Show Facing the hustler that lives in in all 01 o of us Gregory Rodriguez Special to the Los Angeles Times Tunes At first you had to wonder whether she wasn't just a little bit nuts But then as you thought about it was hard not to admire her wiliness and sheer determination The exploits of year old Azia Kim the Fullerton Calif woman who passed herself off as a Stanford student for eight months is isa isa isa a fabulous story that strikes a chord in our national psyche We Ve Americans might be a sanctimonious bunch but we also have a glimmer in our eyes We publicly might embrace the Horatio Alger ethic of lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps through honest work but were we're also secretly fond of our crafty cousins who climb their way to the top by successfully gaming the system Although American culture has been fully and we haven't fully lost our lawless frontier spirit particularly y those of us in the West Sure we wc teach our children that Its not whether you win or lose but how you play the game But as soon as they grow up we know the professional world will teach them new axioms ones we dont don't entirely disapprove of like Act now apologize later or Its easier to ask forgiveness than permission We admire so-called so self made successes who played by their own rules and did it their way The rhetoric of multiculturalism which encourages us to maintain our inherited collective identities might have temporary triumphs but this is still a hyper- hyper individualist nation in which people are free to reinvent themselves and choose their cultures This r is where an born Austrian-born bodybuilder can become governor of Cali California fornia where Bronx-born Bronx Ralph Lipshitz morphs into Ralph Lauren and Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr named after his father who was named after a century white abolitionist recasts himself as At the core of the American dream lies the premise that your past does not predetermine your future We still tell schoolchildren they can become whoever and whatever they want But lets let's face it this process of self-reinvention self isn't always pretty Our cult of mobility encourages strivers not only to sell themselves but to pass to play the part and to pad that resume In other words our penchant for reinventing ourselves is intertwined with our heritage of Historian Walter Valter A. A McDougall has argued that at heart the prototypical American is a hustler No he doe doesn't nt mean that we are more more prone to corruption or deceit than other people but simply that we have had he says more opportunity to pursue our ambitions by foul means or fair than any other people in history Throughout most of European history only the elites could hope to manipulate the system in America he asserts Allwhite All Allwhite Allwhite white males enjoyed the full freedom to hustle white women had their own tricks and even enslaved Africans we now know played the system as best they could And even as the US U.S. population diversified the tradition lived on Indeed the urban immigrant saga at the turn of the century the story of assimilation brought new and more outlandish possibilities for self- self reinvention Our version of the English language which as McDougall points out is uniquely endowed endowed with words connoting a swindle is well- well equipped to narrate narrate our deceit with beauties like bamboozle caboodle double cross fake out grift hoodwink kite pinch rip off snooker and on and on Ve We still dont don't know exactly why Azia Kim wanted to dupe Stanford officials as well as her advisers in the Army ROTC program she enrolled in at nearby Santa Clara University But you youcan youcan youcan can bet it had everything to do with ambition social status and perhaps her parents' parents desire to reinvent themselves through their child They do that sometimes After the initial shock died down news reports and discussion forums quoted Stanford students as holding a begrudging admiration for Kims Kim's craftiness and expressing sympathy over the pressure to achieve that many people believe her parents must have applied On the online message board of the Stanford Daily students argued over the severity of her sin as well as the punishment it did or did not deserve Some saw it as cut and dried she broke the rules got caught and should be punished Others struggled with what was fair and right |