So the Rhodes Scholars were just announced. Being the newsie that I am, I breezed through the story and followed the link to the pictures. The below girl startled me when I traveled over to the page:

And I thought, surely I have seen this young lady before, no? She has that Sarah Lawrence/Vassar/Bryn Mawr English Major-Gender Studies Minor look, yes? Good Germanic stock and (knowing those fine institutions) probably some good Solyndra stock thrown in there as well.

I read the caption and imagine my surprise when it turned out she was a he. Did not Aerosmith once have a song about this? (Yes, this blogpost has a faint Crying Game-ish tint to it. Sorry.) From the official Ya-hoooo caption:

This June 19, 2006 file photo shows Ronan Farrow, son of actress and activist Mia Farrow and film director Woody Allen, during their visit to Berlin.

Ronan Farrow has been chosen as a Rhodes Scholar. He is among 32 American students who will be awarded scholarships to study at Oxford University, it was announced Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011.

Okay, so the picture is old. And undoubtably the dude has duded up. Got himself, hopefully, into some MMA classes. A couple of sore ribs, a busted lip, and a kick or three south of the border will toughen him up real quick. Or he could just join the Marine Corps. He has that pre-Parris Island sheen, no?

What lottery did he lose in life to be born into the Allen household? I can endlessly insult the lecherous man who shares his genes (and his sister), but enough has been said about him. I loved Woody’s work at one time, now I refuse to watch anything he does. He picks these young actresses, like Scarlett Johansson and Julia Roberts, to do his gross schtick with. Yech!

I once saw Woody and his daughter girlfriend wife when I lived in New York City. It was mid-1990ish and I was walking on the Upper East Side, not too Upper, but well north of 59th Street. I was close to 5th Avenue, cutting over to Park. I saw an Asian girl strolling five feet behind a young kid with a khaki baseball hat pulled real low. Like some preppy gangster.

Anyway, the girl looked to be about my age and she wore sandals, the Roman type that had laces that wrapped up the ankle. The kid turned around and waited for her. I passed him and realized that he was not a young boy, but an elder man. And then I discovered it was Woody Allen. I walked faster; I felt slightly creeped out.

I told an actress friend of mine and she mentioned that she took acting classes with Soon-Yi. So what is she like? I asked her.

Well, she is quiet and cries every now and then, my actress friend told me. She’ll never make it in the acting biz. Too shy or something.

Of course, my buddy was one of those Midwest transplants to New York. I want to say she was from Kansas. And she had so thoroughly embraced the Big Apple that she was more New York than many natives. (Note: On further google review, she is not a Kansas girl, but a Missou’er. I just found her Facebook page. 2200 friends. Is that possible? I knew she was extraverted, just not that extra-extraverted.)

As for Ronan and his Dad, if he can be called that, the son had this to say about him:

He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent… I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.

I am starting to like this Ronan kid, despite the fact that he looks like he needs some serious manning up. When the revelations came out about his father, what with the nude photographs and all that, Woody was actually relieved:

In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview, Allen estimated that, despite the scandal’s damage to his reputation, Farrow’s discovery of Allen’s attraction to Soon-Yi Previn by finding nude photographs of her was “just one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life. . . It was a turning point for the better.”

Of his relationship with Farrow, he said, “I’m sure there are things that I might have done differently. . . Probably in retrospect I should have bowed out of that relationship much earlier than I did.”

In a report June 22, 2011, Reuters quoted Allen as saying, “What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now. There was no scandal, but people refer to it all the time as a scandal and I kind of like that in a way because when I go I would like to say I had one real juicy scandal in my life.”

Where was the scandal? Really? Maybe I am provincial in my thinking, but to me, marrying your daughter is one of the big no-nos in life. Yes, she was not officially your daughter. Still. And I am not mentioning the other disgusting actions on his part towards children. (Google, use it if you want to barf.)

As for Ronan, apparently he is quite the prodigy. The youngest kid to graduate from Bard College. And the kiddo followed that kudo up with a law degree from Yale. Now this Rhodes hurrah. I went to wikipedia and saw this pic of him:

And then I thought: Dude, someone at Yahoo does not like you. They posted a picture of you looking more feminine than half the freshman female class at UC Berkeley. The right-handed ones even. Not that that is sayin’ a whole lot.

Back to reading Ronan’s bio. I completely take back my earlier statement on his poor genes. They are in working order. Proof- his effort as part of President Obama’s and Secretary of State Clinton’s administration:

At the State Department since 2009, Farrow has directed the US government’s relationship with nongovernmental actors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His appointment was billed by late Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke as an unprecedented show of commitment by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the civil society and non-governmental actors playing a critical role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. At the time of his appointment, a State Department official speaking on condition of anonymity referred to Farrow as “a friggin’ genius,” adding that “he’s young but he has a depth of experience that many people twice his age lack.”

Not that you will need it, but good luck at Oxford, kid. Steer clear of the hairdressers. . .