Word: wasps
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Harvard won't be the first to have granted a female the presidential post; among others, Nannerl Keohane assumed the position at Duke University in 1993 and Judith Rodin has been president at the University of Pennsylvania since the same year. But Harvard has historically been a bastion of WASP gentility--and traces of that aristocratic outlook still exist today. The maids' quarters may now house students, but the male-only final clubs continue to thrive, and those with a Harvard legacy in their family are unjustifiably given preferential treatment in the admissions process. The presidential search is a fortuitous...
What brought the native of Guadeloupe to the summit of the fencing world was an unrelenting drive and competitive ferocity that early on earned her the sobriquet la Guepe--the Wasp. Flessel-Colovic latched onto fencing at age seven after seeing French legend Jean-Francois Lamour on television. She abandoned dance lessons for the local fencing club--and soon began a victorious ascent through local and regional ranks. The promising southpaw didn't leave home for Paris, and intensive training, until 1990, when--at 19, far from family, friends and acquaintances--she fought off loneliness by pouring all her attention...
TIME: So let's start with your grandfather Prescott Bush. He was a patrician Connecticut banker and Senator, part of the old-line Yankee Wasp establishment...
...schtick? Joe, I said, had a secret: His real name is Joseph Larchmont and he's a WASP from Old Lyme. Why did he parade around as an orthodox Jew, I asked? Because Connecticut's politics were already filled with preppies, either authentic WASPs like the Bushes or near WASPs like the Buckleys. To get ahead in the Nutmeg State, you needed an ethnic angle. This meant that he had to pose as a Jew. After a day of running around in his Jewish pose, complete with Yiddishisms and a rabbinical demeanor, he'd come home each night...
...America." Podhoretz' subtitle is: "The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative." I admire Podhoretz immensely for the clarity, decency, and, shall we say, ruthlessness of his thought, but "cheerful" is not the first word he brings to my mind. A few years ago at a dinner in a highly WASP old club in New York, I watched Podhoretz sink his teeth (figuratively speaking) into a supercilious liberal's calf in the way a very focused dog goes after the mailman. He did not let go for three hours or so. I forget what they were fighting about...