The WSJ should not have allowed a high school senior to harm her future self...

... by publishing an op-ed attributing her college rejections to her nonpossession of diversity factors — says Kira Goldenberg in the Columbia Journalism Review.

Pity the well-off white girl who has not had to struggle with identity politics or face prejudice because of who she is (wait until she realizes the “real world” still has a glass ceiling). Blaming groups that lack the inherent privilege of caucasian heterosexuals for your own bad luck in a crapshoot is a gross distortion of affirmative action, which is imperfect but remains necessary, in some form, as long as historical inequities persist. And considering the Supreme Court was hearing gay marriage cases last week, persist they do.

Goldenberg purports to care about Suzy Lee Weiss's potentially regrettable "youthful contribution to her Google search results, one that eternally allows future employers and boyfriends to find her arguing against affirmative action and disdaining diversity." Goldenberg says the WSJ was "irresponsible" to allow this naive child to display herself on the internet as "bitter" and "egocentric."

Goldenberg is, ironically, also displaying herself on the internet, and I'd say she's displaying herself as overaggressive and unfair. I just read Weiss's op-ed and it's lighthearted and self-effacing — the opposite of egocentric. She's saying I'm an ordinary kid with nothing special to put on my application, and then she mocks herself for being "[a]n underachieving selfish teenager," chattering out a bunch of phony excuses, and she signs off saying that she needs to go watch TV.

I wouldn't be surprised if Weiss shares Goldenberg's attitude about diversity policies. It seems to me that Goldenberg flipped out at one line — "If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities" — and completely lost her capacity to perceive humor.

Talk about embarrassing yourself on the internet!