John Adams on Lolo Jones...Wait for it!

"People will take their sides in the Lolo Jones debate, but there are no easy answers"  Michael Wilbon of ESPN intones solemnly about the story that won't go away.  For those of you who are unaware of the story, the NY Times of all places wrote a hit piece on Lolo Jones, describing her as a cynical marketer who has taken attention away from athletes that are more worthy and credentialed than her in terms of actual achievement.  Citing her "exotic beauty" and overly wrought personal story, the Times decries the fate of other more talented athletes who get nowhere near the attention that Jones gets.  Quelle horreur!  Jones played her part brilliantly; going on the air and breaking down in tears over the trashing that she received at the hands of the esteemed paper...ensuring that she gets yet more coverage and the Times gets more clicks to the offending article. 

Thus Michael Wilbon and others are induced to create flabby post mortems, ostentatiously describing the difficult moral dimensions of the story and the sad unfairness of it all.  For his part, Mr. Wilbon gets to write about something that people will read beause it contains all the elements that he decries.  But Michael is dead wrong.  There is an easy answer...it is the 5,000 lb. gorilla sitting in the middle of the room.

John Adam's, the most deep thinking of our Founders saw that Gorilla in 1813 and described it in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

"Now, my Friend, who are the [aristocrats]? Philosophy may Answer "The Wise and Good." But the World, Mankind, have by their practice always answered, "the rich the beautiful and well born." And Philosophers themselves in marrying their Children prefer the rich the handsome and the well descended to the wise and good.

What chance have Talents and Virtues in competition, with Wealth and Birth? and Beauty?

...One truth is clear, by all the World confess'd Slow rises worth, by Poverty oppress'd.

The five Pillars of Aristocracy, are Beauty Wealth, Birth, Genius and Virtues. Any one of the three first, can at any time over-bear any one or both of the two last."

As sad as it is, studies have show that many husbands and wives will systematically favor more attractive children over unattractive ones...and those are the Parents!  Lolo Jones has made her attractivness a virtue for her and it has over-born others.  It has even over-born the mighty NY Times which tut-tuts this unfair state of affairs but runs its business by placing ads of skimpily clad models to sell clothes (among other things) and has even gone so far as to publish an article explaining how to ogle the women of water polo as they battle beneath the water.

The Five Pillars are the bedrock of America.  We see ourselves as an unaristocratic nation, a nation of equality.  At the very founding of our nation John Adams knew differently....he knew.