# Political Whataboutery **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 4, 2022, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-whataboutery/970934 "2022-09-04T15:01:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 10
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2022, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-whataboutery/970934/10 "2022-09-04T20:32:11Z")
I get a 400 error. [Let’s try this](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=whataboutism,whataboutery). In plain hits whataboutism beats whataboutery 810,000 to 119,000. Frankly, I’ve never seen whataboutery in use, though obviously some people use it. Both terms are at least 20 years old, and whataboutism is used on the Dope regularly, even as a thread topic. > [@What about "whataboutism"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-about-whataboutism/822465): > > I’d been meaning to post this for a while, but only recently got around to it. Lately (as in, for the past several years…I don’t recall hearing the term more than, say, five years ago) there has been, if not a coining of, at least an increase in visibility of the term “whataboutism”. Unless I’m sorely mistaken, its usage is to dismiss charges that the same thing a certain party is accused of doing were done by someone else without objection in the past. But…didn’t that sort of argument used to … The poor baby has been kicked to death. Can’t we stick with the straightforward “hypocrisy” since that covers far more of what the right does? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-whataboutery/970934)._