Why Moms Are Livid Over Lori Loughlin's Alleged College Scandal

LONG ISLAND, NY — It takes a lot to get so many mothers literally livid with rage.

I mean, we moms, we're busy. Feeding our kids, driving them to soccer, dance, theater, gymnastics, listening to their stories and helping with homework — and that's on top of cleaning, organizing, shopping, and oh, right, working full-time. Who has time to get red-faced and furious over another woman's public missteps?

But when Lori Loughlin was arrested — she surrendered Thursday and appeared before a Los Angeles judge to answer for her alleged role in a massive college admissions and bribery scandal, later posting $1 million bail — we moms slammed down our coffee mugs in collective disgust.

Loughlin, who grew up on Long Island and went on to star as the beloved Aunt Becky in "Full House" and also, attend many events in the Hamptons in recent years, was among dozens charged in what the Department of Justice is calling the "largest ever" college recruitment scam.

Documents from the DOJ's investigation, titled "Operation Varsity Blues," show that prosecutors have charged 50 people, including 33 parents, nine coaches, two SAT and ACT administrators, one proctor and one college administrator.

Yes, celebrities get in trouble, often and publicly. Their outrageous acts are fodder for fan magazines and water cooler gossip. It's a fact that the public salivates unabashedly over the latest morsel about a Hollywood star who's toppled from her gilded pedestal — or in Aunt Becky's case, from the attic in one of those glorious Painted Ladies in San Francisco.

But this, this is different. For one, we women of a certain age grew up with Aunt Becky. She was the one who won the heart of the gorgeous and gosh-darned sweet heartthrob Uncle Jesse, played to disarm with charm by John Stamos. We watched Becky have her babies — Becky, with her big smile and shiny hair, she was Every Mom, never ruffled, always picture perfect when her twin boys were being, well, toddlers. She was the mom we all hoped to be — competent, honest, caring, and most importantly, genuinely good. A mom kids could look up to — trust.

But all American pie and Mom similarities beside, what Loughlin is charged with doing cuts far deeper than just a real-life actor shattering the myth of their on-screen persona — reminding us yet again, that these are not really doctors (or Super Moms) — they just play them on TV.

What Loughlin has been charged with doing breaks the mother code. How many of us — no, scratch that, ALL of us who have kids in college have sat up into the wee hours with our kids, trying desperately to wend our way through the maze of frustration, despair and anxiety that comprise the SATS, ACTS and college admission process. And don't even get me started on the FAFSA. To this day — and my son is now a happy college graduate living and working in his chosen field — the thought of the FAFSA process still makes me clammy with sweat and dread.

Financial aid, working two and three jobs, giving up everything to afford college — especially if our kids were reaching toward the Ivy stars — we did it all, arduous and painful and tedious and fiscally draining as it was. We did it all, and we'd do it again, because the fact is, we parents, we moms, we love our kids. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that we wouldn't do to see them off to the college of their dreams, to pack the car with memories and head off, crying the whole time — no one said we had to be happy about the actually leaving part – as we drove to the colleges and universities where their next chapters would begin.

All of us, we'd do anything to see our kids happy. Except cheat. Except lie. Except pay half a million dollars — even if we had it — to shove our kids to the head of the pack at the expense of all the others who played by the rules.

We moms, when our kids start school, we form what I've always called a sisterhood. We watch each other's sons and daughters after school, arrange play dates, coach teams, volunteer as den moms and Sunday school teachers. We sew costumes and make mac and cheese and hot cocoa on snow days. We love each other's kids without reservation, as if they were our own.

And when it's time for college, we all cry into our iced lattes together, over the agony of applications, over the crippling blow when the envelope that comes back is thin, not thick, signaling rejection. We cheer for our kids' triumphs and roar with pride on graduation day — the day that says our babies, they're grown now. They've made it.

We do all of this, we moms, together. What Loughlin and the others have been charged with, it violates every mom code in the book and speaks to an ugly sense of entitlement and arrogance born of wealth and privilege. That sense of entitlement sends a sneering message that all of our hard work to put our kids through school is pedestrian, meaningless, and quite simply, beneath Loughlin and her peers, who, if they are found guilty, had the millions and the complete lack of moral fiber needed to bypass the honor code and head straight through the monied doors.

Never mind the message it sends to the kids.

No matter how much we all loved Aunt Becky — or maybe because we all adored her, together — what Lori Loughlin and the others are charged with doing, it's an insult to everything we've all worked for — a well-manicured middle finger to the American dream.

And it's a bitter reality that sadly, has many shooting off memes on social media of little Michelle brandishing guns to break Aunt Becky out of the slammer. Funny? Yes, I guess, but also sad.

Because if Aunt Becky can stoop so low, anyone can. And that's the most heartbreaking truth of all.