Inspired by the Duchess of York

What could you get for  £500,000?

Or perhaps the better question is what would you be willing to give away or—let’s be frank here—what would you be willing to sell for $717,650?

Have you seen the News of the World video where Fergie (not the singer, but the Duchess of York) is selling access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, for 500,000 pounds?

Although the Duchess of York seems not to have done anything illegal, the fact that she was caught on videotape making a deal with an undercover journalist posing as a Middle Eastern business magnate certainly makes us all think, doesn’t it?

It’s made me think, for example, about what I could auction off were there a bidder.

Come on, there must be some kind of influence or access I could peddle. Therefore, as you might imagine, I’ve been looking around my office today wondering what kind of cash I could get were I to sink as low as a member of the royal family.

I’ve been able to come up with the following:

•I could overenroll you in my class.

This might actually be worth something if you’re one of those poor souls in danger of not being able to graduate on time because you haven’t fulfilled your requirements. The trouble is that since I teach at eight in the morning, I have very few students who are not of the diligent, credit-counting sort. And most of the classes I teach do not actually fill requirements. For example, last semester I taught a course called “The Femme Fatale.”

If it had been a how-to course, for example, or lab-based, I might have been able to get people to enroll simply because they thought it would help them find full employment in this otherwise sluggish economy. I could have called it a service-learning course, and my university could have counted it towards its efforts to be recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as an “Engaged University.”

After all, the whole femme fatale thing has worked for some women in the past—though it didn’t work all that well. Think Scarlett O’Hara. Think Lady Susan. Think Becky Sharp. Actually, Becky Sharp was the first person I thought of when I saw the Fergie video. You’ll remember when Thackeray’s narrator tells us toward the end of the novel that “all her lies, all her schemes, all her selfishness and her wiles, all her wit and genius had come to this bankruptcy.” She’s the kind of bad girl you feel sorry for, and I’ll have to admit that I feel sorry for Fergie. She should have taken my class.

•I could sell you my old class notes except I don’t really have notes for each class. I mean, I have heavily annotated books and stacks of articles that I’ve read, which are also annotated, but a kid who is trying to get through a class fast is not looking for what this package of materials will provide. If they are looking for the 30-Second Bunnies Theatre version, they can find it on the Internet.

•I probably could sell some microwavable Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Extreme Cheesy Explosions for twice what I paid for them, especially to my colleagues. Since I paid $0.97 for this food item, however, it’s not exactly going to make a financial analyst want to suck my toes.

•I could sell access to a former student who was a part-time worker in the registrar’s office and knows the secret telephone number—the one they pick up even when all the other lines are busy. Bidding would start at $125,000.

What I can’t sell, however, is influence that would have, well, any influence. Even if you gave me a bagful of cash, I couldn’t get your kid into school. I couldn’t get you a job. I couldn’t get you published. And I couldn’t introduce you to anyone you couldn’t meet on your own, with very few exceptions.

Show me $500,000, and I’ll tell you who the exceptions are. Ha ha, kidding! Sort of.