RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Actress mixed up about what it takes to be a good parent

My dad tried to be a good parent. He also taught me to respect the law. As a cop who was on the job for 37 years, he probably never saw a conflict between the two. For him, teaching his kids to respect the law was the ultimate example of good parenting.

It seems like a thousand years ago, but that’s how things used to work in America. That’s not how life plays out in Hollywood, though.

Recently, actress Felicity Huffman spoke publicly for the first time about the bad decisions that wound up getting her a starring role in an FBI crackdown dubbed Operation Varsity Blues.

The admissions scandal gave America’s colleges and universities a black eye long before the pathetic spectacle last week of three mealy-mouthed university presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, M. Elizabeth Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. — testifying before Congress.

The university leaders were called to explain what appears to have been an overly permissive approach to antisemitism on their campuses following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. They ducked some questions and hedged their answers to others. The presidents should have been clear and definitive, but instead they sounded as if they had been coached by lawyers and PR specialists. Now one has lost her job and the others are in danger of a similar fate.

What is not in doubt, however, are the details of the 2019 scandal that rocked the world of higher education and raised questions about the integrity of the admissions system. Wealthy parents funneled millions in bribes through a “consultant” who promised to get their children into elite universities such as Yale, Stanford and the University of Southern California.

You want to talk about affirmative action? There you have it. This is preferential treatment for the rich and famous. Yet, no one seemed all that worried that universities were lowering standards for the privileged or that the children of the top 1 percent weren’t qualified to get into the Ivy League.

Oh, there were other concerns. What concerned the FBI was the alleged fraud. The public was concerned about the unfairness of an admissions system where the “fix” is in. But unlike with Black and Latino students who are admitted to elite schools — usually through a lot of hard work — no one was concerned that universities are graduating privileged kids from wealthy families who won’t be able to hack it in the real world.

As I revisit this story, I have my own concerns. And it stems from what Huffman said during an interview with a Los Angeles television station, ABC7 Eyewitness News, that aired Nov. 30. During the segment, the “Desperate Housewives” star apologized for fraudulently camouflaging $15,000 as a charitable donation so that her daughter would dishonestly obtain a higher SAT score.

In March 2019, Huffman was arrested by FBI agents, with guns drawn, in what she described as a raid of her home. She pleaded guilty two months later to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. She served 11 days of a 14-day prison sentence, did 250 hours of community service and paid a fine as part of her plea deal.

As a parent who is trying really hard to get this job right — and who wants to teach my kids to take responsibility for their actions and not blame external forces for their mistakes or misdeeds — there were two lines in Huffman’s interview that really set me off.

First, there was the part where Huffman suggested that she had no choice but to commit these crimes.

“It felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future,” she said. “And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”

Then there was the part where she said she went along with the scheme — as presented to her by the consultant, William “Rick” Singer — because she thought that was what was required to be a good parent.

“I know hindsight is 20/20, but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it,” she said. “So, I did it.”

Huffman failed at everything — parenting, following the law and accepting the fact that she decided to become a criminal.

And to think, the actress claims she did all this to give her daughter a good life. She should have concentrated on setting a better example of how to be a good person.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.