If you think it’s unfair to suggest Hunter wait a few years before selling his paintings, just think about all the far more talented, but far less privileged, artists whose work we’ll never get to see. The creative industry globally is full of variations of Hunter Biden: people whose parents’ names opened doors for them or whose parents’ money gave them the luxury to do unpaid internships or spend years working on their art without worrying about going hungry. In the UK, for example, just 16% of people in creative jobs are from working-class backgrounds. If you want to make it in a creative industry these days, talent is often secondary to money and connections. Ultimately, however, Hunter isn’t the real issue here: rather, he is the symptom of a far bigger problem. I mean, Biden has made a big deal about how he is tough on Putin if he gets an autocrat to do what he wants, surely he should be able to influence his own kid. “His family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example.”Ī rather better example of ethics in action, I think, is if Biden had had a rigorous conversation with his 51-year-old son and persuaded him to do as much painting as his heart desired, but leave off selling his work until daddy left office. “The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history,” the deputy White House press secretary said when questioned on the subject. Joe Biden, by the way, seems to think that the guardrails he has put in place around Hunter’s artwork are an example of his administration raising the bar. But, guess what? We don’t need to keep the bar there. I get it: the Trump family set the bar for ethical conduct lower than a dungeon in hell. If Donald Trump Jr had been flogging art for oversized amounts while his dad was in office, I reckon the liberal reaction might be rather different. Weirdly, however, while the situation has raised a few eyebrows in the mainstream media, liberals haven’t been as outraged about the situation as one might expect. In fact, the whole situation screams nepotism. Still, the optics of Hunter’s pricey paintings aren’t great. It is well established, for example, that you can donate your way to an ambassadorship. (The New York Times generously described them as “ leaning towards the surreal”, which is a polite way of saying: “Looks a bit like a Covid-stricken Mr Blobby vomited on a canvas.”) There are already plenty of other ways, after all, that you can “buy” influence in the US’s rich democracy. Even without those safeguards in place, I highly doubt Biden’s policies would be affected by sales of his son’s terrible paintings.
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