from "Bobos in Paradise"-- (pp. 13-15, 44) "I'm not sure I'd like to be one of the people featured on the New York Times weddings page, but I know I'd like to be the father of one of them...When America had a pedigree elite, the page emphasized noble birth and breeding. But in America today it's genius and geniality that enable you to join the elect. And when you look at the Times weddings page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores...These are the kids who spent the crucial years between ages 16 and 24 winning the approval of their elders. Others may have been rebelling at that age or feeling alientated or just basically exploring their baser natures (ehem). But the people who made it to this page controlled their hormonal urges and spent their adolescence impressing teachers, preparing for the next debate tournament, committing themselves to hours of extracurricular and volunteer work, and doing everything else that we as a society want teenagers to do. The admissions officer deep down in all of us wants to reward these mentor magnets with bright furtures, and the real admissions officers did, accepting them into the right colleges and graduate schools and thus turbocharging them into adulthood.
"But nowadays such an alliance blends right in. We don't even raise an eybrow when Mr. New England Antiquities marries Ms. Judaic Studies because we know how much the bride and groom have in common: Ms. Perry graduated from her college magna cum laude, just as her husband did (except hers was Yale, not Dartmouth). She too, got her MBA from Harvard (and she earned a master's degree in public administration besides). She, too, helped lead the Alpha Course and was photographed in the Alpha News by Mark Elston-Dew...The ancient enmities between class and ethnic groups have been overcome by the common bond of meritocratic ascent."
(one sentence added by your's truly).
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