Where Some See Black-and-White, Kurt Andersen Sees Colors
The more thoroughly some set of facts reinforces the relevant preconceptions, caricatures, clich s, and conventional wisdom, the easier it makes life for everyone, journalists as well as their audiences. Most people want to be told what they already know. And in a world of murky moral grays, who doesn't sometimes relish a black-and- white tale, with villains to loathe, victims to pity, injustice to condemn? Thus the enthralling power of the Duke lacrosse-team story when it broke last spring.
Kurt Andersen, "Rape, Justice, and the 'Times'", New York, October 16, 2006
Just as the Duke-lacrosse-team case confirms ugly stereotypes about privileged white jocks, Kaavya Viswanathan, the only child of a brain surgeon and gynecologist, confirms the invidious stereotype of privileged meritocrats gone wild. She is a flagrant example of the hard-charging freaks that our culture grooms and prods so many of its best and brightest children to become, a case study in one sociopathology of the adolescent overclass.
