The college entrance scandal has taken a back seat in the news lately. Yet, recent details have been released concerning the Lori Loughlin case. Apparently, she and her husband gave the college a fake athletic profile, where they listed their daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli as a gold medal-winning crew coxswain. All of this to help her gain admission to USC.
A coxswain, for all of us backwater Midwesterners — who send our kids to school by the skin of our teeth — is the steersman of a ship’s boat, lifeboat, racing boat, or other boat.
I find this highly ironic. Or— maybe — she was steering the ship all along.
Regardless, I didn’t know what a coxswain was until this morning. You’d think they could come up with a better term for the gig. Like boat steerer. But that is a sport where rowing is sometimes called sculling. Boats are all crazy anyhow, with starboard, and port, and aft. I do best when I sit atop a boat and watch the sea.
Anyway, back to the scandal. I am still upended by the entire matter. I was completely oblivious to this sort of thing going on. Of course, I knew that sometimes, with skilled athletic players, coaches will try to “impress” a candidate with “under the table items” and “big promises.” This is not acceptable either, but if there is any justification, it helps out some really poor families at times, who otherwise have trouble putting food on their tables.
But paying, bribing, cheating for a kid’s admission? Giannulli’s parents, actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, have been charged with three counts for allegedly paying $500,000 in bribes to get their two daughters into USC.
Before all of this crap hit the fan, the kid, the young woman, Olivia Jade was a social media influencer. She had over a million followers on Instagram and YouTube. Brands that had partnered with her, like Hewlett Packard and Sephora, have distanced themselves from her after the charges were announced. Good news for me. I can go back to using my HP printer. But now, she has recently returned to posting on YouTube after a 9-month absence.
You know how I had never heard of coxswain? Well, I still don’t understand the whole “influencer” scheme. It seems like asinine absurdity to me. Again, again, I’ve asked the question time and again. Who in the freaking world are the Kardashians?
Somedays, I think the world is on its head, and it is no fault of the world’s. It results from all the halfwitted people all gathering to one side and really leaning hard into the pit of the ludicrous.
Here is the flip side of that. The way to bring the balance back. I am told, frequently, that our thoughts become things. That we, as humans, become whatever it is we think about. So perhaps, the counterbalance to the tumultuous, is to think in the other direction. Think only about peace, love and kindness. Maybe, if time and again, we envision these values as part of our lives, we will become them.
You coxswains, you.
Row, row, row your boat.
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily….
==========
“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
― Theodore Roosevelt
=========
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”
― W. Clement Stone
==========
“Those who don’t jump will never fly.”
― Leena Ahmad Almashat, Harmony Letters
=========
