Ivy League Cornell sides with Olbermann over Coulter

Last week, one of our favorite loud-mouth "conservatives" Ann Coulter decided to call into question her long-time rival Keith Olbermann's Ivy League credentials:

Indeed, Keith is constantly lying about his nonexistent "Ivy League" education, boasting to Playboy magazine, for example: "My Ivy League education taught me how to cut corners, skim books and take an idea and write 15 pages on it, and also how to work all day at the Cornell radio station and never actually go to class."

Except Keith didn't go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell.

The real Cornell, the School of Arts and Sciences (average SAT: 1,325; acceptance rate: 1 in 6 applicants), is the only Ivy League school at Cornell and the only one that grants a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Keith went to an affiliated state college at Cornell, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (average SAT: about that of pulling guards at the University of South Carolina; acceptance rate: 1 of every 1 applicants).

Olbermann's incessant lying about having an "Ivy League education" when he went to the non-Ivy League ag school at Cornell would be like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a "Yale man."

Unfortunately, Ms. Coulter didn't do much fact checking, but since she went to Cornell herself, it seems that many Cornell alumni, who have responded to her article being posted on Digg and other sites, think that she knows she is lying and is up to her usual tricks (lying to and misleading the ignorant masses and hoping that they eat up her excrements like dog food). Fine examples of people eating up her poo without checking the facts are available at The Weekly Standard, Right Wing News, and of course Red Eye on Fox News. Are we surprised?



So, I emailed a short note to Cornell University and here was their response:

Dear Tammie,

Many people have contacted us about the false and negative statements about Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences being made by Ann Coulter in the media recently.

Cornell as a whole--and all of its colleges--are considered "Ivy League." The term "Ivy League" was initially used by sportswriters, and became the official name in 1954 of the NCAA Division I athletic conference to which Cornell belongs. The "Ancient Eight" are Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Yale, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Harvard. Additionally, CALS admits 1 out of every 5 applicants, as does the College of Arts & Sciences.

Please feel free to watch Mr. Olbermann's response on his Countdown show at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/29539156#29539156

Thank you for your concern about the College.

Sincerely,

Ellen Leventry
Web Communications Specialist
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Cornell University

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I already knew what the response was going to be since this information is readily available on the web, but whenever in doubt, it's not really that hard to get the truth straight from the horse's mouth. There are a few things that really disturb me about Ann Coulter's never-ending antics, however.

First, if this were the real world, this kind of stunt could ruin an innocent person's life. Accusing someone of lying about their education and resume padding is a huge deal. Even after all the facts have been brought out into the open and the controversy cleared up, the effort leaves a bad taste in people's mouths and that air of doubt can follow you for the rest of your life, especially when people like Fox News continue to perpetuate what they know are lies. Despite the "concerned" comments of some conservatives of those blogs, Olbermann isn't going to have much of an issue at work since "Ivy League" Cornell recognizes him as one of their alumni, and he has been invited to and has given their senior convocation speech as an alumni. Fortunately, people who have gone to a university know that they are all separated into colleges, and while each college generally has its own admission standards and breadth requirements, academically, they all tend to be similar. For my fellow Alumni, it would be like me saying that I went to the "real" Cal because I was in the College of Letters and Science and you went to the "fake" Cal and can't boast a true Berkeley education because you were in the College of Natural Resources. Yes, it's stupid, I know. Furthermore, Coulter takes advantage of the fact that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a contract institution. All this means is that it is a private institution that gets part of its funding from the state. No, it does not mean that it is a public state college with lower admission standards that has a minor affiliation with Cornell. But Coulter, leaving the rest to your imagination, perpetuates that blatant lie. She loves taking advantage of the ignorant.

Second, I find Coulter's "Old MacDonald" comment incredibly offensive and elitist. I've known a few people who have gone to agriculture schools, and the science of growing food and feeding America and the world is really nothing to snub your nose at. Agriculture schools tend to be very heavy on the sciences, like biology, chemistry, and genetics. Just because the name of the college has "Agriculture" in it doesn't mean that you go there to become a farmer. The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is one of the best biological sciences institutions in the country and includes the disciplines of Biological Engineering and Applied Economics and Management. CALS is one of the few places in the Ivy League where you can get an degree in Communication, which is Olbermann's degree. Again, all of these can be found on Cornell University's web site. Of course, she doesn't mention any of this in her interview on Red Eye on Fox News and instead puts on a show that has the hosts rolling in her muck like pigs. They make fun of his one response to a slanderous attack on his credibility as "petty" while they are the ones continuing to drive the issue into the ground, allowing Coulter to continue to comment on the subject and mislead people. /rolling eyes

Lastly, "conservatives" like Ann Coulter spend an awful lot of time crapping on their own base, while their followers are quick to defend being crapped on. She basically insults much of middle America and our "Old MacDonald" farmers because she thinks that her Ivy League education is superior and mutually exclusive to the discipline of feeding our ever-growing humanity. And sadly, many conservative Americans just take in her garbage without question, as demonstrated by their delight in passing this story along, intent on flaming Keith Olbermann, rather than examining the facts behind her words or what she is really saying about some of our own people. In fact, many even make the effort to give thumbs down ratings to actual Cornell alumni and others' comments on YouTube who are trying to clear up her lies with facts. All it demonstrates is their aversion to the truth and their neverending quest to make sure as few people are exposed to it as possible.