總裁俱樂部的偽善晚宴

You’re a middle-aged man. It’s early 2018. You get an invitation from a company you know reasonably well to an all-male charity dinner at the Dorchester Hotel. You might have been before. But even if you haven’t, you know that it’s well known to be one hell of a booze up; that the hostesses are always super-hot; and that in the past there has been a bit of an anything-goes atmosphere. What do you say?

你是個中年男人?，F(xiàn)在是2018年初。一家你相當熟悉的公司邀請你去參加在多切斯特酒店(Dorchester Hotel)舉行的一場全是男性參加的慈善晚宴。你可能以前參加過這個晚宴。即使沒有，你也知道那是一個著名的縱酒狂歡的場合;女服務員們都超級性感;那里總有那么點恣意妄為的氣氛。你會應邀前往嗎?

The astonishing bit about the Presidents Club saga is that the charity managed to find 360 people to say yes. That is partly because it was an all-male dinner. There is nothing wrong with single gender events on principle. But there is something odd about very large ones in a corporate context. It’s an odd hangover from the days when women found they couldn’t climb the career ladder because the real networking was conducted in places they weren’t invited to, over drinks they didn’t much like and long after they’d gone home to put the kids to bed. Not nice.

總裁俱樂部(Presidents Club)丑聞中驚人之處在于這個慈善機構竟成功讓360個人同意參加晚宴。部分原因是這是一場只邀請男性的晚宴。原則上講，單一性別活動沒什么不對。但在企業(yè)背景下，一些規(guī)模很大的活動也是如此不免有些奇怪。這是過去遺留的奇癥，那時女性們晉升無門，因為現(xiàn)實的社交活動發(fā)生于那些她們得不到邀請的場合，發(fā)生在她們不太喜歡的推杯換盞之間，發(fā)生在她們早就回家安頓孩子入睡之后。真不光彩。

It’s also partly about the sleaze itself. Sure most of the guests might not have known their high-heeled and black-knickered hostesses had to surrender their phones and sign legally dubious non-disclosure agreements. And we can (I hope) assume only a small percentage of the 360 guests were bottom grabbers in their own right. But still, you’d think most sentient modern men would find even the thought of their peers getting away with being — as the guidance given to the girls at interview put it — “annoying” a tad off putting.

另一部分原因也在于晚宴的骯臟之處本身。當然，大多數(shù)來賓可能并不知道，那些穿著高跟鞋和黑色短褲的女服務員們不得不交出手機，并簽署法律上含糊不清的保密協(xié)議。而且我們可以(我希望)假設這360位客人中只有一小部分人本身是喜歡猥褻女性的色狼。你可以認為大多數(shù)有理智的現(xiàn)代男性都會覺得，只是想想其他男性在做出“令人討厭”(用那些女孩們面試時拿到的指引上的話說)的舉動之后還能逍遙法外，都讓人心生厭惡。

Despite this, the real reason to wonder why anyone, however much they might love a sleazy booze up, said yes is the perfectly obvious risk to their reputation. You would have had to be living in a cave for the past year not to know about the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements and grasped that times that were changing have now changed. This stuff just isn’t socially or politically acceptable any more.

盡管如此，我們之所以想要弄明白為什么有人(不論他可能多么喜歡放浪形骸的縱酒狂歡)會同意參加晚宴，是因為這很明顯會令他們的聲譽面臨風險。過去一年，只要你不是住在山洞里就會聽說過“#MeToo”(我也是)和“#TimesUp”(是時候停止了)這些運動，并且會意識到以往那些改變中的事情如今已經(jīng)真真正正地改變了。總裁俱樂部發(fā)生的事情在社會上和政治上都不可能再被人們接受了。

Thirty years ago — when The Presidents Club had its first ridiculous dinner — wives might have complained about their drunk husbands getting back late at night having spent the equivalent of £100,000 on a car they didn’t need; and professional women might have felt a little resentful about being explicitly left out of a top networking occasion. But neither group could have done much about it. Today, those women can take down a corporate or government career in a matter of hours. You might not approve of that. But why take the risk?

30年前——那時總裁俱樂部剛剛舉行了第一次荒唐的晚宴——妻子們可能會埋怨她們醉酒晚歸的丈夫花10萬英鎊買了輛他們不需要的車;而職業(yè)女性也許會因為自身被明確排除在頂級社交場合之外而感到些許不滿。但對此她們都無能為力。如今，這些女性在幾個小時內(nèi)就能終結一個人的企業(yè)或政府生涯。對此你可能不贊成。但為何要冒這個險?

There’s an obvious answer — arrogance bred of a sense of immunity from being in a big group of properly powerful men, many of whom come with the confidence of knowing that they aren’t beholden to regulated or public companies.

一個明顯的答案是——傲慢。這種傲慢來源于知道自己屬于一大群有權有勢男人的一員而產(chǎn)生的逍遙法外感，他們中很多人都因為知道自己不必對受監(jiān)管企業(yè)或上市公司負責而有一種信心。

The core assumption, conscious or not, must have been that behaving badly, if done inside a large group of 360 top businessmen, charming aristocrats, minor celebrities and property chieftains, is different. Lower risk. But there’s something else in the mix here as well: the fig leaf of charity.

他們內(nèi)心的核心假設(不管有意與否)必然是，行為不端如果發(fā)生在360名商界頂級人士、迷人的貴族、小名星和房地產(chǎn)大佬之中會另當別論。風險會更低。但是這其中還有別的因素：以慈善為名。

“But it’s for charity” is a catch-all excuse for all manner of things — and who’s going to call out well-off men for a little groping at a dinner that raises millions for good causes? If people hear the words “charity dinner” and don’t think about helping sick kids, but instead think “top food, bit of booze and a chance to use the auction bit to show the guys how much I’m making on the back of the government’s help to buy nonsense” — what does it matter? Think of the children!

“為了慈善”是個萬能的借口——誰會指責一群有錢男人在為慈善事業(yè)籌集數(shù)百萬美元的晚宴上有少許動手動腳呢?如果人們聽到“慈善晚宴”這個詞，想到的不是幫助患病的孩子，而是“頂級美食、縱酒狂歡以及一個借著拍賣向別人展示自己在政府的幫助下賺了多少錢來買沒用的東西的機會”——那又如何?想想孩子!

The problems here are manyfold. First, a dinner raising money for charity should probably be held to higher standards than one held just for fun. There has been too much scandal in the sector over the past few years for comfort. If it wants to maintain public trust (and how can it operate without it?) it can’t afford this kind of thing.

問題是多方面的。首先，一個為慈善募捐的晚宴或許應該比一個僅僅為了娛樂而舉行的晚宴格調更高。過去幾年，慈善行業(yè)爆出的丑聞太多，令人擔憂。如果慈善業(yè)還想保持公眾的信任(沒有公眾的信任它要如何運作?)就不能再發(fā)生這種事。

Second, your average charity dinner doesn’t come cheap. The Presidents Club event is a slightly special case (130 hostesses add up). Nonetheless, based on the latest accounts available, it seems to have cost the organisation about 30p to raise 70p for charity, a ratio that makes even the government’s methods of fundraising look insanely efficient. The Charity Commission will say that with 167,000 charities to police they can’t be badgering everyone about their morals and money-raising matters. But all that tells us is that we have too many “charities”, the answer to which is not to pour more taxpayers’ money into the commission, but to cut the number of organisations in the UK given charitable status. We can’t possibly need more than a couple of thousand (tops).

第二，你的慈善晚宴并不便宜。總裁俱樂部事件稍有點特殊(總共有130名女服務員)。然而，最新賬目顯示，該組織每籌集70便士善款的成本似乎是約30便士，這一比率甚至令政府籌資方式都顯得異常高效。英國慈善委員會(The Charity Commission)會說，他們要監(jiān)管167000家慈善機構，所以不可能在道德和籌款問題上糾纏每家機構。但所有這些都告訴我們，“慈善機構”太多了，因此別再把更多納稅人的錢投給慈善委員會，而要減少英國被授予慈善地位的組織的數(shù)量。我們需要的慈善機構不可能超過兩千家(最多)。

Yet despite misgivings about the event, the charities that were in line for donations should take the money. Not doing so suggests they are more concerned about the way their charity looks than what it achieves. It’s do-goodery gone mad. Their job is not to indulge in political grandstanding (that is already a very crowded market). Their job is to do useful things. The Charity Commission might want to find time to have a word with some of them about that, too.

然而，盡管人們對晚宴事件感到擔憂，但那些之前準備接收善款的慈善機構應該把錢拿走。如果不這樣做就表示他們更關心自己做慈善的形象，而不是實際取得的成就。這是瘋狂的偽善。慈善機構的職責不是沉溺于政治嘩眾取寵(已經(jīng)有太多人這樣做了)。他們的職責是干些有用的事。慈善委員會或許也應該抽時間和他們中的某些人就此聊一聊。

The writer is editor in chief of MoneyWeek

本文作者是《Money Week》主編