March 24th, 2009
There’s a fascinating aside in Megan McCain’s interview with Supriyah Jindal:
Megan McCain: I went to Space Camp twice as a child and wanted to be an astronaut growing up. I am still a fan of hers.
Supriyah Jindal: So what happened along the way that made you change your mind about becoming an astronaut? See, something happened.
Megan McCain: As I got to high school, I was told I was bad at math and got discouraged.
Supriyah Jindal: See, and there is no need for that. I am sure you were great.
I wonder why Mrs. Jindal is so certain that McCain was “great” with math. Isn’t math the sort of subject where talent is reasonably easy to spot? It isn’t like, say, poetry or political science, where a child’s latent genius might easily go under-appreciated. If you’re good at math–particularly the type of algebra, geometry, and elementary calculus which is taught in high schools–then don’t you tend to, you know, do well in math?
The exchange is so wonderfully revealing. McCain doesn’t say that she was bad at math, she says that she “was told” that she was bad at it. And Jindal immediately assumes that McCain was simply the victim of some Larger Force which didn’t want the child of a powerful and important man to succeed in school.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Republican party. Good luck in 2012.
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