Purely as a distraction from Trumpy’s [bleep] Show this college admissions scandal is the bomb. Even if at the reptilian psychological roots of this episode we can’t help but be reminded of The Orange One and his base of sad, true believers.

The heart of this particular scandal is the insatiable human yearning for status. It really is essential evolutionary biology. Higher status gives you and yours a better chance of survival and passing on your genetic material. Every study you can find is chock full of statistics showing that with higher status comes higher levels of self-satisfaction and greater distance from psychologically and physically harm.

Here’s a paragraph from Adam Waytz at Scientific American: “[Psychologist PJ Henry at DePaul University’s] theory is based on a considerable psychological literature demonstrating that individuals from low-status groups (e.g. ethnic minorities) tend to engage in more vigilant psychological self-protection than those from high-status groups.  Low-status people are much more sensitive to being socially rejected and are more inclined to monitor their environment for threats.  Because of this vigilance toward protecting their sense of self-worth, low-status individuals are quicker to respond violently to personal threats and insults. … To provide evidence that tendencies for psychological self-protection were the crucial critical link between status and violence, Henry assessed survey data from over 1,500 Americans.  In this nationally representative sample, low-socioeconomic status (low-SES) individuals reported far more psychological defensiveness in terms of considering themselves more likely to be taken advantage of and trusting people less.”

In other words, the lower you perceive your status to be the generally angrier and more irrational and defensive your become, as well as more prone to self-destructive behavior.

There’s also this from a Science Daily piece: “The strongest test of the hypothesis is whether the possession of low status negatively impacts health. The studies reviewed showed that people who had low status in their communities, peer groups, or in their workplaces suffer more from depression, chronic anxiety, and even cardiovascular disease. Individuals who fall lower on the status hierarchy, or what the authors call the ‘community ladder’, feel less respected and valued and more ignored by others.”

But the crowd getting rounded up in this college admission scandal — parts of which I’m still trying to get my head around — are people who already have high status. A couple Hollywood actresses, high-powered lawyers, CEOs. That part of it is what makes it so irresistibly rich.

Also the part about the “Instagram influencer” daughters.

I mean, what is going with someone who can afford $6 million bucks to game the admissions system? As a naked out-front contribution slapped into the hand of some Dean $6 million should be enough to grease the skids for even the worst doofus off-spring. At least one of the “top” schools in the country would find a spot for the little loser.

So you start thinking the issue then has to be that the high status parent has become so accustom to the privileges of status that being told “no” by the school they absolutely must get into is inconceivable. “No” imperils status. There could be a slip on a rung of the great status ladder. What if word got out that little Jimmy Dimwit didn’t get into … Stanford, Yale or USC? How tongues would wag at the country club! Therefore, bribes must be paid. The system must be gamed. Unimpeachable status must be reaffirmed!

The ludicrous lengths humans will go to assert status in any situation is so basic it’s the stuff of thousands of years of satire. You think of the preening foppery of the post-renaissance courts, the millions of scenes, stories and jokes about hapless guys making fools of themselves trying to impress girls, and women at a “peer lunch” squeezing in thinly-masked assertions of greater-status-than-thou … be it over vacations, fashion accessories or the sheer damn brilliance of their children.

It’s the Great Human Theater and a lot of life wouldn’t be as entertaining without it. Hell, the advertising industry — and the fashion industry, the automobile industry, the cosmetics industry, the monster house industry and on and on — would collapse if we somehow stuck a needle in everyone’s brain and extracted the status hunger gene. So who’s surprised it’s a part of the college admissions industry?

But as I say, the comedy in this particular situation is that these are people of already indisputably high, substantial status who are revealed to be (criminally) desperate to preserve that status and pass it on.

You gotta laugh.

It’s just another episode that reminds me of the classic Homer Simpson – Montgomery Burns moment.