"The actress Felicity Huffman will plead guilty in the college admissions fraud scandal, prosecutors said on Monday, along with 12 other parents and one coach charged in the sweeping investigation."

The NYT reports.

“My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions, and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her,” Ms. Huffman said in a statement. “This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life.”

"Bono’s partner in ethical investing falls from grace in admissions scandal."

The Boston Globe reports.

I can't read the whole thing because I don't have a subscription. So here's some detail at Deadline Hollywood.

"At Stanford, she said, she saw students rely on their parents to set up play dates with people in their dorm or complain to their child’s employers when an internship didn’t lead to a job."

"She" = Julie Lythcott-Haims, "the former dean of freshmen at Stanford and the author of 'How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success,'" quoted in "The Unstoppable Snowplow Parent/Helicopter parents are so 20th century. Snowplow parents keep their children’s futures obstacle-free — even if it means crossing ethical and legal boundaries" (NYT).

In the 1990s... parents began filling afternoons and weekends with lessons, tutors and traveling sports games... [T]oday’s working mothers spend as much time doing hands-on activities with their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s....

So sad! I grew up in the 1950s, and my mother stayed home, and I don't remember her doing any "hands-on activities" with us kids. There wasn't even the concept of mothers arranging "play dates." You went outside and found your own friends, and no one needed to drive you to their houses. You found them because they lived on your block. It pretty much worked for mothers to be completely hands-off in those days.

Imagine a mother arranging play dates for a college student!

In a new poll by The New York Times and Morning Consult of a nationally representative group of parents of children ages 18 to 28, three-quarters had made appointments for their adult children, like for doctor visits or haircuts, and the same share had reminded them of deadlines for school. Eleven percent said they would contact their child’s employer if their child had an issue.

Sixteen percent of those with children in college had texted or called them to wake them up so they didn’t sleep through a class or test. Eight percent had contacted a college professor or administrator about their child’s grades or a problem they were having....

Then there are the mothers who act like they know children should be independent but they're up to something else for their own little darlings:

Felicity Huffman, an actress charged in the college admissions scheme, has long extolled the benefits of a parenting philosophy in which children are to be treated as adults. On her parenting blog, What the Flicka (which was taken down this week), she described raising children as “one long journey of overcoming obstacles.” In another post, she praised schoolchildren “for walking into a building every day full of the unknown, the challenging, the potential of failure.” This week, Ms. Huffman was accused of paying $15,000 for an SAT proctor to secretly inflate her daughter’s test scores.

"[Michael Jackson] nurtured relationships, including with the boys’ mothers. He spent hours on the phone with James and Wade, he would also call their moms, just to talk to them."

"Jackson also spent time at the Safechucks’ modest home in Simi Valley, Calif. He could have been anywhere in the world, Stephanie Safechuck said, but he chose to be with them. 'He was a son I started to take care for,' Stephanie Safechuck said. 'He would spend the night, I’d wash his clothes.' She said that she once told Jackson that she had prayed for her son’s success in getting into commercials, and that he went on to find success right away. In response, she said, Jackson told her that he had prayed, too. He had prayed for a friend, and then he found James."

From "'Leaving Neverland': Viewers React With Shock at Disturbing Accounts of Life With Michael Jackson" (NYT).

I've watched about half an hour of this 4-hour documentary. I don't know if I will keep going, but if you've watched some or all of this, talk to me about your reaction to the mothers. They are still, after all these years, lit up and glowing.

I'm experiencing them as I'm absorbing the college admissions scandal, which challenges me to understand parents who experience their own emotions through their child and re-envision bad as good when it is — in some twisted way — seen as for the good of the child.

I've often entertained the thought that parenthood elevates a person into altruism — a mundane and relatively easy form of altruism, but altruism nonetheless. You must and so you probably will subordinate your own desires and pleasures for the sake of another person.

But in the college admissions scandal — and, perhaps, in "Leaving Neverland" — parenthood drives you further away from ethical behavior. You prioritize getting things for your child, and you feel urgent and justified, and you lose sight of right and wrong.

I've been thinking about this problem in light of that question from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "Is it OK to still have children?" If I were a young woman today — looking at Lori Loughlin and Stephanie Safechuck — I might think what a terrible risk it is to become a mother.

"Why did I pay all this money for your education?"

Tweeting out this gem because...well, you know. pic.twitter.com/4fgfpAnVXX

— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) March 14, 2019

ADDED: I realize some of you don't know who these people are. Please read the post from 3 days ago, "Olivia Jade Giannulli, 'Daughter of Lori Loughlin, Is Caught Up in College Admissions Scandal/Ms. Giannulli, an influencer with big audiences on YouTube and Instagram, posted sponsored content about being a student.'" I'll make tags for both names.

Agustin Huneeus Jr. — charged in the college admissions scandal — "has been a popular big money-political donor to California’s Congressional Democrats from the San Francisco Bay Area, and Napa Valley."

The California Globe reports:

In 2016, his family hosted a Democratic mega-donor lunch and wine pairing at their Quintessa Winery for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, with Google’s executive chairman Schmidt as the luncheon speaker.... Huneeus has made seven contributions to House Speaker Nancy Pelois (D-San Francisco), totaling $18,300, and $10,000 to Pelosi’s political action committee, PAC to the Future....

Agustin also made:

• six contributions to Sen. Kamala Harris (D-San Francisco), totaling $21,600.
• six large contributions to the Democratic Congressional Committee totaling $118,500, as well as contributions totaling $33,200 to the Democratic National Services Corporation.
• a $500 contribution to Amanda Renteria, former political director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and a Democratic candidate for Governor of California, who lost the primary on June 5, 2018.
• a $1000 contribution to Michael Eggman, a Democratic candidate for California’s 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House. Eggman unsuccessfully tried to unseat Republican Rep. Jeff Denham.
• $1,000 contribution to Jessica Morse, a Democratic candidate who unsuccessfully tried to unseat Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA), of California’s 4th Congressional District.
• contributions of $5,000 to Hillary Clinton, and $2,500 to Barack Obama.

ADDED: The Globe asked these politicians if they'll give back the money, now that Huneeus has been charged.  I don't see why that would be ethically required.  There's no charge that Huneeus's money came through any criminal enterprise.

I do think it's interesting if the individuals involved in this particular type of crime are all Democrats. We could examine the thought structure that encompasses:  1. the desire (or pretended desire) to tend to the needs of the underclass at the expense of the ordinary people who work hard and play by the rules, and 2. the belief that the rules don't apply to you and yours and you can take whatever you want.

"Huffman was arrested in L.A. on Tuesday in relation to the charges, but her famous husband William H. Macy was not."

"Transcripts from wiretapped phone calls included in the documents mention Huffman’s 'spouse,' and even have quotes from him. But Macy is never named in the documents and has not been charged so far, unlike Loughlin’s fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli."

From "The 10 most shocking revelations from the Operation Varsity Blues scandal court docs" (Entertainment Weekly).

Any thoughts about how William H. Macy escaped getting accused?

I'm seeing an awful lot of stuff like, "The bribery scandal is no more abhorrent than the completely legal industry that helps many wealthy kids get into the schools of their dreams."

That's the sub-headline of a column at the NYT that I am not bothering to read. I'm seeing this argument all over Facebook and on the front pages of plenty of newspapers, and I don't like it.

It strikes me as the equivalent of letting a robber, caught red-handed, argue that there are so many things that are essentially theft — worse things really! — so what's the big deal?

In fact, I'd be more sympathetic to the robber, since he may have grown up as a deprived outsider who might think the rules never work for him at all. But these rich people in the college admissions scheme have had the advantages and have benefited by and used the rules in their favor and still want more, and of course, they'd call the cops if anyone committed a crime against them.

I do not want to see these people get off easy on some bullshit theory that the whole system is rigged. Those of us who've tried to live an ethical life and follow the rules don't want to hear that the rules don't matter. What kind of message is that?

Sure, fix things in college admissions that are rigged in favor of the rich, but don't tell me what these people did — if they did it — is just part of a big amorphous mess of privilege. They're accused of crimes, and they deserve the same treatment we give to other criminals. Other problems, outside of the criminal sphere, deserve attention too, but don't let criminals obfuscate their way out of their predicament. That's another rich-guy move!

"This... Did not age well."

This... Did not age well. https://t.co/APgzxAB9FP

— Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D., M.S. (@Neoavatara) March 12, 2019

"Olivia Jade Giannulli... is the daughter of the actress Lori Loughlin and the designer Mossimo Giannulli.... a social media influencer with close to two million YouTube subscribers and over a million Instagram followers."

"In September, she posted two paid advertisements on Instagram that highlighted her identity as a student. The legitimacy of her college acceptance has been called into question as a result of a Justice Department indictment, along with that of a number of others.... The fall semester at her school began on Aug. 20; a day later, Ms. Jade announced on Twitter that she had just arrived in Fiji.... Ms. Giannulli’s parents were described in the investigation as having paid multiple bribes amounting to $500,000 in order to have Olivia and her sister, Isabella, listed as recruits for the university’s crew team. (Neither participated in crew; both are influencers.)... She was criticized in August after posting a video with the title 'basically all the tea you need to know about me (boys, college, youtubers)' in which she said that she was only going to college for 'gamedays, partying.' 'I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know,' she said."

Olivia Jade Giannulli, "Daughter of Lori Loughlin, Is Caught Up in College Admissions Scandal/Ms. Giannulli, an influencer with big audiences on YouTube and Instagram, posted sponsored content about being a student" (NYT).

More about the case here, at "College Admissions Scandal: Actresses, Business Leaders and Other Wealthy Parents Charged" (NYT):

Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people on Tuesday in a major college admission scandal that involved wealthy parents, including Hollywood celebrities and prominent business leaders, paying bribes to get their children into elite American universities.

Thirty-three parents were charged in the case and prosecutors said there could be additional indictments to come. Also implicated were top college coaches, who were accused of accepting millions of dollars to help admit students to Wake Forest, Yale, Stanford, the University of Southern California and other schools, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said....

The authorities say the parents of some of the nation’s wealthiest and most privileged students sought to buy spots for their children at top universities, not only cheating the system, but potentially cheating other hard-working students out of a chance at a college education....

So despicable.

The top-rated comment at the NYT is: "So how do you think the low level Bushes and even lower level Trumps and Kushners got into 'top' schools?"

By the way, I'd never heard of Lori Loughlin before I read about this indictment.

AND: Here's that "I don’t really care about school" "influencer" video.



I don't know about you but this style of speech, mugging, and behavior is like fingernails on the blackboard to me. It actually makes me feel bad to think about young women teaching each other this phony, irritating cutesiness.