I had planned to blog about all the pretty dresses and hairstyles at the Academy Awards tonight, but first I feel compelled to unload a bit about what I saw on NBC’s Meet The Press this morning: Rick Santorum, being a fool.
It’s becoming a Sunday morning tradition. Of all people, shouldn’t he have more respect for the Sabbath?
Santorum actually made his most jaw-dropping statement, which was then discussed on Meet The Press, at a Tea Party rally in Michigan on Saturday.
Apparently, Santorum believes that attending college, and recommending it to others, makes you snob. Such was his response to President Obama’s recent statement that he would like all American young people to attend a four-year university.
Yes, this is the same Rick Santorum who earned an undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University, an M.B.A from the University of Pittsburg, and a law degree from Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law.
I am fairly confident that President Obama was not really suggesting that all American students — regardless of intellect, skill set or interest — be forced to attend a four-year university. That would make no sense, and would be completely impractical. Rather, I suspect he would like to see all American students with the desire and aptitude for college have an opportunity to attend a four-year university, regardless of their means. The nerve!
Politicians on both sides of the aisle are fond of waxing poetic about The American Dream, and predicting that it will slip out of reach if the other side wins the White House. The American Dream has a few key components, including the promise of a better life for our children. What parents who want success and prosperity for their child would object to him/her attending a four-year university? And if a university like Harvard accepted that child, would his/her parents be anything but proud and supportive?
Are we seriously expected to believe that Rick Santorum would not support one of his seven children attending Harvard because he/she might be “taught by some liberal college professor [who tries] to indoctrinate them”?
Just a few weeks ago, Republicans criticized President Obama for highlighting the widening gulf between the haves and have-nots in the U.S., and suggesting that it is wrong for Warren Buffet to pay less in taxes than his secretary. Mitt Romney complained that this was not appropriate public discourse, because it was akin to inciting class warfare. Yet it’s OK for Rick Santorum to call the President a snob for supporting a liberal arts education, since “there are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test”, who never got one?
The facts are in: Americans with a college education earn more, and are less likely to be unemployed, than Americans without one. But Rick Santorum reassures us; he’s on the case. If elected, he’ll resuscitate manufacturing in the United States so that graduates from trade schools have opportunities comparable to those of their liberal-arts counterparts – thus reversing a decades-long shift towards a service economy.
So… if your son or daughter is accepted at Princeton in the spring, and you are fortunate enough to have the means to pay the tuition, what will you do?
Uh huh, that’s what I thought.
In Write Field 