J. Michael Straczynski has a story about a script where he had to cut a character’s “Not everyone has their own personal Ahab” line because an exec at the table didn’t know the reference & the exec “had a Harvard MBA” so if he didn’t know it of course no one else would either.

This, sadly, illustrates why the standard of education in the US has slipped continually so horribly low for decades now. Plus it sounds like the exec was either a nepo-hire/nepo-admittance or his family just paid for said degree. Either way, this is sad.

The best part of the story is that after Straczynski agreed to cut the line, he went out & bought a copy of the Classics Illustrated comic of Moby Dick & mailed it to Mr. “I have an MBA from Harvard.”