Eric Felten writing in yesterday’s WSJ, observes the hypocrisy of the poets who withdrew from competition for the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize because it was funded by a financial firm. “Hedge funds are at the very pointy end of capitalism” sniffed one self-described “anti-capitalist in full-on form.” The anarchist vegan correctly observed that the funder’s business “does not sit with my personal politics and ethics.”
Felten notes that modern winners of a poetry prize do not “expect the florid lickspittlery once lavished on those who provided artists their livings.” He also calls out the hypocrisy of a poet who turned down a hedge funded prize but wasn’t too shy to acknowledge the support of
the ‘Arts for Everyone’ budget of the Arts Council of England’s Lottery Department. Which is to say, she’s happy to bank the cash culled from the easy marks who pay the stupidity tax, but not the earnings of a mainstream investment firm. * * * So let’s get this straight: If the investment bankers’ money is grudgingly handed over to the taxman it’s squeaky clean. But if it is given voluntarily, the lucre is filthy. What an odd and upside-down moral equation.
But Felten shouldn’t have focused all of his ire on poets. I have written about American filmmakers who similarly find a lot to dislike in the capitalists who support their work but have little problem with government.