When you say "diverse", do you mean you wish those patterns of achievement were as broadly dispersed among those characteristics?

Because who could disagree?

Hmm. Why not the lines at WalMart?

One things I've seen: appearance has nothing to do with brains. Diverse doesn't automatically mean "better".

Japan is how diverse?

Advocating diversity is a bit overrated.

Diversity requires separation: if you put all the fish in one pond, the asian carp eats all the others.

So we usually find the asian carp types advocating diversity -- more food for them.

What I meant is that all those worthy institutions are packed with people who are exactly the same--they went to the same schools, they think the same way, they've followed the same paths to success. Walmart doesn't cater to small business owners like Costco does, thus the difference. I wish more people in Congress knew what it was like to have to make payroll.

Kind a off topic, but I am so sick of white people (like me) so afraid of the " "n-word" ". Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger... Jeez, I don't use it since Richard Pryor talked about why he didn't like it, but fuck I'm tired of dancing around it.

Chevy Chase- he's a kooky comedian. Get
over it.

I can agree with Kate this far...

But here's the thing: The band of people with the competence and decency to serve in American government and actually do well – perhaps only by staying out of the way – is extremely slender. Almost everyone presently employed by our government escapes that boundary, and is badly over-compensated in the best case.

"Diversity" is not what we need right now. Hiring by color, gender, preference, weight, height or national origin will not make things better. Excellence is not depicted on Girl Scout Cookie boxes or Glee videos. Virtue, especially modern virtue, is not distributed evenly throughout the human population. The people with the qualities we need come from a select and heartbreakingly predictable set of loving, challenging, humble homes.

I adore my fellow shoppers at Costco, truly I do. But you don't have to scratch too deeply into the character of someone from outside the American mainstream before you find unacceptable ideas... And the most popular unacceptable ideas, I believe, concern the proper behavior of women in society. That's where the ugly starts... For half the human race.

Obama never built a team, or did anything for anyone, with his own money. And for Chrissake, Romney made a killing in financial services... The largest and perhaps least worthwhile sector of the American economy.

KateC, I share the pain you feel. A generation as educated and well-meaning as ours ought to be able to do better than this.

But there's no silent army of productive, disciplined, law-abiding, compassionate, service-minded genius out there. This is America: We communicate ferociously, and sniff at each other's haunches like no nation in human history. We'd know if there was a vein of gold to be mined.

"The people with the qualities we need come from a select and heartbreakingly predictable set of loving, challenging, humble homes."

All my really really good friends come from this type of homes. Only one childhood friend and I made it out (he's a doc now) and we both had pretty shitty home lives.

You don't know how many friendships I've had to break because they can't break the generational cycle of abuse on their kids. Eek.

Joe Biden's new job?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc

"Welcome to Costco, I love you."

I wish it looked more like the line from Whole Foods.

*ducks*

> "Welcome to Costco, I love you."

Best scene of the film.

"'Diversity' is not what we need right now. Hiring by color, gender, preference, weight, height or national origin will not make things better. Excellence is not depicted on Girl Scout Cookie boxes or Glee videos. "

Exactly. Because what the U.S. Government defines as "diversity" is merely an exercise in nose-counting, based on easily observable surface characteristics of the individuals involved. You may as well make quotas by eye color -- it makes the same amount of sense. True diversity does not fit within that Girl Scout cookie box, and is neither easily achieved nor easily quantifiable.

"Virtue, especially modern virtue, is not distributed evenly throughout the human population. The people with the qualities we need come from a select and heartbreakingly predictable set of loving, challenging, humble homes."

I have a theory that approximately 10% of the human population consists of people who are self-motivated and form good personal value systems without needing any instruction. These are the people who will always overcome the circumstances of their lives, no matter how bad They are the poeple who will come up smelling like roses no matter how much crap you drop them in. They will always find a way to succeed. They are not necessarily the people who are the greatest leaders or accomplish the greatest things. They are, however, the glue that holds the human race together. Without them, human civilization would never have devleoped.

I would like to think that this 10% is distributed evenly among all population groups. However, I suspect that this is not the case. I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.

I think KateC was talking about diversity of experience, not necessarily diversity of looks. And yes, amen to the her quote "I wish more people in Congress knew what it was like to have to make payroll."

> I would like to think that this 10% is
> distributed evenly among all population
> groups.

As might we all, it would certainly be more fair.

But —

> 10% of the human population consists of people
> who are self-motivated and form good personal
> value systems without needing any instruction.

I am certainly not in your 10% (and don't mean to suggest that you were saying I was: Your 10% is a fine concept on its own). There were perhaps a few scraps of decency in my heart before toilet training and socialization... Freaky, sweet little impulses that been coded into the chemistry.

Yet certainly, the vast majority of virtue in my life has come to me through instruction... Often through painful, expensive lessons, because I am mostly uncaring, and sometimes through beatings, because I'm stubborn. I had to be taught not to rape, pillage, maim and murder, and taught to trust and empathize. This instruction was often refined by people who didn't know they were refining it, carried to me by people who didn't know they were carrying it, and delivered by people who didn't know they were delivering it. These blessings are too detailed and reflexive for conscious transcription, although the greatest kindness almost always requires willful transmission.

(If these blessings could be readily conveyed to mature souls, we could clean up the Middle East in about twenty weels.)

I think that to get the kind of people we're going to need serving us in the years ahead (and sometimes, in small degrees, leading us), we're going to rely on the families described above.

Still-- If someone shows up and performs admirably as a public servant (whether in the executive branch of the federal government or as a crossing guard at the grade school), I don't care if only 1% of their virtue is natural. Natural virtue is no more reliable, or less corruptible, than the other kinds.

Y'know, they say Rosa Parks had trained for her confrontation. Who cares? Her courage was no less authentic, and was perhaps therefore greater: She could anticipate the horrible responses she'd seen suffered by her family across a lifetime.

> I think KateC was talking about diversity of
> experience, not necessarily diversity of looks.

Almost certainly, but the chance for misunderstand can no longer be too casually ignored. There are huge political forces in our culture, industrial forces, which feed off rhetoric like that as they do villainous things. "Diversity" has become a cussword, and it's not my fault. Let's all be very clear with each other.

> amen to the her quote "I wish more people in
> Congress knew what it was like to have to
> make payroll."

Amen, sister.

Weeks, not weels.

"I am certainly not in your 10%..."

For the record, I too make no such claim.