Some People’s Parents (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

(A correction has been made to this commentary. See end for details.)

My mother had a lot of great sayings, which I assume she absorbed growing up in Cleburne County in the 1930s and ’40s. Whenever someone did something she considered tacky (one of her go-to adjectives), she would exclaim, “The nerve of some people’s children!”

I hear those words in my head frequently. Then last week’s big news about the rich and famous using bribes and fraud to secure preferential positions in elite universities for their kids turned my mother’s thesis upside down. The nerve of some people’s parents!

Life isn’t fair. We all know that. “This dress exacerbates the genetic betrayal that is my legacy,” 5-foot-1 Janeane Garofalo’s character grumbles in “Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion,” a movie that still seems painfully relevant 22 years after its release. (“We can go to the reunion and just pretend to be successful!”)

But does it follow that, because life isn’t fair in the first place, it’s OK to make it even less fair? (Related: When Jesus said, “For ye have the poor always with you …,” did He mean that there was nothing we could or should do to reduce the number?)

The advantages of being born into affluence are already so profound that it seems like wealthy parents would expect more from their children. “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required,” Jesus said in the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Luke.

Instead, folks like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman — Loughlin’s husband, Mossimo Giannulli, was charged while Huffman’s husband, William H. Macy was not — were clearly not satisfied with the way their children had turned out and decided to use their wealth to pretend that their children were different and better. What a terrible thing for their children to learn if they had mistakenly believed that their parents loved them unconditionally for who they were.

But there I go again, displaying those “middle-class values” that a former boss of mine once derided. If I had money, perhaps I’d understand that bribes and fraud are the way rich parents display love, because otherwise that place in the right college might go to a genuinely smart kid whose parents were nobodies. What a waste that would be.

The criminal case out of Boston — “Operation Varsity Blues” — illustrates that there’s a right way and a wrong way to buy your mediocre child a prestigious start in life. You can’t bribe coaches to pretend your kid is an athletic recruit in order to get admitted; you can’t pay someone else to take the SAT or to correct your kid’s lousy answers.

But if you are rich enough, you certainly can make a big, tax-exempt donation to the university of your choice. Suddenly, your child is going to look as good to the admissions committee as any kid who actually has brains and a work ethic.

In 2006, before Jared Kushner even met Ivanka Trump, his college education was the centerpiece of a book called “The Price of Admission” by Daniel Golden, who is now a senior editor with ProPublica.

In 1998, New Jersey real estate tycoon Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, which was not his alma mater. Five years later, his son Jared, despite unimpressive SAT scores and an undistinguished GPA at an exclusive prep school, had a Harvard degree — “with honors,” like 90 percent of his classmates.

That’s the legal way to prepare your boy to be a special assistant to the President of the United States.

There are some things about Arkansas that I would like to change, but I do like the fact that people who come from modest means and who don’t have degrees from “elite” universities can still prove themselves here. Yes, they have to compete with the sons and daughters of locally prominent parents; the playing field is never going to be perfectly level as long as human beings are involved.

Still, this is a place where talent can find mentors and champions. And, as Tommy May recently advised us all, “[M]ake a commitment to make a difference in somebody’s life because … it’s never been more important.”

Elsewhere in Luke 12, Jesus said other words that Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman should have heeded:

“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.

“Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”

(Correction, March 19, 2019: The status of criminal charges against Lori Loughlin’s husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, was incorrect in the original version of this column.)

Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com and follow her on Twitter at @gwenmoritz.