Pinned, featured, showcased…whatever! Read it or not. Comment or not. If something this trivial is bothersome to you, then I want YOUR troubles.
Kidding…kind of!
You would not believe how many interesting “anti” posts our exercise, colonoscopy, and fashion threads attract! 
I am happy for Dante, and his family, just as I am happy for all of the Class of 2015/2019 students and families. How blessed are we to have healthy children with the opportunity to attend college. Not everyone is so lucky.
It is bad enough that we treat politicians as celebrities and now we make their kids celebrities.
The thing is that Watson, Shields, Foster were all world-class accomplished individuals based on what they did - not what their parents happened to do. Secondly, the idea of a world famous actress ditching the trappings and rich life of Hollywood and hanging out on campus is a compelling story.
Clearly, he is highly accomplished compared to his peers, but I don’t know how accomplished he is compared to the other 2000 or so people accepted at Yale or people like Evan Chan, David Stoner, or Kevin Bao to garner.
I will absolutely grant you that point, @skyoverme. I completely agree personally that too many people make too big a deal out of these things. But my point wasn’t that the kids were the same. It was that the interest a certain segment of the population takes in these things is the same, be it that the kid is a celebrity on their own talents or that the parent(s) is/are. To each their own. CC has something for everyone (well, kind of). As I said before, those that have no interest in this topic can merrily breeze on by. In fact, perhaps the worst part of being a moderator is that I end up reading so many threads in which I have absolutely zero interest. Ah well. High class problems.
CC highlights this as one of the major threads, so that is an editorial decision that where a politicians son goes to college is somehow relevant.
Too bad that CC and other sites don’t have a similar emphasis of where the IMO or USBMO winners or other extraordinarily gifted people chose to go to college and why.
No surprise, there is a reason TMZ is more popular than NPR, but I always hope for better than that, especially when it comes to education.
@skyoverme <<too bad="" that="" cc="" and="" other="" sites="" don’t="" have="" a="" similar="" emphasis="" of="" where="" the="" imo="" or="" usbmo="" winners="" extraordinarily="" gifted="" people="" chose="" to="" go="" college="" why.="">>
This. (Thank you)
-psy
I did not know who the mayor of NYC was. I know some previous mayors: Ed Koch, and… um, the guy who got caught using prostitutes, and the blind guy black guy they used to do on Saturday Night Live… and Giuliani? Okay, that’s 4. And Mario Cuomo? That’s 5, from memory. Oh, and the billionaire who went to Johns Hopkins. That’s 6. I can certainly name more mayors of Washington DC, but that doesn’t mean I’m typical of people across the country.
I agree that there is no more reason for this kid to get front page press outside his hometown than there is for any other state or local politician’s child anywhere in the country.
He does not rise to the level of the Obama children - they are internationally known, children of a world leader, they cannot even go to school without Secret Service protection, they won’t get to live anything like a normal life while their dad is in office - they’ll just choose where they want to go, and any school would be thrilled to have them. That will be a newsworthy post. Child of a (major) city’s mayor, not so much.
He also does not rise to the level of a Brooke Shields, Emma Watson, etc., who had extremely successful careers before college and were internationally known celebrities in their own right.
I honestly never heard of him before this thread. I had no idea whether the mayor of NYC had a family, nor did I have any reason to want to know.
Mario Cuomo was NY governor. Never mayor.
DiBlasio has been in national news stories in recent months in reporting on the police reaction to him. I would imagine that people who follow current events would know who he is. Heck, I live in Canada and I know who he is.
Neither Cuomo nor Spitzer were ever mayor of New York.
David Paterson was actually the NY governor in the late '00s, not mayor of NY.
Okay, Koch, Giuliani, and the billionaire. 3. And I don’t know whether any of them had college-aged children while in office, and I don’t have any reason to want to know that about them, any more than anyone else. The point is that this kid is not a national (or international) news figure.
The point is, the CC cafe forum features threads on things as trivial as panty hose and vacuum cleaners. It’s called the cafe because, like conversation in any brick and mortar establishment, people are likely to talk about virtually anything. Where di-Blasio’s son is going to college is of interest to some who frequent the cafe. That people are still so adament to express why the topic is unworthy of discussion here seriously has me scratching my head. If you don’t give a rat’s rear-end where Dante di-Blasio goes to college, just left click on a topic that interests you. Is it really so hard?
Psst…Guess what? I didn’t even open the thread on panty hose, not even to tell those discussing the topic how stupid, boring, or “inappropriate” I thought is was. Should I have?
No, the point is that CC has this as a FEATURED thread on the front page of the forum and it is the second one on the list. It isn’t just some other random post in the cafe.
I am scratching my head as to why the editorial decision was made to highlight this particular thread on the front page of the forum and it has been here for a while. If CC wants to highlight some kid getting into college as some sort of informative or inspirational message, there are tons of other stories that should be promoted.
Pssst…Guess what? If the panty hose thread was highlighted as one of the FEATURED threads, then yeah, maybe it was worth asking why the heck it was a featured thread. There is no reason for CC to devolve to TMZ-like news coverage when there are so many more important topics to discu.
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Why has this boring story become "featured"?<<<
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Slow day at the office. Not that the featuring of threads has made much sense for a while. TMZ comes to mind.
My guess is that very few regulars even look at that list of Featured threads on the homepage. Most probably have their favorite forums bookmarked and/or navigate once they’re into the forums.
In any case, who cares what the Featured thread designations are? Seriously?
This discussion cracks me up! The other “featured” thread hasn’t had a post in two months and has had many fewer views than the Baltimore thread, for example. I don’t pay attention to what threads are “featured” and couldn’t care less if my favorite threads earn that esteemed designation.
I think it’s fun to hear where kids of well-known people are headed for college, and I wish Dante the very best at Yale.
As some of the last posters have said, some of you are taking the “Featured Thread” aspect of this site way too seriously. Obviously I like CC a lot and think it is a very valuable web site, but it isn’t the New York Times and doesn’t purport to be. And even the NYT “features” things that are of little interest to most of their readership. I can’t remember if I said it here or elsewhere, but I have seen major city newspapers (print editions, where space actually has even more value) feature teasers above the headlines on Sunday where they direct people to check out the article in Section H that describes a honeybee exhibit at the zoo or or the latest observations by scientists regarding shifting tectonic plates or the latest in lawn mower technology. I would wager that well less than half the readership actually has a real interest in those topics. But they feature them anyway. Would I expect people to write a letter to the editor every time that happens because they feel the paper is featuring trivial articles of little interest to the majority of their readership? No, they skip reading that section or that article. And they actually paid for that paper! Sigh.
Besides, I think we all have pretty good guesses where the brightest students tend to go to college. But certainly if someone has a tabulation of something like that and the results were surprising and interesting, there should be a thread about it and it should be featured. But absent such an article or study, what are we supposed to post? We are not a news gathering organization. It’s all well and good to say we don’t feature threads about where IMO/USBMO winners go to school, but is there such a thread? Is there an article out there about that topic? I just put USBMO into the CC search engine and got 3 (THREE!!!) hits total. For the entire site. I don’t even know what USBMO is, frankly, but I am assuming it is a prestigious award of some kind. Whatever it is, members don’t seem to be talking about it much, so I would really wonder about the interest level of that subject. Remember, you all create 99.9% of the threads on this site.
I think there was a featured article about a year ago, maybe two (time goes by so fast) that did talk about Siemens winners or something similar choosing Stanford over other schools. It has been awhile and I might have the details wrong, but those things are not ignored. There is nothing wrong with the occasional light thread mixed in with all the serious stuff.
Maybe it was a featured thread because somebody predicted it would spawn at least six pages of discussion.
Personally, I am always amused when the featured threads in the Parents Forum or Cafe include those which have been locked. B-)