Writers are falling over themselves ridiculing the two poets who’ve withdrawn from consideration for a pretty big-time poetry prize in England because the money behind the prize comes from a hedge fund.
There’s the guy in this post’s headline, for whom no contemporary Alexander Pope could be satirical enough to do justice to this absurdity.
There’s this guy in the Economist: “The poets should watch out, or they may soon have only their own words to eat.”
I mean, what’s wrong with these glorious engines of financial growth? I mean, sure, a day doesn’t go by without the SEC announcing a new case against a hedge fund… And of course
…[I]n the categories of custody and financial disclosure, …hedge fund adviser violations were about double that of other advisers. Hedge fund advisers that were examined by state regulators were cited for violations concerning their valuation of holdings, undisclosed conflicts of interest, cross-trading (not recording transactions that cancel each other out, often to hide a markup), preferential treatment, selling to nonaccredited investors, and selling unregistered securities without an appropriate exemption.
Google HEDGE FUND SCANDAL if you want to spend all day online.
To be sure, the particular hedge fund giving money to the poetry prize might be pure as the driven snow. That doesn’t really mean anything, does it? Hedge funds as such have tarnished themselves plenty in the last five or so years, and they shouldn’t be surprised that some people don’t want to be associated with them…
But no, it’s ridiculous. It’s like turning down the opportunity to have Donald Trump moderate your presidential debate. Where is the author of The Dunciad when you need him? After all Trump is a perfectly respectable businessman… a glorious engine of financial growth, really… What is it with Huntsman, Perry, Paul, and Romney? Silly buggers. They should watch out.
December 8th, 2011 at 5:36PM
“Hedge funds as such have tarnished themselves plenty in the last five or so years, and they shouldn’t be surprised that some people don’t want to be associated with them…”
Well, *governments* have tarnished themselves plenty in the last hundred years or so, with at least 50 million deaths of their own citizens to their credit, so by the same logic one shouldn’t want to accept a prize that comes directly or indirectly from a government…
December 8th, 2011 at 6:08PM
Withdrawing from consideration from a prize harms nobody else. In fact, it gives a better chance of winning to the other candidates. I don’t see what the fuss is about. Suppose Kinsella won the prize, then people might call him a hypocrite for railing against capitalism yet accepting the money. What could he say in his defense in that case?
I don’t know what the Dunciad has to do with anything. If these poets’ work is boring or otherwise undistinguished, it is boring, whether or not they withdraw their work from consideration for any particular prize for any particular reason. What is the logic here? It’s not as though these commentators have read the work of either of these poets.
December 8th, 2011 at 8:37PM
Given the constant disgrace college sports brings on itself, as documented diligently on this blog, what’s UD’s take on the fact that the incoming prez of the MLA is Paterno Professor of Literature, with all the rights and privileges and funding pertaining thereto?
December 8th, 2011 at 9:18PM
J. Remy: My take is that it’s pretty funny and pretty embarrassing but it’s not the guy’s fault and he’ll only be prez for a year (I think I’m right that the term is one year).
December 8th, 2011 at 10:00PM
I guess what I was getting at was…if poetry funding by a hedge fund is automatically evil, and this blog rightly and regularly bashes the excesses of college sports…isn’t there also something not quite right about a humanities fund created by the guy who ran what we’re seeing is a rather corrupt football program? Where’s the line that, when crossed, makes money dirty?
December 8th, 2011 at 11:08PM
J. Remy: I don’t think poetry funding from a hedge fund is automatically evil, but I have no trouble with principled people deciding that it’s – not evil at all, but not palatable for them to enjoy hedge fund profits. Personally, if I’d been nominated, I doubt I would have minded that the money came from a hedge fund, even though hedge funds in general are pretty smelly sorts of enterprises.
As for the Paterno money… We always knew Paterno, like his compatriots at almost all big-time football schools, oversaw a pretty stinky program (however Penn St. deluded itself on the matter). Now it turns out it was stinkier than we’d thought. I’m not seeing any bright line that was crossed and made the money dirty. The money was always reasonably dirty, as any money connected to big-time university sports is liable to be.
It’s a great big dirty world, as Randy Newman tells us. I don’t think we should be above taking money from somewhat dirty sources like these.
When all of a chunk of money unambiguously comes from a criminal or degenerate source – an apartheid state, Bernard Madoff, Muamar Gaddafi – you shouldn’t take it.