Writing in the Globe, James Carroll considers the connections between Harvard alum Richard Blumenthal (Vietnam liar) and Harvard ex Adam Wheeler.

For most of the column it’s hard to tell what Carroll is trying to say, but I do like this paragraph:

In America, elite culture is now defined less by social class than the resume, with great rewards going to academic super-achievers and, as always, military heroes. Celebrity and wealth have themselves become commodities, with the price tag often being inauthenticity. Yet most ordinary people aren’t buying. Honesty remains normal. People understand the difference between appearance and substance, and won’t sacrifice the latter for the former. There is coherence between who they are, who they think they are, and who they say they are. Such coherence also goes by the name integrity, and ordinary people take it for granted as the precondition of happiness.

Actually, I’d say that it’s been some time since America was defined by social class, probably since the mid- to late 1700s, and even then class was never as powerful as it was in the Old World. I’m not sure I’d say that “America,” once it became known as America, was ever defined by social class. (The great barrier has always been race.)

What Adam Wheeler suggests is that, while many people associate a Harvard degree with standing at the top of the American pyramid, they don’t value the work it takes to get there.