Have You Seen This Fellow?

Isn't he a bit like you and me?

In Ferdinand von Schirach's Crime – Stories (Knopf 2011) I found the following sentences of interest: "He was sly rather than intelligent, and because he was weak himself, he recognized the weaknesses in other people. He exploited these even when it gained him no advantage."

Of whom did I immediately think?

Possessed of some talent in book-learning or blather-slathering, perpetual students eventually land a job and enter a system that selects for

• "professionalism," which in context means cowardice and aversions to conflict and to candor;
• "civility," which in context means smarminess and unctuousness; and
• "smarts,"which in context means cunning and cravenness.

So of whom at the University of Puget Clowns did I immediately think?