But whether “Politics stops at the water’s edge” is a serious issue. And it is helpful to identify commentators who are completely full of it.
For the Palin/Dixie Chick cases are roughly comparable. Palin gave her for-pay attacks in front of a group of foreign policy makers (specifically foreign investors). But the talk was closed to the press (though there was no stopping the antendees from describing what they saw). The Dixie Chicks’ performance was not closed to the press, but their remarks were not exactly the stuff of policy analysis and those of their audience who were decision makers probably weren’t exactly focused on serious matters at the time.
Anybody concerned with the Dixie Chicks should be concerned with Palin. The thread was about accountability. Hannity, O’Reilly and Limbaugh are all full of it. What was news to me though were the numbers of (relatively serious) conservative commentators who simply dodged the underlying issues.
More generally though, hypocrisy isn’t the worst of sins. Some denounce behaviors that they secretly engage in. Sometimes they are full of it, but other times the flesh is simply too weak. It can be difficult to distinguish between the two cases. In other contexts, differing stances occur because the situations are meaningfully different and the speaker can reconcile the two positions in a non-dubious manner. And sometimes the hypocrite lacks introspection.
I have only a little problem with the remarks of either the Dixie Chicks or Sarah Palin in Hong Kong, in roughly similar proportions. I am rather more concerned with the airing of conservative whacking fantasies like death panels, certificate of birth paranoia and the mainstreaming of Godwinism as applied to the US executive branch. Responding to Airman Doors, this sort of stuff may help the Republicans at the ballot box (or not) but embracing irrationality certainly doesn’t provide a basis for sound policy. It is the reality-grounded conservative who is worst served by the Palins, McCaughleys, Hannitys and even the larger number of conservative commentators who dodge the inconvenient elements and issues.
Well that’s a good question. It’s a deeper issue of moral courage. Was the dodge out of disagreement with the war, or out of fear for personal safety? Is a dodger that willingly faced jail time and the social stigma of disloyalty/cowardice out of belief in the unjustness of a war the same as a draftee who used family connections to avoid consequences or danger?
Say the latter was running on a campaign of war against someone who served and is running on a campaign of peace. Don’t you think their past histories should be examined when deciding who should have the power to send people off to kill and be killed?
I rarely visit the SDMB these days, particularly the Pit, but I’m glad I found this thread. It includes some thoughtful observations, and it has a broader scope than threads that focus more on specific examples of hypocrisy.
This is a long post, but not only is it difficult for me to find time to interact in anything remotely akin to realtime here very often, I also consider brevity to be the perhaps the most invidious enemy of accuracy, if not truth itself.
I’ll begin by noting that my comments are in regard to political rather than personal hypocrisy. I’m posting to express my disagreement with the OP and his supporters here, primarily because I sharply disagree with the post by Airman Doors that Tom Scud created this thread to applaud. I’ll quote it now in full:
Sadly, several posters have informed Doors that they, too, apparently feel that pointing out hypocrisy is “nonsense” and that having hypocrisy pointed out to them is “exasperating”. But at least they don’t dispute that they’re “morons”, so they arguably deserve at least a bit of credit for intellectual honesty.
Because this issue is first and foremost about intellectual honesty & integrity or the lack thereof: the hypocrisy is but the most visible symptom. As such, it should not be confused with the actual disease, although I contend that the severity of the symptom is strongly correlated with the damage it does to the body politic, if you’ll permit me to extend the metaphor a bit.
For Airman Doors’ lament seems to me to be indistinguishable from the kind of thing that someone found guilty of intellectual dishonesty would argue to attempt to defend themselves. Why, it sounds positively Palinesque! “There ya go again, playin’ ‘gotcha games’. Just because I quit my job with half a term left to finish, ya’ll call me a quitter!” (Compare Palin to Nixon, who demonstrated true intellectual integrity when he remarked upon his own resignation: “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body.”)
I’m exasperated (to put it mildly) by Doors’ egregiously absurd re-assignment of blame from the actual hypocrites to (get this) a reflection of “the current dynamic”. How does one respond to such extraordinary equivocation and misdirection? How would a judge respond to a similar evasion, to wit: “No, your Honor, my client, James von Brunn, did not shoot and kill Mr. Johns at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I have with me a sworn affidavit from Airman Doors, who insists that Johns was actually killed by a reflection of the current dynamic.” I’ve gotta give him points for originality, anyway.
In truth, pointing out non-trivial intellectual dishonesty (as indicated most strongly by hypocrisy) in politics is very long way indeed from “gotcha games”. It is actually essential for treating this disease that non-trivial examples in politics be pointed out whenever they occur and whomever reveals its symptom justly deserves identification and scorn, regardless of what party he or she represents. No party has a monopoly on hypocrisy, just as no party has a monopoly on truth, honor, or, sadly, despicableness. Although indulging in petty tu quoque squabbles is indeed pointless and exasperating, identifying and criticizing significant cases of intellectual dishonesty (as revealed by significant hypocrisy) and which group or party engages in them more frequently serves the public very well indeed. Americans like to keep score, and hypocrisy is a domain more readily quantified than others.
Here’s one recent example of intellectual dishonesty as revealed by blatant hypocrisy that I consider quite revealing and well worth criticizing: The House measure to “express disapproval” (that’s all it called for!) of Addison “Joe” Wilson’s shouting “You lie!” during Obama’s speech to a rare joint session of Congress.
Wilson did apologize swiftly to the president after being ordered to do so by wiser and more honorable Republicans, but it was soon revealed to be the same kind of non-apology “apology” we’ve come to expect from weasels like he. He essentially retracted it the next day by insisting he was right all along and has been persuaded by the loons that he performed a “heroic act”. Wilson also bragged afterward that lots of people came to his office to thank him and offer their support in person. Most notable among them are explicitly anti-government militia / budding domestic terrorist groups similar to McVeigh’s and various racist and neo-Nazi organizations, at least one of which Wilson himself has long been a member of and still remains so, and was listed on his web site: The Sons of Confederate Veterans. What once was a good cause has, since 2002 anyway, become essentially a white supremacist hate group, as you’ll learn after reading that link to the renowned Southern Poverty Law Center.
While Obama showed graciousness, political acumen, and the essence of The Office of The Presidency by immediately accepting Wilson’s apology, he was never in any position to speak for Congress on that matter. That’s why there had to be a resolution and a vote: There are three independent branches of government, and the President heads only one of them. Wilson offended Congress, too.
Make no mistake! That vote was not primarily about whether or not the House should express “disapproval” of the most offensive act of disrespect ever seen in a joint session of Congress. The real question was:
Should the Office of the Presidency be treated with respect, or not?
Only seven Republicans thought so! To imagine that that was not a blatant example of extreme hypocrisy requires a rather perverse imagination.
It’s always best, of course, for partisans to criticize and call out hypocrisy within their own ranks rather than exclusively criticizing their opponents. In that, I emphatically agree with the following comment by Airman Doors: “I am identified as a conservative, therefore me condemning “my own”, as it were, carries more weight.” I’m a liberal Democrat, and I have done precisely that against other liberals and Democrats many, many times. For example, I have spent a great many hours very harshly attacking The Huffington Post and Huffington herself for permitting and even openly encouraging extreme levels of pseudo-scientific and even blatantly *anti-*scientific crackpottery, conspiracy mongering, and – worst of all – very dangerous quackery of the most contemptible nature. And I’m never going to give up attacking her and her site for the extreme damage she’s doing to the liberal cause. For another example, I have often verbally assailed MSNBC hosts Olberman, Maddow, and Ed Schultz (whose “polls” are utterly laughable) in emails and on various blogs when they issue or repeat falsehoods, misstate facts, and misrepresent statements or positions. It doesn’t happen often (in my opinion), but when it does, it urgently needs to be pointed out and criticized sharply in order to genuinely try to ensure that that sort of thing doesn’t recur. And the thing is, liberal internal criticism is often rather effective! I believe this is a consequence or co-factor of the tendency I’ve often observed for liberals to suffer substantially more intellectual pain from cognitive dissonance and similar intellectual conflicts than do conservatives.
I don’t even bother trying to directly criticize Fox News and conservative talk radio and such. The Right – at least today’s American Right – shows every appearance of being immune to facts and criticism from any source, primarily because conservatives are generally highly authoritarian and, frankly, the facts are overwhelmingly against them anyway. They avoid, ignore, and/or hide genuine facts because they are harmful – even toxic – to their cause. So they invent artificial “fact substitutes” instead. This, along with the one Commandment that Republicans actually take quite seriously – Reagan’s 11’th – make the Right far more unified and thus far more successful among the regrettably huge numbers of fact-impaired Americans than we liberals, whose respect for facts and all the subtle thinking such respect demands puts us at a distinct disadvantage among our poorly informed and insufficiently rational fellow Americans, who regrettably exist in vast numbers (look at polls that measure the frightening levels of belief in pseudo-science vs. science, for example). Most Americans much prefer a short and confidently asserted falsehood to the complex subtleties of facts and the rather more verbose set of qualifiers (such as are seen in this long post) that are usually necessary if the facts are to be expressed factually.
I’ll close by posting a link to a work-safe Daily Show clip that demonstrates that, while neither party has a monopoly on hypocrisy or grossly inappropriate Hitler/Nazi comparisons, one party’s primary media outlet demonstrates they have a real knack for the job: Now Fox News is liberal?
I’ll try to get back here within a few days to respond to any comments about this post…
True, but I admire brevity because it demands that the author get to the point. I like accuracy, but let’s not forget that it typically entails some sacrifice of clarity. That said, nice post: it was one of the few long discussions worth reading.
Airman Doors is a good guy: I would recommend that he take the time to read it.
Picking nits:
Actually, I thought that the real question involved holding the line on Congressional civility, so that we don’t become something like the British House of Commons. Ironically, a Democrat has recently pushed the envelope, saying that the Republicans health care plan was “Don’t get sick” (true in a hyperbolic way) and if you do “Die quickly” (false and objectionable, somewhat more so than when Republican Rep Ginny Brown-Waite said that the Democrats’ health care bill “essentially said to America’s seniors: ‘drop dead.’ ” (NYT))
Possibly.
I agree with this empirical assessment, as it applies to the WSJ editorial page for example. They really don’t care about getting the story right. Another example is at the Washington Post. Matthew Yglassias: “The point of giving columns to Will and Charles Krauthammer and now hiring Bill Kristol is to show that Fred Hiatt and The Washington Post believe that whatever random crap the conservative movement wants to make up on any given day will get a hearing in The Washington Post. They’re not interested in informing their audience, they’re interested in showing that they’ll bend over backwards to be fair to the right wing.” More generally, all mass media outlets attempt to inform or stimulate their audience in varying proportions. The electronic media tilts more towards stimulation.
Dubious. Modern conservatives are also anti-authoritarian insofar as they are populists or even libertarians in a way.
Dr. Johnathan Haidt hypothesizes that conservatives respond to a wider variety of evolved moral principles, whereas liberals rely on a narrower base. So intellectual honesty and courage are diluted against other concerns. I’ve been wanting to discuss this in GD for 2 years now, but I’m just too damn lazy.
Sort of. But I think there’s a workable reality-based case to be made against the Obama administration, but that segment of the modern conservative movement has unfortunately run out of oxygen. IMHO, it’s the smart conservatives who should really be upset at the antics of Palin, Fox et al. For they frankly lack representation. Another one of my postponed projects involves a hunt for serious and honest reality-based conservatives worth reading. On my candidate list is Bruce Bartlett et al at Capital Gains and Games, Gary Becker and Posner’s joint blog (and counter-blog!) and one I can only recall dimly.