Political Fundraising Letters - Obvious Hypocrisy
Hillary's Letters - Obnoxious Hypocrisy

Senator Hillary Clinton has been fund raising. Almost every U.S. Senator does this. However, her fundraising is a particularly humorous example of non sensical alarmism.

DailyKos is not amused (I am). His commentary is at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/25/205749/182

DailyKos (aka Mr. Markos Moulitsas) points out that,

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"... the emails are full of alarmist crap like:

The 2006 elections are right around the corner, and the GOP is in full swing to throw everything they can at Hillary. And the worst thing we can do is sit on our hands [...]

Let's not kid ourselves, Hillary is in for a fight. Team Hillary Supporters will enable her to be prepared for whatever they throw at her.

Hillary is in a fight? For 2008, perhaps. But it's absolutely clear that the GOP is not throwing everything at her. In fact, their efforts to find a candidate to challenge Clinton border on pathetic.

Perhaps it's time for her to use some of that fundraising prowess to help out other Democrats? She's got $17 million and no real prospect of being seriously challenged.

If she wants to fundraise for 2008, all the power to her. But she could be honest about it. Pretending to raise this money for a non-existent Senate contest is simply obnoxious."

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Since Senator Clinton surely realizes that what Kos says is correct and since the letter is obviously alarmist, this is definitely hypocrisy. Since it is surely unnecessary it is also at least level 2. However, the only deleterious effects, other than getting people to contribute to her who can't afford to do so, are minimal (e.g., annoyed left wingers), I don't see it getting to level 3.

Of course Senator Clinton is surely not the only politician who has ever done this. The example above however, is particularly egregious (and amusing to poke fun at).

Another hypocrisy accusation re: the Cartoons

This time it is Mansoor Ijaz, who writes frequently about being an American and a Muslim.

Here is a portion of a recent column:

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"...The first truth is that most Muslim ideologues are hypocrites. What has Osama bin Laden done for the victims of the 2004 tsunami or the shattered families who lost everything in the Pakistani earthquake last year? He did not build one school, offer one loaf of bread or pay for one vaccination. And yet he, not the devout Muslim doctors from California and Iowa who repair broken limbs and lives in the snowy peaks of Kashmir, speaks the loudest for what Muslims allegedly stand for. He has succeeded in presenting himself as the defender of Islam's poor, and the Western media has taken his jihadist message all the way to the bank..."
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I can't find the hypocrisy. In fact I can't even figure out who is being accused of being a hypocrite. Is it some Muslim ideologue that the author knows or some group of them. The author doesn't name them nor does he name their organization. Or is Osama bin Laden the hypocrite. If so, when did Osama say he was going to do something for the victims of the Pakistani earthquake? Mansoor is an articulate fellow and obviously he is disturbed by the cartoon riots and the other failures of the Islamic world. However, he has badly misused the word 'hypocrite'.

The column is viewable at: http://www.latimes.com/news/
opinion/commentary/la-oe-ijaz18feb18,0,6492979.
story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

A Hypocrisy Kerffufle Applebaum vs. captain ed

A number of blogging pages have been posted on a hypocrisy charge by Ann Applebaum.

This is discussed in detail at: http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/006307.php

The chronology is thus:

Feb 8 Ann Applebaum has column in the Washington Post. She discusses the cartoon hypocrisy. She charges the political left with certain hypocrisies. She charges the right wing blog community with hypocrisy with respect to the Newsweek 'flushed Koran' story; specifically that the RWBcommunity accused Newsweek of insufficient understanding of Moslem sensitivities.

Feb 8 (later in the day), Captain Ed writes that Anne didn't understand history and that the criticism of Newsweek was based on their inaccuracy and their inaccuracy based upon Newsweek's belief in the validity of the charges of terrorist suspects over the military spokespersons.

Feb 10 Anne replies that she was criticizing the RWBcommunity's "Newsweek lied, people died" meme.

Feb 11 Captain Ed writes that Anne didn't cite a single example of someone writing that and that if she had followed the debate at the time she would have realized that although some people may have said, "newsweek lied, people died", that this was an incidental meme and not the main meme.

Cartoon hypocrisy

Several papers, authors, bloggers, etc. have accused the moslem cartoon rioters of hypocrisy because they riot when Mohammad is depicted as a bad guy but are gleeful when Jews and Christians are so depicted.

A quote from a German newspaper is noted in this post:

http://www.natashatynes.org/newswire/2006/02/papers_across_e.html

The weight of evidence suggests that this is not hypocrisy at all. The moslem rioters do not feel that nasty depictions of Jews and Christians are wrong. The rioters clearly feel that Islam should not be criticized but other religions should be. Thus, I don't see the hypocrisy.

There are however two forms of hypocrisy that may be going on.

1. Some media are not publishing the 12 Danish cartoons and saying that they aren't publishing it because they are offensive even though they have published other offensive things. If the people in the media making the claim also know that they have published offensive things in the past, that is hypocrisy. If not, not (but in that case they should shortly find out the truth). Assuming this is hypocrisy it would rise to about the 3 level because when media intentionally use double standards it debases the public debate.

2. Some media say they are not publishing the cartoons because they consider the cartoons offensive when it seems the actual reason is that they are scared that they will be harmed by Islamic mobs. If this is so, it is hypocritical. In this case the hypocrisy would also be about level 3 because the problem of intimidation needs to be vetted.