The Private School Stereotype Rears Its Head...Again

I did have a long rant about a thread over at Making Light in which both Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Teresa Nielsen Hayden take a young political blogger to task for sloppy language in a post. But why waste my time and my readers' time? The short of it is that making assumptions about a person based solely on their alma mater (or appearance, as comes out in the comments) is very silly, but effective for the person being stereotyped. That is, if someone wants to dismiss me because I'm a young, blonde Notre Dame alumna who grew up overseas as the daughter of an Air Force officer, they can do so with my thanks and appreciation for effectively removing themselves from the group of people with which I should concern myself.