"People nowadays just don't seem to know their place" (Alito's CAP 1983)

[StefanX]

If you want a quick rundown on CAP (the well-funded right-wing fear-and-smear machine which Alito was a proud member of during his Princeton days), check out this account by a fellow Princetonian:

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/11/alito_and_cap.html

Some quotes from his account:

CAP tended to attract not conservatives per se, but the sort of conservative who is forever getting deeply hysterical about some perceived threat to a supposed previous golden age, who sees such threats everywhere, and who is willing to completely distort the truth in order to feed his (and it generally was 'his') obsessions.

(I mean: just ask yourself: what sort of person would devote time and energy to a group focussed entirely on combatting trends at his undergraduate institution, trends that the actual undergraduates of the time had no problem with? We used to wonder: don't these people have lives?)

CAP did a number of things to combat Princeton's slide into mediocrity and decadence, otherwise known as its decision to admit women and more than a token number of minorities. ... It published a magazine, Prospect, devoted to lurid stories about all that decadence and mediocrity and outraged editorials calling for a return to the halcyon days of the 1950s. ... We used to read stories in Prospect aloud to one another for laughs. (CAP was very well funded, and copies of Prospect were everywhere.)

But CAP also did other things. The Daily Princetonian cites two:

"- In 1973, CAP mailed a letter to parents of freshmen implying that their sons and daughters were living in 'cohabitation,' rather than simply coeducational dorms.

— In 1975, a CAP board member tried to disrupt Annual Giving by writing to alumni in the business community to consider whether their gifts were 'being used to undermine, subvert, and otherwise discredit the very businesses which are helping fund private education.'"

They really did mail letters to the parents of incoming freshman trashing the university, and they really did try to disrupt annual giving. These are serious things to do.

read more here: Alito and CAP by hilzoy at ObsidianWings

For a sense of Prospect's general level of discourse:

"People nowadays just don't seem to know their place," fretted a 1983 Prospect essay titled "In Defense of Elitism." "Everywhere one turns blacks and hispanics are demanding jobs simply because they're black and hispanic, the physically handicapped are trying to gain equal representation in professional sports, and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children."

[Hissyspit]

1. * nominated him, so Alito's a dickhead. It's algebraic.

So many times I've had friends and aquaintances get all bizarrely moral on me. "Here's what's wrong with people today!!" My answer is usually "What in the hell are you talking about?"

There is usually some kind of strange rose-colored glasses view of the past at work in their opinion. And some weird weighing of values that overemphasizes one value over another. A lot of ignorance at work, too.

[unblock]

2. wow. i remember some of that crap from my princeton days

between scalito and frist, i'm gonna have to disown my alma mater.

on the other hand, lest these scumbags forever smear princeton's reputation, note that by the time i was there in the early 80's, it was rather well integrated and by now, i believe women outnumber men and there i believe minorities are represented fairly closely to the population at large. also note that princeton has made a huge effort to make admissions 'needs-blind', meaning even the poorest people, if qualified, can afford to attend (with the help of grants, scholarships, loans, and work/study).

they've backed off a bit from a complete guarantee of affordability lately, but it's still nowhere near the elitist haven that it was in the 50's.

[NVMojo]

3. I can just picture this fucker owning slaves ...

[Dora]

4. Great read; it's good to be informed. n/t

[Al-CIAda]

5. .

[smirkymonkey]

6. Yeah! And Italians think they should be Supreme Court Justices!

Oh, wait. Never mind.

[Matariki]

7. too funny

"and homosexuals are demanding that government vouchsafe them the right to bear children"

i'll have to tell the lesbian moms i know that they didn't have the right to bear children. i don't think they know about that.

[Jim Sagle]

8. Got yer vouchsafe right here, fuckheads.

x(