Reply #36: For every entrepreneur who goes from rags to riches with something he

[Lydia Leftcoast]

built in his garage, there's a crass idiot who was born into affluence, went to an Ivy League school through family connections, and got hired through alumni connections to work on Wall Street or in the upper reaches of the federal government or writing for major publications, despite only average writing skills. How do I know this? I went to an Ivy League school for graduate school, was in organizations with mediocre rich kids and TA'd mediocre rich kids.

There's something suspicious about a young person whose only writing experience is a university newspaper going directly from college to senior editor at a major news magazine, book reviewer for a major newspaper, sportswriter for a major newspaper, staff writer at a major feature magazine. (These are people I knew.)

You can't tell me that those people worked harder or wrote better than the run-of-the-mill J-school graduate who ends up at a small town newspaper and most likely stays there because newspapers are cutting back on their staffs.