Genius Remains Painful

An earlier editorial here was mostly the usual bitchiness, but the subject of that barely sketched all-about-us fuck you was already researched, thought out & typed up when the MacArthur Grants were new, 31 yrs. ago. By Michael Kinsley yet, when he was worth occasional attention.

John D. MacArthur got rich by selling one-dollar life insurance policies through newspaper ads during the Depression. “Dubious” is how Parade magazine charitably described this scheme in 1976, by which time MacArthur was a self-made billionaire and self-styled colorful old codger, fond of shoveling leftover food into his pocket at banquets.

St. Nick on a kebab stick, if Parade fucking magazine calls your shit dubious ...

Another paragraph:

NOT ONE of the first MacArthur Fellows is suffering from lack of recognition for his or her talents. What’s more, though some probably can use the money more than others, not one really faces financial obstacles to exercising his or her creativity. They are already doing whatever it is the MacArthur Foundation admires them for doing, many are doing quite well at it, and presumably they will keep on doing it, unless this windfall encourages them to stop.*

Final worth-it paragraph:

But take something like the “Kennedy Center Honors,” created three years ago because, according to Kennedy Center chairman Roger Stevens, "We believe that there is a need in this country for national recognition of individuals who enrich our lives and our culture by their life work in the field of the performing arts.” A “need”? The first winners were Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers, and Artur Rubenstein. Have they really been underappreciated and underrewarded for their contributions to our cultural life? Is there another potentially great hoofer out there somewhere who has considered Fred Astaire’s career—the fame, the glamor, the money, the love of millions, the other awards—and who has decided it’s not worth it, until he reads that Fred has won the Kennedy Center Honors, and decides not to become a dentist after ail? That’s what you have to believe in order to suppose that giving Fred Astaire one more award serves any useful purpose.

Yep. Eff the entire structure, Oscars &c too.

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*Also typed Kinsley:

Even the ones you may not have heard of are identified as having “won honors for her poetry, film-making and plays” (Leslie Marmon Silko, a 33-year-old Pueblo Indian) ...

Our guess is that receiving the prize didn't hurt Leslie Marmon Silko at all, so we begrudge one to the MacArthurs while laughing at Kinsley.