Happy families are all alike

This New Yorker portrait of Hunter Biden is a melancholy read.

Some takeaways:

(1) The “scandal” over Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine is typical Clinton Cash right-wing bullshit. There’s zero evidence that as vice president Joe Biden did anything in re Ukraine that was in any way influenced by his son’s employment. It’s true that, purely as a matter of appearances, it would have been better for Hunter Biden not to be doing the work he was doing at the same time that his father was involved in US policy toward Ukraine, but, in the age of Trump, to be talking about the mere appearance of possible impropriety, with no evidence whatsoever of actual impropriety — and a great deal of evidence to the contrary — is classic bothsiderism nonsense.

(2) Hunter Biden is Exhibit [very large number] of a hyper-privileged white boy fuckup getting endless breaks because of that hyper-privilege. I feel bad for him, but I feel a lot worse for the uncountable number of less privileged members of his generation who didn’t get those breaks, and had their lives ruined as a result.

(3) Nothing in this story should, as a matter of principle, have any effect on Joe Biden’s bid for his party’s nomination, which ought to sink for any number of perfectly good reasons. But if he does get the nomination, we can expect endless stories about Hunter’s professional and personal past, which will raise questions and cast shadows till the cows come home.