Bloodless Coup

"Young, thin and cute"

This is from a nice post taking down the "I didn't get hired because I'm a Repubican" whine/OpEd that people are talking about today, but I like this description:

Anyone who's spent any time in academia knows the grim reality: an overwhelming reliance on paid-per-course temps; the rarity of permanent jobs in any field in any given year; the hundreds of applications that get sent in response to any one of those jobs; the almost incredible number of hoops that any applicant has to jump through even to make the semi-final cut. You have a slightly better chance these days of making it as a rock star. Oh, and the qualifications for an entry-level academic job these days -- they're more or less equivalent to what the qualifications for an endowed chair used to be a generation ago. And no, it really doesn't hurt if you're also young, thin, and cute.