OPINION:
Are we finally done hearing about white privilege from woke progressive celebrities?
Start typing “college” into a Google search. Autocomplete finishes the thought for you — “college admissions scandal.” The scandal that broke last week is the largest college admissions scam ever uncovered and prosecuted in American history. It involves entrance test proctors, professors, coaches, parents and their privileged progeny from coast to coast.
According to the Justice Department, more than 200 agents investigated William “Rick” Singer and his college entrance prep front company. Mr. Singer was wined and dined at the center of a web he wove connecting those with big enough bank accounts to the schools they wanted their kids to attend — despite those kids’ lack of academic or athletic credentials.
In short, the talentless replaced the talented.
The U.S. attorneys called the investigation “Operation Varsity Blues.” I’ve got another name for it: Operation White Privilege Blues. Hollywood loves to lecture flyover country about its alleged white privilege, the names revealed so far all have two things in common: They are very rich and they are all very white.
Let’s look at the two most famous names involved.
Felicity Huffman, wife of Hollywood star actor William H. Macy, was one of the “Desperate Housewives.” That hit show made her wealthy on her own. She made a reported $275,000 per episode, raising her net worth to about $20 million. Mr. Macy has enjoyed a string of hits for a couple of decades — “Fargo,” “Pleasantville” and Showtime’s “Shameless” — raising his net worth to an estimated $25 million. Add them up and they land just shy of $50 million. For the record I’m a huge Frank Gallagher fan.
Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman are both extremely wealthy thanks to their Hollywood careers and the high-flying careers of their respective spouses. After starring in “Full House” and “Fuller House,” Miss Loughlin married fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli. His estimated net worth is $80 million. Together they reach nearly $90 million.
These are people who could afford to pay for college at any university in the world. Or they could afford to use their cash to grease their kids’ skids into any university in the world.
These two couples could buy a university. Or build their own. Instead, they scammed America by purchasing a university spot for their pampered brats.
According to the indictments, they threw their wealth around to make their privileged kids even more privileged — and deprive other kids, whose parents aren’t staggeringly wealthy, or liberal, or woke, of their rightful place in college.
Hollywood and academia worship “green privilege.” The more green you have, the more they care about making you more privileged.
Those kids, whose names we will never know, are the victims in this fraud that involves more than 50 people in six states and millions of dollars in alleged bribes. The Varsity Blues scammers corrupted the SAT, the ACT, scholarships in lower-visibility college sports and the entire college admissions process.
Well, the latter has been corrupted for years. It has been common knowledge that the wealthy can move university mountains with a well-placed check of $20 million or more. The University of Texas at Austin, which has a tennis coach caught up in this scandal, had an admissions scandal at its law school just a couple of years ago. In that scandal, kids of politicos and other movers and shakers got breaks that let them into one of the country’s most well-regarded law schools.
Hollywood and academia can now and forevermore spare us their lectures about “white privilege.” Operation Varsity Blues shows us it’s all a con. A scam.
Like most things in Hollywood, it’s an act.
Except this time, the karma police have finally made an arrest.
• A.J. Rice is CEO of Publius PR. Find out more at publiuspr.com.
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