It’s entertaining to watch the spectacle of Democrats and Republicans pounding each other, this election season, with charges of hypocrisy. As if one side is guilty of it and the other isn’t. It reminds me of little kids at some preschooler’s birthday party: “She did it first!” “No, he did!” “But she did it more!”
A friend of mine, whose politics are predictably leftist, has gone on a crusade to get me to hate Sarah Palin. I made the mistake of noting that, as a woman, I find it offensive the way Leftists pile on her, while criticizing Right-Wingers for their sexism.
This is further proof (as if we needed more) that in politics, principle matters little. Power is everything.
I’m no great fan of Sarah Palin. But I don’t hate her, either. She’s a politician. I don’t have a particularly good opinion of any of them, Right or Left. The demonization of them is — just as much as the worship of them — but a symptom of the cult of personality to which we subject them.
When talking heads in the media make pornographic remarks about women in the public eye, I find it offensive. I don’t care which “side” they’re on. Comments about their children, about their body parts, about their weight, or their dress, or their appearance, are stupid and childish. It makes those who make such comments sound like airheaded thirteen-year-olds.
This will be conveniently forgotten the next time I make a remark unflattering to the sacred cow of either particular “side.” I will be accused of unfairly targeting her or him. Even though proof of my even-handed abuse may be only the click of a mouse away.
We use the hypocrisy of others to excuse our own. But it does not excuse it. Nothing does. Only children think that other people’s hypocrisy makes theirs justifiable.
An old slogan from the Sixties said “What if we gave a war and nobody came?” I’d like to update that. What if they held an election, and everybody acted like an adult?
Now, there’s a concept.
For some reason we allow women to be held to a different standard. Yes, men are also mocked for their appearance but nowhere near as often or as viciously as women are attacked.
Something you touch on that bothers me more than hypocrisy (which, frankly, is the only glue holding this country together right now), is that for some reason we are all (across the spectrum) expect to either love or hate certain people. In reality most everyone (with a few exceptions) have done something we liked and something we didn’t. We ought to be able to criticize someone for a specific action or statement without a knee-jerk defense of whatever they just did. (I also find, conversely, people being criticized for things they never actually did or said, so widespread is the strawman argument construct these days). So yes, I voted for Obama but I don’t like everything he does. I pretty much hated Bush but occasionally he did or said something I agreed with. Why is that so hard? Why are our commentators so one-sided these days. No wonder our politics are so upgefucktet.