Where would you be without Daddys help?

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Alexander Waugh

Lay off Kofi Annan, said Alexander Waugh in the London Daily Telegraph. A pious chorus of critics is ripping into the U.N. secretary-general for using his power to help his son Kojo get a cushy job. They should all just “go away.” The desire to pass on our power and authority to our children is instinctive, and for a good reason. Civilization was built on nepotism. Many a son who admires his father has sought to enter the same career, and often he’s quite good at it. Why shouldn’t the father hire him, then, rather than “some stranger?” I got my first big break in publishing when my late father, Auberon Waugh, praised my writing in his newspaper columns. His father, Evelyn Waugh, had done the same for him. Evelyn’s first novel was put out by the publishing house that his father, Arthur Waugh, headed. And Arthur got his start there through a cousin, who got his job through his father’s influence. The trail of nepotism in our family goes back at least 200 years, and I’m proud of that. “Parents who refuse to demonstrate an active bias in favor of their own talented and competent children are, in my view, not just pompous and insane but positively evil.”