Saville was on to talk about her experience inviting black Republican Candace Owens to address her school as a “black trailblazer” for black history month. Her school had asked her (it’s not clear whether administrators asked student leaders, or all students) to nominate someone.
Another student, with the support of Head of School Cathy Sgroi, blasted Saville in an email that went out to everyone at the school, calling Saville “disrespectful,” and Owens “racist,” asserting “that she has done absolutely nothing for the black community.” Saville said that the other student never explained her position.
The dean of students then “arranged a Zoom meeting” between Saville and her student critic, who later apologized in an email to Saville. However, when Julia Saville and her family asked that the student’s apology be sent out to everyone at the school, according to Saville, the school, i.e., Cathy Sgroi, refused, without explanation.
(Kristina Bethea Odejimi was the dean of students between 2014 and 2019; the position appears not to have been filled since Odejimi was hired away by Bowdoin College.)
I guess Head of School Cathy Sgroi sought to suppress knowledge of what the school had done to Julia Saville. Well, millions of people have since found out.
But that’s not why I’m writing about Saville. It’s the way she carried herself. First off, she looked a little peculiar. She’s a cute girl, but something was off. That’s because she wore no make-up. The typical female TV interviewee has more layers of war paint on than a Tenth Avenue… well, you get my drift.
And the way she addressed the host. “Mr. Carlson.” “Sir.”
Everyone, regardless of age, should talk that way, on both sides of the screen. But instead, we get all of this phony familiarity. “Tucker” this,” and “Tucker” that.
The girl was nothing, if not poised, and yet she was every bit the lady. I married a lady like that, and if my chief of research is really lucky, so will he.
Year ago, newspaper columnist Ann Landers once quoted a dad as telling his son that such fake familiarity is how introductions are handled between “Johns” and working girls in Vegas.
The interview reminded me of a scene in a poignant, if at times hilarious movie masterpiece, Falling Down (1993), about the collapse of American civilization.
The protagonist, “D-fens” (Michael Douglas), a middle-aged, unemployed engineer who had worked his entire life for defense contractors, tries to purchase breakfast at an L.A. fast-food joint, but is turned down, because he’s three minutes past the deadline.
D-fens catches himself being improperly familiar, addressing the counter clerk and her manager by their first names: “I still call my boss, ‘Mister,’ I worked for him for seven years.”
Things go downhill from there, but that happens, when you dispense with the little things that undergird civilization.
Award-winning, New York-based freelancer Nicholas Stix founded A Different Drummer magazine (1989-93). Stix has written for Die Suedwest Presse, New York Daily News, New York Post, Newsday, Middle American News, Toogood Reports, Insight, Chronicles, the American Enterprise, Campus Reports, VDARE, the Weekly Standard, Front Page Magazine, Ideas on Liberty, National Review Online and the Illinois Leader. His column also appears at Men's News Daily, MichNews, Intellectual Conservative, Enter Stage Right and OpinioNet. Stix has studied at colleges and universities on two continents, and earned a couple of sheepskins, but he asks that the reader not hold that against him. His day jobs have included washing pots, building Daimler-Benzes on the assembly-line, tackling shoplifters and teaching college, but his favorite job was changing his son's diapers.
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