It’s early yet. Like I said I doubt they’ve received full discovery yet. They may just be waiting to see how it plays out. The lawyer has to know that the FBI doesn’t go forward with a high profile case unless they are 110% sure of a conviction. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s a guarantee of a win but they are usually right.
One of the interesting points from that article that I hadn’t previously considered: Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade already had a successful cosmetics line and YouTube channel, both of which have now tanked. If her parents had left her to her own devices she could well have been a self-made millionaire. Now her brand is destroyed.
Way to go, Mom and Dad.
It’s also proof that you don’t have to go to college to run a successful business/brand. Yeah, nice way to screw your kid over mom and dad - should have listened to her when she said she didn’t want to go to a university, you could have plowed that money into, say, expanding your daughter’s business venture, or bought several lifetimes of toilet paper, or something else useful.
On the other hand: if it weren’t for the connections she made because of her parents the Youtube channel probably wouldn’t have been nearly as successful and the cosmetics line probably wouldn’t have happened.
Follow the money. With high stakes at hand, easily leveraged loopholes, and a lot of money, sadly, I think you are probably right.
Since this has been going on since forever, I think it interesting to ponder people already thru the mill and well into their careers now, who may have taken short cuts to prestigious degrees, and are now in leadership positions at various companies, or politicians - will the truth ever see the light of day?
Anyone who ever benefited from something like this should probably sleep with an eye open, or keep looking over their shoulder.
I found the Caitlin Flanagan article in The Atlantic to be pretty “meh”. The only point she makes that I think should be drummed into everyone’s head is that most of the cheaters worked in high finance type jobs handling other people’s money and had no ethics issues at all in doing this. Even when some of the actions involved criminal payments.
Yet almost everyone focuses on the actresses. (And often ignore the husbands!) You have to ask yourself why the media is covering it like this.
And yes, it is the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Thousands of rich families have been doing this all the time.
The worst part of the article was trying to play this as some sort of white backlash. Nope. It’s all about wealth.
Also, Olivia Jade is going to be at “work” as a social network influencer in no time at all. She will be again making money most of us can’t really imagine. This is barely a blip in her life. It probably will boost the number of her followers and that’s all the advertisers care about.
True, but Youtube doesn’t pay unless you have genuine viewers, and people don’t watch unless there is something worth watching.
No mystery, media are aware that people would rather read about the crimes of Lori Loughlin, who they have actually heard of and know about, than Joe McHedgefund.
Sure - but that’s successful networking, isn’t it? And a hell of a lot cheaper than bribing your way into USC. If her parents are going to pull strings for her I’d rather they do it by legal networking and promotion of their kid’s ventures than illegal bribery.
Except it’s not really the kid’s ventures. There’s little more to becoming an influencer than getting approached by an agent (after numerous glam shots of you and mommy on the red carpet hit social media) and posing with products. Celebrities who introduce their own makeup lines basically say, “I like pink! And purple. And green if it isn’t too pukey,” and wear it for some photos. I’m sure it gets boring, and sometimes they have to act like life is one long party when actually they’re hungover, but it’s not exactly a venture.
I agree 100%, though, that when your kid is raking in big bucks legally, it makes little sense to push her into college, let alone bribe people to get her in. The kid was fine. She seemed happy. And she’d never have to actually work.
I think Loughlin imagines her Christian cred + her Republican cred, especially in the times of MAGA, when combined with wealth and celebrity make her next to immune. And maybe she IS that well connected, only time will tell. She seems pretty unconcerned by all appearances.
I think the bigger deal is that it’s not really her fault. The advertisers only left to not have their brands associated with the scandal, and have no reason not to come back once it dies down. No one who didn’t hate Olivia before hates her more now.
If it had been a scandal she was a part of, it could have hurt her much worse.
In other words, it’s a form of modeling work.
Since I don’t follow Olivia Jade and I’m unfamiliar with her venture I can’t say how much she actually works - even if all she does is act as a front-woman and talking head in videos depending on how much of her time that takes and how she applies herself that could still qualify as work in my mind.
Or she just sells her name and sits back while the bucks roll in.
Either way - I think everyone would have been better off, and maybe happier, if the parents had backed what she did with YouTube and cosmetics rather than pushing her into more schooling that she seemed to have little real interest in attending. And someone else with less money and connections via family might have had her slot and used it to improve their lot in life.
As several articles have pointed out, based on interviews with Lori Loughlin from before the scandal, she wanted her daughters to have the “college experience” because neither she nor her husband attended college. For them it was not about having her daughter get the best education or vaulting her into a successful career, it was solely about “going to college” as a thing they didn’t get to do as kids, like visiting Disneyland or getting to play Little League.
Which brings me to the one point that I haven’t heard much about in the media – how this scandal fits into the “think about the children” and helicopter parenting memes. I see this scandal as being as much about "it’s okay to do anything, as long as its for the kids, as it is about entitlement of the wealthy. Maybe these parents cut corners everywhere in their lives - cheating on their taxes, not fulfilling contracts, etc. But I get a sense that for at least some of them, their moral compass failed as soon as it came to their children. If willingness to do anything for your child is seen as a virtue, then why draw the line at lying, bribery or fraud?
Or murder?
And bullying a poor, scared employee of the school where their daughter worked and threatening her job if she didn’t back off from telling the school that the crew team claim was bullshit.
That there was a moral compass even before this is far from clear.
While this might be an example of helicopter parenting (though you could buy a real helicopter for that much money) I think it is more entitlement. They live in LA, they are rich, their kids deserve to be in USC no matter how smart they are or what their grades are.
My ex step-sister lives in La Jolla, and her son and daughter both went to USC. He was definitely smart enough, not sure about her, but they went before USC ramped up admissions requirements. But it seemed the only acceptable choice of school for them.
… or whether or not the kid wants to go to college or whether doing so is in the kid’s best interests or not.
I’m sure a dozen Hollywood scribes are, even now, tapping away at screenplays exploring just those questions.
I’m guessing it’s not going to be a Hallmark Channel movie.