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The pre-modern world was one of family connections and personal favors. Kings and queens ruled as well as reigned.
Families controlled the commercial world. Civil service jobs were handed down to relatives. Oxbridge colleges awarded fellowships automatically to descendants of college founders. The word "nepotism" derives from Latin and was first used to describe the Catholic church's practice of allowing popes to appoint their nephews (who were often illegitimate children) to the College of Cardinals.
The march of progress can be measured by the abolition of nepotism. The Church dispensed with the position of cardinalis nepos in 1692. State bureaucracies introduced open examination in the 19th century. Oxbridge colleges replaced "founders kin" with examination fellows. The rise of big business in the late 19th and early 20th centuries replaced owner-managers with professional business people.
Yet there are two high high-profile areas where nepotism continues to thrive - entertainment and politics. The Dec. 19 issue of New York magazine has popularized the term "nepo babies" to describe the children of Hollywood stars who are themselves stars. "She has her mother's eyes - and agent" reads the cover caption next to photographs of eight prominent nepo babies cropped onto infant bodies in bassinets.
Hollywood has always had a nepotism problem. The film business was founded by exuberant nepotists such as Carl Laemmle, the co-founder of Universal Pictures, who was known as "Uncle Carl" because he brought so many family members on board. And leading clans such as the Fairbanks, Houstons, Douglases, Barrymores and Redgraves hogged leading roles down the generations.
But the problem is arguably getting worse and certainly isn't getting any better. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" a Hollywood film celebrating Hollywood, featured nine nepo babies. O'Shea Jackson, Jr. played his own father, Ice Cube, in the 2015 biopic "Straight Outta Compton." The ever-growing service industry of agents, lawyers and the rest is also dominated by leading families.
The situation is no better in Britain. It's impossible to pick up a tabloid without reading about the antics of A-listers: the Beckhams and Jaggers, Iris and Raff Law, Amber Le Bon, Lily Collins. The singer Lily Allen is the daughter of actor Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. Kate Winslet has just appeared in the Channel 4 drama "I Am Ruth" alongside her daughter Mia Threapleton. Liz Hurley is to star in a thriller directed by her 20-year-old son Damian.
The only other prominent industry that can match entertainment is politics. You can find nepotists everywhere: Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is the son of a former prime minister and France's far-right politics is a Le Pen family business. American politics has long been dominated by a collection of regionally based dynasties: Roosevelts and Cuomos in New York, Tafts in Ohio, Kennedys in Massachusetts, Stevensons in Illinois, Browns in California, DuPonts in Delaware, La Follettes in Wisconsin, and Bushes in Connecticut and Texas.
There is some evidence that the dynastic principle is getting stronger: George W. Bush was after all the first presidential son to make it to the White House since 1824. Brand names give family members a head start - hence the focus on the young Bushes, Clintons and Trumps. Dual-career couples such as the Clintons and the Cheneys boost each other's careers and produce political children. Congress people run politics as a family business, giving jobs to the children of friends in return for their friends giving jobs to their children.
By a recent count, Britain's House of Commons contains 52 nepo babies, around 8% of the total membership. Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons and by tradition a non-political figure, is the son of Labour Member of Parliament Doug Hoyle, and attended his first Labour Party conference as a babe in arms.
Nepotism used to be primarily associated with the Conservative Party: the phrase "Bob's your uncle" stems from the fact that Lord Salisbury - Robert Gascoyne-Cecil - helped to make his nephew, Arthur Balfour, his successor as prime minister. That tradition continues: 10 Tory MPs are the children or relatives of previous MPs. Today's Labour Party is arguably an even more enthusiastic practitioner of nepotism. Hilary Benn and Stephen Kinnock are the children of two Labour giants. John Cryer, the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party is the offspring of a husband-and-wife MP duo, is married to a fellow Labour MP, Ellie Reeves, and is brother-in-law to the shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.
Why does any of this matter? The obvious answer is that social justice matters in all walks of life: Professions dominated by insiders, particularly family dynasties, deserve scrutiny. Several nepo babies have hit back at New York magazine by arguing that actors have to pass a neverending performance test: A family connection might get your foot inside the door, but it doesn't sustain you over an acting career. The same might be said of politics given that politicians have to perform in public.
All the same, getting your foot in the door ranks high on the list of privileges. What about all the "mute, inglorious Miltons" - as Thomas Gray might elegize - who didn't get a look in because the children of privilege had hogged all the opportunities? And there are plenty of prominent figures who owe their prominence to family connections rather than innate talent. Would Brooklyn Beckham be the star of a cooking show if his parents weren't David and Victoria Beckham? And would George W. Bush have made it to the presidency if he didn't belong to such a prominent dynasty?
A more telling answer is that social justice matters even more in entertainment and politics than in other walks of life. Especially the latter. It can't be good for democracy if representative positions are hogged by people who belong to a narrow, privileged caste. Democracy withers if it doesn't have deep roots in the soil of society.
As for entertainment, its leading lights perform a quasi-public role because they tell us the stories that help to make sense of our lives. They are also taking on an increasingly prominent role in public life by pronouncing on great public issues, usually from a left-liberal position. The worlds of politics and entertainment are increasingly intertwined: Boris Johnson made his reputation as a TV performer and journalist rather than in the House of Commons, while Barack Obama now produces programs for Netflix. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle occupy a strange netherworld between politics and celebrity - and between old-style dynasty and new.
Most professions are intensifying the war against family privilege in the light of worries about stalled social mobility and wider economic stagnation. A growing number of corporations have introduced "CV blind recruitment" (whereby candidates' names, schools and universities are stripped out). Family companies force family members to pass meritocratic tests if they are to have a hands-on role. (John Elkann, the boss of Italy's Exor, is engaged in a bitter lawsuit to reduce the role of family members in running Agnelli-related companies.) Oxford and Cambridge colleges seem to go out of their way not to give places to the children of alumni.
The worlds of politics and entertainment are lagging badly behind. There is some talk of improving recruitment into British politics with blind CVs, for example. But the mood in both American politics and global entertainment is resistant to change. "The current conversation about nepo babies is just designed to diminish and denigrate and hurt," says Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Hollywood royalty Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. "There are many of us. Dedicated to our craft. Proud of our lineage. Strong in our belief in our right to exist." Hardly an attitude that leads to industry-changing reform. U.S. politics also has many people who were born at third base and think they've hit a triple.
The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of populism is the accusation that the world is controlled by a self-dealing elite that applies one set of rules to itself (look after your family first!) and another to the rest of the world.
Entertainers and politicians play an outsized role in creating this impression, partly because they occupy the public stage and partly because they are, indeed, guilty of so many of the sins they are accused of. They could also play an outsized role in calming the populist fury if they took a more responsible role in improving recruitment and promotion in their professions.
Previously:
• 07/13/22: Boris Johnson's fall is populism's latest act of self-destruction
• 06/21/22: The West is facing a followership crisis
• 05/25/22: The 1970s had a big bright side, too
• 05/10/22: Young Americans aren't as woke as you think
• 05/04/22: The furor facing Disney in Florida is a warning that capitalism won't regain its legitimacy by alienating
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Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously a writer at the Economist. His latest book is "The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World."