eligible and successful

"It's a fast, comfortable way of meeting eligible Ivy League singles just like you.... You must sign up with a friend of the opposite sex to ensure an even number of daters" (March 2006 newsletter of the Yale Club of New York City). Wrong in so many ways, like the Yale Visa card (which I must admit I occasionally want for the Harkness Tower photo).
Not half as wrong, however, as the very existence of the book Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers, and How You Can Too, a review of which well-intentioned John Bordley thought Tom and I would find interesting...with ill results. I question the credibility of authors who claim with 'egalitarian' spirit, "Every Asian American could have written this book; we were just the first ones." I doubt the Kim sisters are really so stupid as to take the "model minority" stereotype as a given fact, but they do in order to sell their money-making scheme. Most of the Asian-American students I knew weren't going anywhere fast and certainly couldn't write. And if I were willing to sell my soul and write such a book (in six months during my free time, no less!), it would argue tenets opposite to what the Kim sisters advocate (i.e. "encouraging children to pursue financially lucrative careers rather than 'whatever will make you happy'"). While co-author Jane Kim may have failed to achieve her dream of becoming a writer within just one year after graduation, her exemplary current job as a lawyer, her main qualification to write about Asian-American success, could easily suggest that she chickened out and sold her dreams for a money-making career...as she and her sister are doing now at the expense of untold numbers of American children.

I could rant forever, and I will later.