Really Desperate Housewives

Every once in a while, we all get a reminder of why rich and powerful people are often quite loathsome. It's because they seem to think they operate under different rules and breathe different air from the rest of us schlubs.

I remember the time I was in court, bringing evidence for a trial, waiting to share it with the assistant state's attorney before the proceedings began. As I waited my turn, some attorney with a briefcase and a $600 suit pushed past me to confer with the ASA as if I were invisible. And I assure you, I am not.

With the same sense of outrage that I display in this blog almost daily, I asked him how he felt entitled to brush past me in that way, and as he sputtered, the ASA told him I was not a defendant, and to get back in line.

I replayed that scene the other day when I read that Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin, and dozens of other well-off types found out that standing on stacks of money they made with their bland, mawkish acting in bland, mawkish television stories could give their children a leg up in the college admissions game. 

According to the news, Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy, plunked down $15,000 “to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her oldest daughter” and later "made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her youngest daughter, before deciding not to do so.”

They got off cheaply, according to the authorities. Lori Loughlin, who acts in "Full House," was charged as well, and the documents filed  say that she and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, shelled out bribes totaling $500,000 to have their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team.

The fact that neither of the daughters know which end of an oar to put in the water did not seem to matter in this criminal enterprise. 

Huffman (l) and Loughlin

Andrew Lelling, U.S. District Attorney for Massachusetts, told the press that this is the  “largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice,” totaling $25 million in bribes.

Both actresses, if convicted, could face up to five years in prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.

The kingpin - Mr Big - the "capo di tutti capi" - in this whole sickening situation is one William Singer, a Californian whose business it was to get kids into college in return for truckloads of lucre.  The scheme involved either bribing college entrance test administrators to correct wrong answers on the tests, or paying coaches to set aside places on college teams for students who, in many cases, did not even participate in the sport involved.

Singer pleaded guilty in a Boston federal courtroom to charges ranging from racketeering conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Some years ago, Tom Wolfe wrote an essay about the changing American economy, pointing out that with all the money floating around today, everyone's kids have the chance to do things that previously only the Rockefeller family enjoyed. But the fact that really struck me is that the profits from this game were such that the tennis coach at Georgetown University - the TENNIS coach, for crying out loud, got 2.7 MILLION dollars for his involvement, before resigning in December, two steps ahead of the feds.

The tennis coach.