My FB friend former Marine Robert Rose JR uses this word a lot. You are the only other person I’ve seen use it. https://www.facebook.com/groups/vets.fight.back/?ref=bookmarks
Definition of schadenfreude - pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.
Thanks for your response, FRiend Gail.
You’d be surprised how much this German word is cropping up in English prose here and there.
I wouldn’t say “schadenfreude” has become trendy, but many writers are finding it a useful concept. We don’t really have any equivalent in English.
And I must admit that I am enjoying these scandals — and even more, the prospect of many more revelations still to come.
Anything that discredits elite universities can only benefit us yokels here in Flyover Country.
I remember back when I was a teenager in the 1970s, my father — a wise and decent man — opining that there were many places to get a good education and that the Ivy League had lost some of its cachet.
Well, I think Dad was right on the first point but made an honest mistake on the second.
Competition for places in elite universities seems to have become more vicious than ever since Dad and I had those conversations around 1974-75.
It’s my hope that these scandals will reveal how admission to Harvard or Stanford is basically nothing but a status symbol — and also a device for the bicoastal elites to maintain their caste exclusivity.
Personally, if I had been blessed with a son, I would want him to go to my state’s land grant university. Any campus with cows on it is a good place to be.