Sorry to interject politics into this blog, but Ari Blackthorne's recent blogpost really stirred me up and I couldn't help myself. I urge anyone who disagrees with me to compile a list of hypocritical social liberals (with references) that matches or exceeds the list of hypocritical conservatives I compiled in just one hour. I'll even give you two to start: Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson. But consider, Bill Clinton just acted like a busted school kid when confronted with his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He hadn't made it his life work to attack those who engage in extramarital sex. So maybe he shouldn't count. But feel free to have at Jackson.
Written 28 May, 2010
The Hypocrisy of Social Conservatives
Consider this amazing statement:
I find many liberals to be two-faced hypocrites of the highest order.
While liberals are hardly immune to hypocrisy, the list of high-order hypocrisy from prominent social conservatives is astounding; it's as if they attack their inner demons by denying and waging war on them. In fact, I'm morally certain that's what happens.
Consider:
* Several prominent Republicans and right-wing media types have made the astounding claim that there were no terrorist attacks in the United States during the Bush/Cheney administration.
Here's a Fox News report by Dana Perino that makes that claim.
And
here's former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani saying the same thing.
Now consider the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. And the anthrax letters. And the shoe bomber. When was all that? 2001? And who was in charge?
Bush!
I take that back!
I really meant Cheney!
Teabaggers and others who have drunk the conservative Kool-Aid should go
here and take a peek at the successful and foiled terrorist attacks in the U.S. in the years 2002-2008.
And who was in charge?
Right!
So, how much hubris or bad memory would it take to make such a claim? There were no terrorist attacks in the United States during the Presidency of George W. Bush. Puh-Leaz!
I'm not a huge fan of liberal commentator Keith Olbermann (although I admire his sincerity), but I love the way he hoists conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, and John McCain, by their own petards by playing video clips of their hypocracies alongside their earlier words.
Here's a great clip from Keith's TV show
Countdown in which Idaho GOP hopeful Vaughn Ward
is shown giving a speech which is a blatant plagarization of Barack Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention. It's frigging hilarious to see Ward and Obama on the screen giving the same speech. And which one was earlier? Oh, yes, Obama.
Ward, of course, would deny having plagarized Obama if he thought he could get away with it (and I'm sure he will in the future), but under the spotlight, he instead tasked campaign manager Mike Tracy with misdirecting reporters. Tracy
said, "[F]olks are getting desperate -- they're saying anything to get Vaughn to go after him. If anyone thinks he's anything like Obama, they're dead wrong."
Watch the side-by-side video. Please!
The list of hypocritical prominent social conservatives is absolutely legion. Consider the anti-gay crusader George Rekers, who recently got
busted when returning from Europe with his hired rent boy. Consider the high numbers of anti-gay ex-gays caught in gay bars-- for instance, ex-gay John Paulk, who was
recognized by gay activists cruising in a gay bar. And consider Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who was arrested for
playing footsie with a cop in an airport bathroom stall. Consider the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart's repeated
falls from grace due his addiction to prostitutes. Consider Rush Limbaugh, who announced on his radio show in 2003 that he was addicted to painkillers and would be checking into a drug rehabilitation clinic (and who came within a gnat's ass of going to prison for his
illegal drug use). Consider, oh, the national attention-grabbing hypocricies of Pat Robertson, Strom Thurmond, Bill Bennett, and Jim Bakker, and...
I could go on and on...
Now consider:
* Rekers was an repeated expert witness against gays. In a 2004 case involving gay adoption in Arkansas, which had banned LGBT people from adopting in 1999, he argued that "it would be in the best interest of foster children to be placed in a heterosexual home" because the majority of people in the country disapproved of homosexual behaviour, putting further stress on children who were already likely to suffer from psychological disorders. This was in fact a blatant lie, because Rekers knew there were studies which show his statement to be untrue. See
here for a 2002 review of outcome studies of gay and lesbian parenting. Hypocrisy.
* Paulk is author of
Not Afraid to Change; The Remarkable Story of How One Man Overcame Homosexuality. In other words, Paulk made his living by proclaiming he was no longer gay, all the while hanging out in gay bars and doing you guess what. Hypocrisy.
* Craig's role in the persecution of President Bill Clinton for his sexual behavior while in office. Hypocrisy.
* Before his day of reckoning, Swaggart
was instrumental in the defrocking of fellow minister Marvin Gorman for infidelity.
* Limbaugh has said, of users of illegal drugs, "The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river..."
Hypocrisy. Pure and simple, unmatched on the other side of the political fence.
Now, I'm not saying social liberals aren't hypocritical. Certainly, many of them are. But one has to be politically blind not to realize there's something endemic going on here in the social conservative movement. There's a lesson in human behavior here, for those who allow themselves to see it, and that is that people who go out of the way to attack others for their behavior almost always have, uh.... issues.
