By Steve Fey

"The C-students run the world!" – Harry S. Truman

To illustrate Harry’s point, consider Neil Bush, brother to the President, son to the President at the time of the Silverado debacle. He once said that he couldn’t see anything wrong with lending someone else’s money to a third party even if he had no reasonable expectation of getting it back. Neil made a lot of money out of the Savings-and-Loan business, and he was a C student, just like his big brother GW. Makes you wonder why any of us study hard to get those better grades, doesn’t it?

Any reader of The Dilbert Newsletter knows how funny C students can be. They might mangle common sayings ("get out of the kitchen if you don’t want to rock the boat") or they might just make decisions that leave people scratching their heads. Like the head of Qwest (nee US West, nee Mountain Bell) who laid off a whole bunch of customer service representatives, never mind that the only thing his company had to sell was customer service. ‘Course, he’s rich as heck now and the company’s struggling to stay out of bankruptcy (I pity the new CEO, who seems an honest fellow.) Once again, maybe we should’ve just partied more and paid less attention in class, huh?

I find such things mind-boggling, and I know everything! Imagine how confusing such behavior must be to the mere mortals who buy stock from C students, elect C students to school boards, raise C student children, etc. Is it any wonder why life always seems to be such a mystery? I had to ask my associate, Mr. Expert on Everything, but Mr. E. on E., amazingly, was able to offer a solution.

"What?" I asked. "Please tell us, what can we do about this enigmatic C student success?"

"Simple," he answered, "just reconfigure the universe!"

"What?" I interjected.

"Oh, come on, you know. Put together a world where virtue really does triumph, where stupid behavior has negative results, and your mother was right about how to behave to get ahead."

"That sounds impossible!" I said. "How do we do that?" I asked.

"Just go see those cloning dudes," Mr. E. on E. said, "they’re good at changing reality. Or maybe those folks who made up the trickle-down economic theory!"

"Are you serious?" I interrogated.

"Of course I’m serious," said the expert. "Reality is always subject to change! Think about it: one hundred years ago Adolph Hitler was a poor young kid in Austria, Russia was ruled by an emperor, the Republican party stood for strong government, and gold was $35 and ounce. Now just look at things!"

"Huh, you’re right," I admitted. "So, we can make this a world where C students get C student jobs, so the rest of us can stand half a chance of getting somewhere?"

"Well," he said, "I didn’t say you should start doing drugs, did I?"