The art of the con

The good news is that Hunter Biden has figured out how to make up whatever income he lost when his term on the board of Burisma expired. The bad news is that his replacement gig may be even shadier. As Andrea Peyser puts in her New York Post column on Hunter’s new gig: “In October, a snazzy art gallery in New York City’s high-rent Soho district is scheduled to put on the market some 15 works created by the president’s son, 51, whose artistic experience, as far as I know, until now has been limited to doodles on strip club cocktail napkins.”

What’s so shady about that? Peyser explains: “These multi-media monstrosities, which one critic said resemble renderings of the COVID-19 virus, but to me look like bacteria — on acid — are expected to fetch between $75,000 and $500,000. Each. The White House is insisting that the identities of buyers remain secret, from Hunter Biden as well as from the public.”

Can secrecy serve as an ethical keystone? Byron York considers the possibilities in his Examiner Daily Memo Newsletter. This is almost funny: “Hunter Biden himself would not comment, but a White House spokesman claimed that the secret-buyer deal shows that the Biden administration ‘has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history.'” It is what might be called in other circumstances the art of the con.

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