice Ashkenazic boy" or "A nice Ashkenazic doctor" or "A nice Ashkenazic doctor with an apartment in New York and plenty of frequent flier miles to visit your mother whom you never cawl anymore"). Likewise, a Jewish son is expected to bring home a nice Jewish girl. No matter how nice, however, this girl will not be good enough. Heaven forbid he marries a Shiksa Goddess.

As long as critics considered her White Patton's suggestion of intellectual superiority was regarded as beyond the pale. That changed as soon as she played the jewish mother card. Being a "good jewish mother" implies group superiority. Though for a White mother this would only be regarded as more damning, for jews it miraculously serves to blunt the attack, and shifts the focus elsewhere.

It's interesting to consider how this story might have unfolded differently if Susan Patton were White. Would she have written such a letter? Would it have been published? Would James Taranto have lept to her defense? Would feminists now be organizing a boycott of her business?

On the same day that Susan Patton's letter was published, the Wall Street Journal published a letter from Suzy Lee Weiss, To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me:

If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity.

For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage.

To those claiming that I am bitter—you bet I am! An underachieving selfish teenager making excuses for her own failures? That too! To those of you disgusted by this, shocked that I take for granted the wonderful gifts I have been afforded, I say shhhh—"The Real Housewives" is on.

As with Patton, controversy ensued. Suzy Lee Weiss: 'Entitled' high school senior sparks firestorm after writing biting open letter to the Ivy League schools that rejected her, Mail Online, 4 April 2013:

The article outraged many, who accused her of being entitled, self-indulgent and even racist.

'Entitled little brat,' one Twitter user said, as another said: 'Choking on the petulant privilege of Suzy Lee Weiss & hoping she matures out of her ignorance rather than being bolstered by a book deal.'

Another directed a message to Weiss, saying: 'Your letter reveals your republican homophobic leanings and hatred of others not exactly like you. Grow up.'

Despite the criticism Weiss, like Patton, was given television time to explain herself. On Today she claimed it was a joke, satire, that she was poking fun at political correctness. This contradicted her story that before writing she cried to her mother about it and then her sister. Weiss added that diversity is "a wonderful thing" and admitted that her letter led to job offers.

If you're wondering how a whiny high schooler got their letter printed by the Wall Street Journal in the first place, it helps to know that her sister Bari Weiss, is a former Wall Street Journal editor. Bari is also now a senior editor at Tablet Magazine. Like Susan Patton, Suzy Lee Weiss is visibly jewish. Unlike Susan Patton, who played the jewish mother card early, the only mention I've found of Suzy Lee Weiss' jewish identity is an article at Tablet, Suzy Lee Weiss Fires Back on the Today Show:

A story we’ve been following closely–how could we not? she’s mishpucha

Because they can't yet have the internet and ban us from using it too, Whites who are curious about bits of tribal code can still read things like The Yiddish Handbook, which suggests 40 Words You Should Know:

mishpocheh

Or mishpokhe or mishpucha. It means “family,” as in “Relax, you’re mishpocheh. I’ll sell it to you at wholesale.”

That strikes quite a different tone than Weiss' deprecatory reference to herself as a "saltine cracker".

Commentary Magazine, the neocon journal of the American Jewish Committee, provided two supportive editorials. After decades of non-stop jewish propaganda downplaying race, in particular by reducing it to skin color, in When Will Universities Understand Real Diversity? Michael Rubin complains:

The sad fact is that universities—both private and public—are essentially racist: They will gladly boil down diversity to the color of skin.

It’s Not Only the Colleges that Weren’t Honest with Suzy Weiss, by Seth Mandel comments on the Today interview mentioned above:

Guthrie then looks at Weiss and says: “I mean, for one thing, some people read this and they say you are being very cavalier about the importance of diversity.” Weiss dismisses the attempted shaming by saying the piece was satire. But here Weiss isn’t giving herself enough credit. The problem with the section of Weiss’s op-ed about diversity was that it wasn’t an exaggeration: had Weiss followed her joking suggestions, she very well might have been accepted by any number of universities whose admissions officers probably cringed at the op-ed because Weiss was describing actual applicants they happily accepted over Weiss.

Guthrie may have seen Weiss’s words as cartoonish, but here’s the point: they accurately describe the attitudes of the deans at America’s top universities. Weiss didn’t lampoon them so much as expose them to a wider audience.

Weiss can shrug it off because she knows she has a network of unflinching support. Diversity doesn't change that. And anyway, jews understand "diversity" is code for less White. The problem, and the reason for all the beating around the bush at Commentary, is that jews, especially "conservative" jews, want to be seen as "white" by Whites, but they also want to be seen as "diverse", or at least exempt from any cost of "diversity".

The conflation of Whites and jews as "white" is deliberate. Julie Gerstein, writing at The Frisky, provides one example. In Entitled High School Senior Suzy Lee Weiss Makes Me Sad For The Future Gerstein writes about Weiss' "screed" and "failure":

Maybe the lesson for Ms. Weiss isn’t that she’d have gotten into college if only she’d “worn a headdress to school,” but that colleges are no different than the general population: They don’t like assholes. And they, like the rest of us, don’t appreciate deep-seated resentment, mild racism and selfishness in potential friends, mates and students.

Maybe, Ms. Weiss, you were rejected because your piss-poor attitude of entitlement and privilege seeped out of every word you wrote on your college application. No one “lied to you” about what colleges want. They want you to “be yourself,” as long as the “you” in question isn’t a smug jerk who believes you’re entitled to get everything you want just because you want it. And that, Ms. Weiss, is where you went wrong.

Entitled, "To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me," the piece is a good old fashioned spiteful rant, flinging glasses of white whine into the eyes, not only of every college that denied her admission, but also every person who has ever been accepted into a college, ever.

It's possible that Gerstein doesn't recognize Weiss as a jew, but not likely. What she's definitely doing is aiming a spiteful rant at "whites" that would not likely have been written, much less published at The Frisky, if it had been about jews.

Suzy's mistake, it seems, was interpreting the advice "Just be yourself" literally. Like perhaps someone told her, "Applying to colleges? Ah, just be yourself," and she accepted this as an instruction to pursue no activities other than being herself.

Being yourself is not a talent.

Unless of course you're a jewish mother. Being jewish worked for Weiss and she didn't even have to play that card herself. With a little help from the WSJ and Today she's enjoying the privilege of being a jewish-looking girl with a jewish-sounding name that a jewish media outlet or two regard as family. Whether she was whining about her jokes or joking about her whining it all worked out well enough. At least for her. Meanwhile, Gerstein and others are busy slagging "whites" over it.

Kirsten West Savali, writing at Clutch Magazine, which is explicitly targeted at black women, provides an example of the desired effect. For Middle-Class White Girls When Being Privileged Isn't Enough:

Suzy did what any self-respecting privileged, young, white woman would do — she used her familial connections with the WSJ to pave the way for her brilliant od-ed, which otherwise may have languished in darkness, never to be seen by human eyes. This literary phenomenon, which places the blame squarely on the shoulders of those pesky black and brown people who don’t deserve to go to college because, well, they’re black and brown, has exposed the world’s best-kept secret: “If it ain’t white, it ain’t right.”

See how that works? A jewess complains. She gets press and benefits. Whites get the blame. Savali, in her budding wisdom, at least gets a bit of the crying/joke:

Weiss, in her budding wisdom, exposed the mantle of white privilege for what it should be: Proud, unapologetic and unconcerned with anyone not blessed to posses it. She offered herself up as the scape-goat to be ridiculed. Though she did receive job and internship offers for her take-down of reverse racial discrimination, that was never the point.

The point was to reveal the face of the forthcoming post-racial state of America. A place where white students are rewarded for mocking the tenuous foundation of equality on which this country is built and education remains a coveted club to which only middle-class white students are entitled.

Equality is a delusion which mainly afflicts Whites. The point is that today jews and jewish interests rule academia and media, among other things. The fact that Whites get the blame for what jews do is evidence of jewish privilege, not "white" privilege, and certainly not White privilege.