One annoying species of meritless hypocrisy charges are those that involve neutral categories being treated as something you either favor or oppose.  For instance, both left and right have been hurling charges of hypocrisy at each other for taking different stances on the anti-war protests of the Bush years and the Tea Parties of the past year.  “Whatever happened to dissent being patriotic?”  But nobody is claiming that the Tea Partiers have no right to protest.  Rather, the Tea Partiers are criticized because they are 1) wrong on the merits, 2) using violent, racist, and homophobic rhetoric, and 3) displaying a level of hysteria and fear of the president so detached from reality as to suggest that it is at least in part motivated by a certain characteristic that makes our current president unique from all of his predecessors.  (And in case anyone got lost in the run-on end to that sentence, yes, I’m calling them racist.)  By criticizing the Tea Parties for these reasons, I am not preventing myself from taking to the streets and denouncing the president next time someone takes us to war for illegitimate reasons.

A prime example of a surface-level hypocrisy charge that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny is this post from “The Corner,” in which the tragic Jonah Goldberg endorses a reader’s condemnation of liberals for invoking the Constitution in opposing the Patriot Act but dismissing concerns that the health care bill is unconstitutional.  The argument has some superficial appeal:  liberals loved the Constitution when Bush was making laws, but now that it’s Obama they don’t care!  But with any knowledge of history and consideration of context, it’s obvious that the difference between liberal reactions to the Patriot Act and the health care bill (and conservative reactions, for that matter) is not a change in opinion over the importance of the Constitution, but rather a difference of opinion in how the Constitution applies in a given situation.  Liberals have long interpreted the Constitution to give strong protections to civil liberties while giving the government wide discretion to regulate economic matters.  The different reactions to the Patriot Act and the health care bill are perfectly consistent with such an interpretation.

-AR

What does this have to do with anything of actual importance? I feel like the past months of following the health care debate have been a condensed version of my experience as a Pirates fan. Every time a new package or compromise or new procedural avenue is announced, I convince myself that it’s the one that’s going to get the bill through. And every time, thus far, I’ve been disappointed. So with the White House house announcing that “this is the week!” and the House and Senate having a tentative agreement on how to get the bill through, my reaction is both to celebrate “here we go!” and to lament “here we go again. . .”

In one way, the Democrats inability to pass a health care bill is a lot sadder than the Pirates inability to put together a winning season. (OK, in two ways: whereas passing a health care bill involves giving millions of people access to medical care, the Pirates having a winning season involves winning some baseball games.) While the Pirates’ losing records are consistent with the lack of talent, poor management, and low payrolls they’ve had over the past two decades, the Democrats have failed to pass a health care bill despite large majorities in both houses of Congress. Despite the fact that Republicans have used every procedural tool at their disposal to block legislation since they’ve been in the minority, and despite the fact that Republicans used every tool they could to pass legislation when they were in the majority, Democrats have, to this point, been unwilling to push the limits of the rules so that a simple majority vote could pass the bill. So while there’s a lot to be encouraged by in Harry Reid’s recent “get tough” letter to Mitch McConnell, it also has a “what took you so long?!?” quality.

McConnell, for his part, calls Democratic efforts to pass the bill by majority vote “a raw exercise of legislative power.” I’m not sure exactly what work the word “raw” does in that sentence, but passing a piece of legislation is no doubt an exercise of legislative power. Which is, you know, kind of an appropriate thing for the legislative branch to do.

-AR

For 20 years liberals have (rightly) decried the way in which George H.W. Bush invoked Michael Dukakis’ pardon of Willie Horton in the 1988 presidential race.  Just weeks ago, when the Supreme Court took up the issue, many liberals (rightly) railed against the practice of sentencing juveniles to life without possibility of parole.  Yet now that Mike Huckabee is under fire for granting clemency to a man who was sentenced to 100 years in prison for crimes he committed as a juvenile, we see liberals piling on and cheering the downfall of a Republican politician.

Thankfully, most of the commentary on the Clemmons pardon that I’ve seen from progressive blogs has been rather muted and focused on Huckabee’s idiosyncratic reasons for granting pardons and clemency.  While I agree strongly with Ta-Nehisi Coates that Huckabee’s generally forgiving approach towards clemency is something to be applauded rather than condemned, individual decisions should be scrutinized, particularly if they were indeed based more on the influence of Baptist preachers than the facts of the case.  I raise the issue mainly because I shudder to think what the gleeful response would be in progressive circles if a similar story came out about Sarah Palin, or if Mike Huckabee were considered to be a more serious contender for president.  While the aftermath of the murder of four police officers isn’t the most opportune time to be calling for a more forgiving, rehabilitative approach to crime and punishment, liberals should not lose sight of this goal in the context of this story simply because of the opportunity to embarrass a conservative Republican.

-AR

-AR

An Orange County lawmaker [Mike Duvall] who inadvertently broadcast explicit remarks about his sexual conquests over an open microphone during a lull in a Sacramento hearing abruptly resigned from office this afternoon.

The famously conservative Republican Assemblyman was just having a little pre-hearing banter about his sexual exploits with a couple of much-younger lobbyists , when unbeknownst to him the whole conversation was picked up by a nearby mike. Awkward!

Even more awkward is what it must have been like to be the conversational victim of such a gross overshare (courtesy of the OC Weekly):

“She wears little eye-patch underwear,” said Duvall, who is married with two children. “So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And
 so, we had made love Wednesday–a lot! And so she’ll, she’s all, ‘I am going 
up and down the stairs, and you’re dripping out of me!’ So messy!”

So many questions, so little time. First of all, what the hell is “eye-patch underwear”? How come the person Duvall is talking to doesn’t stop him at that point to figure that out? Oh right, because he’s THROWING UP IN HIS MOUTH.

You can check out some of the actual footage courtesy of the hilariously dopey KCAL news report that broke the story here.

-AS

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OK, I lied, I do have more to say. Excuse me while I get on my soapbox and do a little moralizing. While I usually agree with most every word Adam Serwar writes, I disagree with him that we shouldn’t care about politicians’ infidelities. Trust is important in a democracy. And while the sex aspect causes too much attention to be paid to infidelity, a politician’s personal life definitely matters (and not only when there’s blatant hypocrisy at play). Obviously it’s not important enough a factor that I’m going to support George Bush over Bill Clinton, but if a person cheats on their spouse (or is a bad tipper, or yells at the coach during their kid’s little league game, etc.), that is going to effect whether I want them to be the person speaking for me in my government.

I strongly supported John Edwards in the Democratic Primary, in 2004 and especially when he moved to the left in 2008. When his affair was revealed, it made me question whether he actually believed the things that made me support him in the first place. If someone could be that dishonest to the people closest to him, why would I trust him when he says he’s deeply committed to ending poverty? I still haven’t answered the question for myself if I would vote for Edwards again if I had another crack at the Democratic Primary. His platform was that much better than Clinton or Obama that I don’t regret for a second the time I spent campaigning for him. But the choice between a faithful Edwards and an unfaithful Edwards is an easy one.

-AR

So I really wish I could be fully on Letterman’s side in his feud with Sarah Palin. Letterman is right to be angry that the Palins are saying he told jokes about their 14 year old, when it’s pretty obvious that the target was 18 year old Bristol. But I’m not sure he provides an adequate defense of joking on national TV about the sex life of an 18 year old, or that such a defense exists. Letterman himself seems conflicted: he certainly isn’t entirely serious when he says “this is nasty stuff,” but I don’t think he’s being entirely sarcastic either.

Offensive humor is a subject I’ve struggled with for a while. I tell, and laugh at, more than my share of offensive jokes. It’s not something I’d necessarily say I’m ashamed of, but as the Letterman clip demonstrates, it is hard to justify when put to the task. Not that I’m fan of utilitarianism, but the pleasure derived from those who enjoy an offensive joke is almost never going to justify the harm to the person offended.

I try to rationalize my sense of humor by being sensitive to my audience and trying not to offend whoever I’m with at any given moment. But I know this doesn’t get me off the hook. I also know that I need to be more aware of how easy it is for me as a straight white dude to laugh at things that really aren’t funny.

I know some will respond to such bleeding heartery by saying that people should just lighten up and what is society coming to and here come the thought police and so on. I’ve always thought that critics of “political correctness” (which has taken on a negative connotation, even though it’s basically a synonym of “being considerate to others”) dramatically overstate the value to society of being able to mock other people or groups. Even if you feel a person or group is being overly sensitive, I don’t see the harm in being accommodating rather than being antagonistic (or masking your desire to be able to laugh at a joke in good conscience as a crusade for free speech). And, any way, if we can’t make each other laugh without going for shock value and tearing others done, we might as well just pack it in on this whole civilization thing.

There’s another issue here, which might be worth getting more into at another time, which is the degree to which people open themselves up to scrutiny and mockery through their political stances. It’s tempting to rationalize joking about Bristol Palin because her mother comes from the family values wing of the Republican Party and she herself has begun speaking out for the abstinence only movement. But while I’m all for calling out hypocrisy (and, as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing a blog post about the harm of offensive, engaging in hypocrisy), I don’t think it justifies the crasser jokes leveled at the Palin family. See also.

-AR