"You Know" vs. "Uh"

Caroline Kennedy is seeking to be appointed to the Senate in NY (to replace Sen. Clinton when Clinton takes office as Sec of State). Caroline apparently says, "you know" a lot.

According to the Telegraph,

"Caroline Kennedy's campaign to claim Hillary Clinton's Senate seat has taken another downturn after an interview in which she said "you know" 142 times..."

The interesting thing here is that President elect Obama uses the expression 'uh' a lot. The Telegraph has never made fun of him for this.

I'm not sure what is going on here. Maybe to the British mind (or ear), "You know" sounds worse that "Uh". If so, its not hypocrisy; otherwise, it sure seems to be.

On the Letterman program in March 2008, they made fun of the Obama "Uh"s. However, no one ever said it was disqualifying.

Is This Art Hypocrisy?

There is an art display at the Harrow Arts Centre (Harrow is a borough of London). The Centre removed images of nudes in Oct 2008. The image on the left was mounted in November and a complaint was made in late December. As noted in the Harrow news,


"...Ms Davey accused the council of hypocrisy for allowing the painting of the Muslim woman but censoring the nudes. "

I can't tell from the article whether the artist meant for the woman to be a terrorist or a hero.

Notwithstanding that, nudity and violence are clearly separate subjects. However, if the standard for art at the Harrow Centre is "don't show anything that offends anyone" (I'm not sure that is the standard), and the image on the left offends someone, then you are guilty of hypocrisy if you don't take it down.

Emily Says that Dahlia Says... Hypocrisy

The webzine Slate has a feature called the xx Factor. It deals with women's issues.

Recently one of the writers, Emily Bazelon wrote to say,

" Dahlia has pointed out the contradictions and hypocrisies here: The Bush administration is evincing much concern for the morals of pro-life health care workers even as it dictates a script of contested and medically inaccurate information for abortion providers. Obama will surely revoke this rule, but he can't do it with a quick stroke of the pen. In the meantime, let's at least refrain from calling this "the conscience rule," as the administration urges..."

The Dahlia in the quote is another Slate writer, Dahlia Lithwick. Dahlia compares the regulation issued under the Bush administration by the HHS (which would have to be revoked by another regulation but, notwithstanding what Emily said, the regulation's enforcement could be ended with a stroke of Obama's pen on Jan 21, 2009) which protects hospital workers from being required to perform abortions with a South Dakota law which requires providers of abortion to read a script to potential customers. That is, the comparison isn't between the Bush Administration and the Bush Administration but between the Bush Administration and a State.

I don't think this is hypocrisy on Emily's part. Just very sloppy research, a desire to use the word hypocrisy and possibly a case of BDS.

The Employees Free Choice Act

The fellow whose image is on the left, introduced legislation in 2007 that would require the National Labor Relation Board to compel companies to recognize a union if more than 50% of that companies employees signed a union card within a certain time period (although there are numerous other provisions including a provision for secret ballot elections if more than 30% sign a union card so requesting it).

Back in 2001, on the stationery of George Miller, sixteen US representatives signed a letter to Mexico containing this sentence,

".. [W]e feel that the secret ballot election is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose...."

Hypocrisy?

Probably but not necessarily. It could be that US Representative Miller believes that the situation in the US in 2007-2008 (he will reintroduce this in 2008 he says) is qualitatively different than in Mexico in 2001. Or he might have changed his mind.

It is almost certainly not the latter. On one of his websites, US Representative Miller says that the 30% provision saves the secret ballot. This is disingenuous at best because the same Union goons who could require a worker to sign the union card could simultaneously dissuade the worker from signing the secret ballot card.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia Hypocrite or artful linguist

The King of Saudi Arabia (on the right in the image; President Karzai of Afghanistan is on the left) addressed a UN Interfaith conference and spoke out, ostensibly, in favor of tolerance,

Here is what he said according to an english language Turkish website,

“We state with a unified voice that religions through which Almighty God sought to bring happiness to mankind should not be turned into instruments to cause misery,” the king said, opening a UN General Assembly meeting initiated by Riyadh. “Terrorism and criminality are the enemies of every religion and every civilization. They would not have emerged except for the absence of the principle of tolerance.”

As the end of this article implies (although only far too gently IMO), Saudi Arabia isn't exactly a model when it comes to tolerance. As a matter of public record:

no religion except Islam may have a house of worship in the country;
women may not drive;
if a woman is raped she is subject to being prosecuted for adultery;
Shiite muslim are persecuted;
Sunnis who don't hold with the Salafist persuasion (e.g., the Sufi) are persecuted;
idiosyncratic groups of muslims like the Averi, Adumahddi, Ismaili) are subject to death if caught in public stating their beliefs;
public criticism of the King is a criminal offense.

there is lots more along those lines

This would be an open and shut case of hypocrisy except that we don't know what the King means.

The first sentence, "We state...misery", may simply means that he regrets that some Muslims are against him (the phrase "religions through which...happiness" may refer only to the various types of Salafism).

Furthermore, he may mean the phrase "terrorism and criminality" to only refer to killings and violence against Salafists and the phrase "principle of tolerance" to refer to his desire of all Salafists to recognize him (the King of SArabia) and the arbiter of what is right and wrong.

McCain, Obama and Joe the Plumber




After a brief back and forth Q&A at an Oct 11, 2008 campaign event for Senator Obama, a man, know known as Joe the Plumber has become famous (yes he has an entry in wikipedia).

Senator McCain uses the Q&A to charge Senator Obama with being a redistributionist.

Senator Obama denies that he is a redistributionist.

The fact of the matter is that Senator Obama is one and so is McCain because both advocate retention of the current progressive income tax system (with modest modifications). This is somewhat of a terminology issue rather than an issue of hypocrisy so I will not charge either of them with hypocrisy.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. has a progressive income tax system. A recent study by the OECD actually classifies the U.S. as the most progressive in the world (or at least among the ones they studied).

Like any study, this one has some flaws since:

1. it only measures income and social security tax against reported income
2. the data collection in the various countries varies in comprehensiveness and accuracy
3. it doesn't include sales tax and property tax and excise taxes (although the US has a relatively low sales tax compared to most countries VAT and so this might actually favor the US 'progressiveness' index somewhat - as far a property taxes, I don't have much of clue about what other countries do; the high excise taxes of some countries probably contribute to progressiveness).

I suppose it would be too inconveniently honest of Senator Obama to say "yes I will try to make the system slightly more progressive" or for Senator McCain to say "I propose to keep the system progressive but slightly less than it is now".

BTW, I recall one of the reasons I did not keep renewing the subscription I had with The New Republic (TNR), that I had inherited from my mother,) is that TNR kept having article after article advocating means testing of social security benefits on the grounds that the social security taxation of income is regressive (the other reasons were that since I read the WaPost, I pretty much already get exposed to the liberal viewpoint).

Of course it is true that social security taxation of income is regressive (income above, say $100k isn't taxed). However social security benefits are very progressive, in fact far more so than the taxation side is regressive.

This doesn't mean I necessarily oppose means testing of social security benefits or extending the income limit for social security taxation (the latter would be easier to administer so if we have to do one or the other, extension of the income limit seems preferable). I simply disliked the intellectual dishonesty of a magazine which frequently prides itself on its honesty.

Sarah Palin Redistributionist?

Governor Palin, like Senator McCain have recently criticized Senator Obama for being, in essence, a redistributionist, that is, someone who wants to take from the rich and give to the poor.

Whether the criticism is true is not the issue I'm going to deal with.

Instead the issue is whether Governor Palin is herself a redistributionist by virtue of Alaska's oil and gas severence fee and the Petroleum Trust. The latter group takes proceeds from the former and distributes some of it to Alaska citizens.

A blogger for the Atlantic, Marc Armbinder has a post on this subject in which he, implies (I think in a tongue in cheek way) that Palin is being a hypocrite on this point. He says, in part,

"Palin taxed oil company profits and cut $1200 checks for every Alaskans.

That's spreading the wealth. Redistributing some money.

The McCain campaign talks about Palin's executive experience.

So Obama might have socialistic inclinations... Palin's gotten it done."

-----------------------------------------

Well. There are some problems with the accusation of hypocrisy here. One problem is that the Alaska Petroleum Trust was set up in the 1980s and Palin is simply administering an existing program. The other, more important problem is that the Oil and natural gas in the portion of the Prudhoe basin where the product is produced is property of the State of Alaska. The State charges companies a fee for taking the product from the basin. This is quite a different matter than the case where the Government taxes income because the government doesn't own the income in the first place.

Cute analogy but no hypocrisy.

Luxury Jet at the World Wildlife Fund

At one of their websites, the WWF has Tips on What to do on Global Warming.

"Reduce your air travel.
Although air travel can be very convenient, the emissions from planes contribute significantly to climate change. When possible, use another form of transportation such as the train or bus."

At another website, they advertise a private jet excursion as a fundraiser,

This site says in part,

"Trip Overview One of the tips is:

Join us on a remarkable 25-day journey by a luxury private jet. Touch down in some of the most astonishing places on the planet to see the top wildlife, including gorillas, orangutans, rhinos, lemurs and toucans. Explore natural and cultural treasures in remote areas of South America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Africa.

To reach these remote corners, travel on a specially outfitted private jet that carries just 88 passengers in business-class comfort."

Probably they will buy 'carbon offsets' (all the sanctimony with none of the inconvenience). Without the belief in carbon offsets this would be obvious hypocrisy even to the WWF.

Does Hypocrisy Describe It?

An article in Commentary called, "

Hypocrisy Doesn’t Begin To Describe It"

accuses Senator Obama of fraud which is (in the author's opinion) worse than hypocrisy. The author, Jennifer Rubin, first quotes someone who (I think) accuses Obama of hypocrisy, then disagrees with it in part.

Here is a portion of the article (the quote that Rubin disagrees with),

"...Obama’s obfuscation regarding Ayers is, in a sense, the homage that vice pays to virtue - a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that the political culture of Chicago, and especially of Hyde Park, is more accommodating than perhaps it should be to a morally dubious figure like Ayers, and that having accommodated himself to those accommodations Obama now recognizes the need to behave as if he didn’t."

and here is the disagreement,

"more than hypocrisy is at work here. It is not just far Left, American-hating radicals he now disowns. You get the sense that he believes everyone can be played. Rashid Khalidi can believe that Obama finds no one suffers more than the Palestinians. Jews can buy that he was moved by the Holocaust from a summer camp experience. Voters in his Congressional race in 1990 can be told that there is no difference ideologically between him and 100% ADA-rated Bobby Rush, but the rest of the state in 2004 (and eventually the country) can buy that he’s a post-partisan reformer. Terrorists come to believe he shares their scorn for America, but Iowa voters hear him talk about his appreciation that only in America could his story have happened. Primary voters in Ohio are coddled with protectionist promises - and then privately scorned while he is talking to San Francisco (original source spelled the city wrong) liberal donors."

Rubin comes to the conclusion that this is fraud, not hypocrisy.

"There is no end to it — everyone gets the version of Obama that perfectly fits his own world view. It is not hypocrisy. It’s fraud."

All this goes whether Obama either,
- Pretends to believe what he doesn't believe.
- Pretends to be what he isn't.

Let's say Senator Obama has pretended to be what he isn't. This isn't too much of a stretch since, unless he has changed his mind about what he believes in, he is portrayed as a "I love America" kind of guy in some of his ads (where he talks about the values of Kansas where he lived for a few years) and also let his "God Damn America" pastor (noted in the article) think he believed otherwise.

That is, if he is the "I love America" guy he was a hypocrite in pretending to support his "God Damn America" pastor. If he believed in "God Damn America" he is a hypocrite now.

Ah. But which is it or is it something else. Suppose Senator Obama believes in neither "I love America" nor "God Damn America" suppose he just believes that he is destined to be President and whatever pretend belief advances the goals at the opportune time is the 'right' pretend belief. Which is to say, perhaps he believes that hypocrisy is a necessary act to advance a larger goal.

As to fraud, well, this blog deals with hypocrisy, not fraud.

----
UPDATE:

My cousin Ellen thinks that Senator Obama has a defense against hypocrisy based on nuance. For example, say Obama had a nuanced position on Ayers (let's say he disagreed with Ayers on the inherent criminality of America but thought Ayers had valuable ideas on education). This would be a decent defense before the egregious failure of Ayer's education ideas in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and even after that failure if Obama thought there were good ideas that came out of it (which he has never said but may believe).

However, on the Jeremiah Wright issue, I don't see a lot of room for nuance. At one point in the campaign, Obama said he thought his church really wasn't very controversial. Then after videos of Wright's sermons were posted on internet sites, he said that he loved Wright but sometimes disagreed with what he said but he would never leave the church. Then after a sermon at the church preached by a Catholic priest (who had been a indirect grantee from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and also from the Woods Foundation another charitable trust in which both Obama and Ayers served), Obama left his church. At no time in this process did Obama ever say, "I used to believe X but now believe not-X. Thus the nuance defense in this case is pretty iffy.

Columnist for Newsweek Proclaims Hypocrisy

Anna Quindlen has a syndicated column that is purchased by Newsweek. My cousin Ellen kindly sent me a link to a column in the Sept 15 issue in which Quindlen accuses somebody of hypocrisy regarding the selection of Governor Palin as VP candidate,

".... This would all have been entertaining if it [I think she means the criticism of anti Palin opinion as sexist but I'm not entirely sure] were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. These are people who inveighed against personal attacks on their new nominee when the wingnuts of their own party elevated such attacks to a fine art by accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of fictitious misdeeds ranging from treason to murder. To try to suggest Sarah Palin might garner the Hillary Clinton vote, that one woman is just the same as another, that biology trumps ideology, is the ultimate evidence of true sexism, and I hope Senator Clinton will travel the country and say so."

Here's a major problem. Not only do I not know the exact criticism of anti Palin opinion. Not only do I not know the previous allegedly sexist comments; Quindlen doesn't even say the specific person who she considers sexist and hypocritical (if she did, maybe I could find these comments).

What I think Quindlen may be thinking is that there is something I'm going to call a 'composite conservative' who has made 'sexist' comments in the past and now this 'composite' conservative is criticizing all anti-Palin opinion as sexist. This is just a theory because Quindlen gives no examples of any specific 'sexist' comment by anyone (conservative or otherwise).

Since there are millions of conservatives, I'm sure at least some of them have made sexist comments in the past and I'm sure at least some of them have criticized anti-Palin opinion as sexist but I'm not entirely sure that any given conservative has done both because Quindlen certainly has the time and resources to have named someone and given the time/date/place of both the sexist and the criticism of anti-Palin remark if she could find it.

Thus the charge of hypocrisy is completely unsupported.

Near the end of the Quindlen column is the following,

"... John McCain has been no advocate for women; when asked during the primaries, on the subject of Senator Clinton, "How do we beat the bitch?" he responded, "Excellent question." (Note to the GOP: that IS sexist.)"

There is an apparently uncut video of the incident to which Quindlen refers at youtube. In the video Senator McCain is a bit troubled by the question turns away from the person who asked the question, thinks and then asks to 'give the translation' (he finds this 'give the translation' response self amusing) before saying it is an excellent question and in his answer says clearly that he respects Senator Clinton (who presumably was the subject of the question). Probably he should have gone on to reprimand the questioner, however, notwithstanding this, Quindlen's version of this is clearly slanted. I hope I would have done better when being asked to answer such a question but I'm not sure I would.

While browsing this subject I have become convinced that the attacks against Gov Sarah Palin are maintaining a high level of viciousness. As an example, Comedienne Sandra Bernhard evidently has a comedy skit about Palin full of obscenity (I don't understand the humor). The actual video of Bernhard is here (warning- very obscene). Subsequent to some complaints, Ms Bernhard justified her remarks based on a webposting and some email that Sarah Palin had billed rape victims for 'rape kits' provided to such victims. This webposting and email has now been thoroughly debunked.

A less obscene type attack on Sarah Palin by US Representative Rangel.

A paranoid attack on Sarah Palin by Naomi Wolf (who famously advised Al Gore to wear earth tones) is on the HPost (Ms Wolf says Palin will replace McCain soon after the election and institute a fascist state; Ms. Wolf also says her mail is being stolen, etc.).

U.S. Representative (from FL) Alcee Hastings (who is also one of only 6 Federal Judges ever to be impeached) said at an event that Palin's moose hunting would make her a danger to Jews (the audience was largely Jewish).

U.S. Representative Wexler charged Palin with being a pro-Pat Buchanan supportor and therefore anti Israel. However, Palin is apparently a supporter of Israel and had an flag of Israel in her office before she was selected as VP nominee.

Professor Doniger Accuses Palin of a Triple Hypocrisy

Professor Doniger has an endowed chair at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

She has a column or op ed in Newsweek.

Here is the accusation:

"... the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy (her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins), is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska. Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

There may be something about professors. I can't figure out what the hypocrisies actually are (did Palin say "don't let anyone know if your daughter is pregnant). I am unable to determine anything out of Doniger's column other than the fact that she obviously doesn't care for Gov Palin.

As for the "greatest hypocrisy", this seems pretty close to insanity (except if you believe in the most extreme side of postmodernism, i.e., that all 'truth' is just a 'construct').

One interesting item is the line item comment. The Alaska legislature had allocated $5M for a capital improvement to charitable facility that, among other things, provided the transitional home. Palin used her veto power to cut it to $3.9M. The organization itself indicates that this will have no impact on the operation side of the facilty.

Palin a Hypocrite?

A few posts earlier (Aug 8 date), a Slate writer accused John McCain of being a hypocrite for one of his advertisements.

Today, a different Slater writer accuses Sarah Palin of being a hypocrite for taking federal funds while decrying pork projects (the image is from the Slate article).

The Slate writer, Tim Noah, brings this as evidence,

"The woman who made this complaint about big government taking your money is the governor of Alaska. Please take a moment to look at this U.S. Census chart showing federal-government expenditures, per capita, in the 50 states. You will observe that Alaska receives about $14,000 per citizen from the federal government. That's more than any other state, and a good $4,000 more than every other state except Virginia, Maryland, New Mexico, and North Dakota. The chart is from the Census Bureau's Consolidated Federal Funds Report for Fiscal Year 2005. I skipped over the 2006 report, the most recent one available, because Hurricane Katrina put Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Alaska that year."

Mr. Noah doesn't seem to understand that Governor Palin was not elected Governor until November 2006 and didn't take office until 2007. It will not be until many years in the future that decent information will be available to analyze Palin's influence on 'pork projects', and even then, this analysis will have to be based on information beyond the Census numbers on federal expenditures because, for one thing, expenditures in, say the year, 2008, may well be based on authorizations many years earlier.

My cousin asked me if Palin should be considered a hypocrite because, while running for Governor in 2006, she supported the 'bridge to nowhere' (actually a bridge to connect Ketchikan with an island to Gravina Island to its west which has the municipal airport) . I consider this an example of someone changing their mind.

If she said, "Everyone should be against the bridge to nowhere" at the same time she was for it, that would be hypocrisy.

Lindsay's Challenge to Dad Michael

According to an AP wire, (carried in the Washington Post)

"...The 22-year-old actress lashed out at father Michael by calling him a "public embarrassment" and a "bully" in a MySpace blog entry posted Thursday. Earlier in the week, Michael said in an interview with E! that Lohan gal pal Samantha Ronson was "using" his daughter.
Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloane-Zelnik, confirmed the post by Lohan was legitimate.
"If you have something to say to me, say it to my face _ that's what I have believed my whole life _ don't be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world," Lohan wrote. "

Thus, Lindsay is using her MySpace website to tell her (ex-con) father to speak to her in person.

Hypocrisy?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Lindsay seems too clueless to fully comprehend the irony here. Or possibly, she considers E to be public and MySpace to be only minimally public.

Gore on the Lake

I've discussed before the situation in which former VP Al Gore uses a remarkable amount of electricity and natural gas in his home in Nashville.

One of the reasons that this might not be a case of overuse of energy (and thus on the way to hypocrisy) is because the home (10,000 sq ft) in Nashville might have a complicated security system or a complex of offices or something similar.

Now, Mr. Gore has purchased a 100' long houseboat from a local boat manufacturer. The boat is evidently to be equipped with solar panels to generate electricity and is to burn bio diesel (although the wave runner visible at the stern probably uses gasoline like other craft of its kind). Because of these factors, Gore has named the boat bio solar 1 (which the anti Gore community refers to as BS 1). The lake on which it docks is Center Hill Lake. The lake is property of the US Corps of Engineers and docks are the property of the US. The lake is part of the Tennessee Valley project. It is a rather large lake, with 18,000 acres of water surface and 415 miles of shoreline so the boat is not out of place from a visual standpoint.

The boat manufacturer is obviously hoping to sell more such boats based on his famous customer.

Here are some threshold questions that have to be answered before getting into the hypocrisy issue.

Is it possible that Al Gore does not realize that it took a huge energy input to construct this boat?

Is there a conceivable public use or environmental use for the boat or is this simply a prestige purchase with some minimal energy mitigation thrown in to fool people?

McCain Ads vs. Obama - Hypocrisy?

Slate writer, John Dickerson writes an article titled,

""Voters don't mind negative ads. Do they care about hypocritical ones?"

The article is written so that I'm not even sure which of McCain's negative ads was supposed to be hypocritical and also I'm not sure what the hypocrisy is.

I'm guessing that Dickerson thinks that when McCain's ad criticized Obama for not visiting injured soldiers in Germany that was hypocritical because Obama did visit injured soldiers in Iraq.

If my guess is correct, it may or may not be a bit misleading (there are a lot of other factors - chose to give a big speech in Germany and passed up a visit to the injured - however, in Iraq there was no opportunity for a big speech). Notwithstanding the complexity, I can't figure out the hypocrisy.

John Edwards and Hypocrisy

Today's Slate has an article on former Senator John Edwards (left in the image) called, " Why the Press Is Ignoring the Edwards "Love Child" Story". As part of the Slate article it takes as a given that if Edwards had denied that he had fathered a child with Rielle Hunter (right in the image) and if he had in fact fathered the child, he would be a hypocrite. Here is a relevant selection from the article,

"...If Edwards had no affair and fathered no love child, it should be easy to erase the hypocrisy charge, and the press owes him that, pronto. If we give Edwards the benefit of the doubt, which he deserves, visiting the woman who recently gave birth to the out-of-wedlock child of a married campaign aide is completely OK. But meeting her at a Beverly Hills hotel in the early hours of the morning and running from tabloid reporters when approached and hiding in a hotel bathroom for 15 minutes, as the Enquirer reports Edwards did, is not completely OK. Not if he wants to avoid the hypocrite label...."

Now let's assume he did father the child. I'm not sure why it makes him a hypocrite. He didn't tell other people not to have an affair with Ms. Hunter. What this makes John Edwards is not a hypocrite but a liar.

Full disclosure - I probably loath Senator Edwards more than any other person who has been a Senator or Governor in the past 10 years. Notwithstanding that, I'm trying to be fair.

Al Gore Yet Again

Former VP Al Gore was in DC yesterday to promote an energy/greenhouse program.

As noted by the group, Americans for Prosperity, Mr. Gore and his entourage showed up in two Lincoln Town Cars and an SUV despite the fact that public transit is quite convenient to the venue (the image is from the Washington Post report of the event).

The group charges Mr. Gore with hypocrisy.

In defense of Mr. Gore, he may be obliged by security protocols to avoid public transportation (I don't know). In addition, if there were a lot of people in each Lincoln Town Car and in the SUV, it would have actually been fairly efficient from a carbon emission standpoint.

What I did find annoying was that the newspapers, in general did not report that the basic block of Mr. Gore's plan was a very significant carbon tax (how much is impossible to tell from the newspaper report or any site Mr. Gore has that I could find). Instead, the newspapers said that Mr. Gore's plan would replace all carbon emissions in 10 years. This is not hypocrisy, however, just incomplete reporting.

Hypocrisy at the G8 Summit

Apparently, the G8 (comprised of 8 countries with advanced economies) had a summit on the food crises.

The London telegraph article reporting on this event, had this to say,

"...Gordon Brown and his fellow world leaders have sparked outrage after it was disclosed they enjoyed a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner at the G8 summit where the global food crisis tops the agenda..."

Deeper into the article they have some additional juicy and delicious details. This was the 2nd course of the eight courses:

Second course:
Folding Fan Modeled Tray decorated with Bamboo Grasses for Tanabata Festival
Kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto Beef shabu-shabu, asparagus dressed with sesame cream
Diced fatty flesh of Tuna Fish, Avocado and Jellied Soy Sauce, and Japanese Herb "Shiso"
Boiled clam, tomato, Japanese Herb "shiso" in jellied clear soup of clam
Water Shield and Pink Conger dressed with Vinegary Soy Sauce
Boiled Prawn and Jellied Tosazu-Vinegar
Grilled Eel rolled around Burdock strip
Sweet Potato
Fried and Seasoned Goby with Soy Sauce and Sugar

I wonder how the sweet potato got into that course and why was it just served plain. Possibly it was a symbolic diss to the US (the sweet potato being native to the US).

Since so much of the food was flown in from far away it probably also had a huge carbon footprint.

So here is a case of hypocrisy but given that very few people are really naive enough to expect the G8 to do anything good at their conferences, it seems to me fairly harmless.

Also for what its worth, the G8 countries are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There are also an "outreach" five consisting of : Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Thus there may be a G 13 soon.

Is Satan a Hypocrite?

WRAL, a TV station that covers news in Durham county, NC has a article on some arrests related to cult inspired child abuse. The persons charged (who are also affiliated with the Democratic party in Durham county) are said by the assistant DA to have a shared interest in Satan worship.

However, a spokesperson for the local Church of Satan said,

"Our church is, without exception, against all illegal acts. Our dogma is clear and concise on the issue of sexual abuse and crime in general: If you do it, you can be excommunicated," Ygraine Mitchell wrote in an e-mail to WRAL.

At the least this seems to be a dumbing down of Satan worship. Or it could be that Satan says one thing to followers and his spokeperson says another thing to the media (which would be hypocrisy). This might therefor be a virtual hypocrisy.

Saletan On Hypocrisy Again - The Moral Issue

Will Saletan has commented on Hypocrisy before. The previous time quite recently. On that occasion I basically agreed with him. On this occasion I partly do and partly don't.

This time he comments on an obscenity case pending in Florida. The State is, near as I can tell, charging someone with selling obscene material. Here is Saletan's report:

The defendant is accused of purveying obscene material from a Florida Web site. To be judged obscene, the material has to be found patently offensive or prurient by "contemporary community standards." According to Matt Richtel of the New York Times, the defense attorney in the case, Lawrence Walters, will use Google Trends to argue that the community's standards are lower than advertised. Walters "plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like 'orgy' than for 'apple pie' or 'watermelon,'" Richtel reports. (Evidence here.) The point is "to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics—and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm."

Saletan takes the position that the meaning of "community" differs from "neighborhood" of "county" and that searching for porn on line is more than just thinking about porn but less than viewing porn.

Fair enough. However, there is also a difference between selling porn and browsing on the term "orgy". More importantly is the substance of the claim about community standards. If Pensacola has 60,000 residents (the city) or 600,000 residents (the metro area), does having 200 people in the area browse on "orgy" make it a community standard (its hard to believe you would have very many people doing that - after they his "orgy" once or twice they would have favorite sites to go to directly. Suppose the attorney representing the accused hired a bunch of people to browse on "orgy" from various computers at the public library or other available places. That would 'game' the statistics.

Obama on Equal Pay for Women (suggested by George)

On June 22, 2008, Senator Obama made a speech in New Mexico. The speech was, as reported by the newspapers the next day and as near as I can tell, to a group of women employees at a bakery. Senator Obama said he would be better than Senator McCain on the issue of equal pay for women.

It turns out that what he meant was that he would support a bill (which may or may not have been introduced in the Senate) that would extend the time that a person had before they could sue for gender discrimination under existing law . The existing law establishes a period not to exceed 180 days after a paycheck that was less than it should have been and was less because of gender discrimination. That law was declared constitutional earlier this year. Senator McCain does not favor changing the law because he feels the potential for excessive lawsuits is too high.

By June 30 people had gone through the published records of compensation for Senator Obama's staff and noticed that women had lower average salaries than men.

(although not directly related, it seems that on Senator McCain's staff women had average salaries higher than those of men).

So does that make Senator Obama a hypocrite.

Actually, Senator Obama did not say in the June 22 statement that he favors equal pay for all work. However, interestingly, in 2007 , he did use the phrase, "...That’s why I’ve fought to ensure equal pay for equivalent work in Illinois and in the U.S. Senate..."

So what we have here are problems with understanding what phrases like "equal pay for equal work" or "equal pay for equivalent work" means.

What I would say is that Senator Obama is being slippery here. He wants people to believe the connotations of his comments (more pay for women) while holding himself only to the denotation of his comments (favors changing the law on lawsuits).

Slippery isn't hypocritical.

More information on the entire issue is on a nice cyber news service article that George sent me.

Senator Obama on Vouchers

Back in February 2008, there was some possibility that Senator Obama would be pro-school voucher. After all, his kids are in private school and part of his wife's compensation package is tuition support for dependents.

Since then, he has, apparently reversed his position.

Does the fact that he essentially receives a voucher for private school for his kids constitute hypocrisy given that he is against extending this priviledge to everyone.

Not the way I look at it.

Similarly, I don't think taking advantage of a tax management device that you believe is unwarrented, makes you a hypocrite. Nor is watching public television even though you believe govt shouldn't subsidize it.

Furthermore, on the subject of taking public funds for campaigning for President, Senator Obama once pledged to do this and now says he won't do so.

This is simply a matter of changing his mind - change you can believe in I guess.

However, it is not hypocrisy.

Gore Mansion Again



Back in February 2007, there were a number of reports that the family mansion belonging to former VP Al Gore in Nashville, TN used many times the amount of electricity and natural gas that similarly sized mansions did elsewhere in Nashville (and of course many, many times the amount used by an average house). I commented on these at the time.

Subsequent to these February 2007 reports, spokespersons for Mr. Gore stated that energy saving measures and alternate energy generating devices were being installed and subsequently work was done.

A new report indicates that the electricity consumption of the mansion has increased, rather than decreased since then. This new report does not contain information on natural gas consumption. A Gore spokesperson notes that the energy saving products were not completely installed until Nov 2007 and requests more time before a before/after comparison is made.

As noted back in 2007, although this looks bad for Mr. Gore, he may sincerely believe that the carbon offsets he purchases and the 'clean energy program' he participates in with the local electricity provider make him innocent of carbon-hogging. In addition, as noted before, there may be offices in the mansion and if, say, there are more people working in the mansion this year than in a previous year, it might account for some of the discrepancy.

Where to Drill for Oil; Where Not to Drill

President Bush has urged Congress to rescind statutory restrictions on oil exploration in various off shore areas but has not rescinded an Executive Order (dating back to 1990) that also restricts oil exploration. According to an Associated Press report, he considered doing this latter step but determined to delay doing so.

Is this hypocrisy (George thought it might be)?

Unfortunately, I don't really have the information to determine this. There are times that Congress passes a law that has some loose ends and the President issues an executive order that, ostensibly, allows the executive branch to tell the rest of the executive branch how to deal with the loose ends without making administrative blunders. I'm not sure if this is such a case.

UPDATE: On July 16, President Bush issued a new executive order allowing drilling.

Saletan is pro-hypocrisy on Hymenoplasty

(but with a caveat).

On the left is a doctor who, per his own testimony, performs 100 to 200 hymenoplasties a year. The patient is 23 years old.

This operation, is a type of plastic surgery which creates an artificial skin cover over the female sex organ. The skin cover is called the hymen. It is, from the point of view of the physical health of the patient, medically unnecessary. In ancient cultures having a hymen was a sign of virginity, although in many cases the hymen is torn off by action other than sexual intercourse.

Will Saletan, of Slate (a webzine owned by the Washington Post) dislikes the cultures (mostly Moslem but some others also) that gives women an incentive (and sometimes violently coerces them) to have this operation. However he acknowledges the existence of the culture and does not want to eliminate the choice of having this operation.

Saletan's article contains this core argument:

"...The virginity fetishism these women endure is sexist, hypocritical, and totally unrealistic. The pressure applied by families and communities to enforce it is obscene. One woman interviewed by the Times says her fiance's family is insisting that she go to Morocco so a doctor of their choosing can inspect her for proof of virginity. Don't even get me started on the mental sickness of insisting that your wife bleed on your wedding night. And to top it off, the procedure is a sham. Restoring your hymen doesn't make you a virgin.
You and I can sit here all day rehearsing these complaints. And some day, God willing, the twisted culture of virginity hypocrisy will wither away. But until it does, hypocrisy is its own best remedy. Help these women deceive their husbands and parents. If they want artificial hymen restoration, let them have it."

and here is a second hypocrisy noted in Saletan's piece:

"...The Journal [I'm unable to determine which Journal he is referring to] reports that Dr. Bernard Paniel, a Paris gynecologist, has modified the original Tunisian procedure to reduce invasiveness and coital pain and bleeding. In fact, the blood reduction is so effective that it threatens to expose the fraud. That's why he "provides his patients with vials of blood that can be spilled on wedding-night bed sheets."
Let's hear it for Dr. Paniel and his fellow fraud artists. Two wrongs don't make a right, but sometimes, they're better than one."

I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the ideas noted in Saletan's argument. One problem I see is the cost. If the cost of these procedures is borne by society at large (via the French national health plan for example), the people who pay for these procedures are also victims of the culture that requires virgin brides. Another problem is that by using the procedure we may be perpetuating the culture.

I would consider this hypocrisy to be a fairly significant one, 4 on a 1-5 level (with 5 being very bad and 1 being harmless).

Another Blogger on Jet Setting Enviros

At a comment space on Amazon.com, a post entitled, Double Standards, Hypocrisy, and Hey! A Trip to Bonn notes,

"...is there anything quite like having 2,400 delegates from 162 Nations all jetting in to Bonn, Germany for a summit on--you guessed it--Climate Change?..."

I personally wonder if the author of this post did an analysis. If each of the people attending took public transportation for each of their trip and shut off all the electricity, etc. at their home during this conference, it might have made a slight decrease in total carbon emissions. Of course these assumptions are unlikely, however, what is likely is that each of the attendees considers their personal presence vital to this conference (on the other hand, this is, undoubtly, in many cases due to ego or bureaucratic game playing). The thing is that how many people are being hypocrites here is completely unknown.

Rabbi Berel Wein is against it.

Rabbi Wein titled a op ed "Hypocrisy". It was published May 16, 2008 in the Jerusalem Post.

He criticizes leaders who either argue for morality and don't practice it or leaders who overpromise (I can't tell which).

Here is a sample of each:

Morality - "Hypocrisy is the greatest enemy of religious leaders. Fallen clergy are the stuff of legend already, let alone popular literature and investigative media.

They are especially vulnerable because of their usual posture of moral self-righteousness and their penchant for criticizing sharply those whom they feel to be derelict in their behavior, policies or thoughts and attitudes.

Thus when their faults are exposed it is not only they that fall but they take down the faith that they represent as well. The tendency in certain religious circles and society to glorify its leadership to the extent that these people become superhuman only exacerbates the vulnerability to the accusation of hypocrisy."

Leadership overpromising - "I have always felt that part of Winston Churchill’s greatness in the leadership of Great Britain in World War II lay in his refusal to make sweeping promises or proclaim easy solutions.

He promised the English people “sweat, blood and tears” with the hope that eventually victory would come their way.

This promise in all of its forms was eventually completely fulfilled . There were no promises of settling ancient disputes in a matter of months, no brazen commitments for immediate victories and no hiding from the evident facts of the situation. This enabled him to escape from the plague of hypocrisy that has hounded so many of our leaders on the social, military and diplomatic fronts."

I personally can't tell what he defines as hypocrisy. If preachers preach good behavior but admit that people are frail, I don't see what the hypocrisy is when the preacher is frail. If leaders believe (mistakenly or because of ego) their own promises and can't deliver, they are simply mistaken or egomaniacs but not necessarily hypocrites.

Bottom line: Rabbi Wein didn't define hypocrisy and I can't backward engineer his definition from his article.

Are We Being Hypocritical?

This is a question asked by Trudie Skyler (wife of Sting - the entertainer). The Daily Mail (a British Tabloid) answers the question in the affirmative in the headline of their article.

However, I can't extract enough information to figure out if, Ms. Skyler actually acknowledged hypocrisy or what the specific charge was. She does acknowledge wanting to curtail use of Genetically Modified products but that's not quite the same thing as having a large carbon footprint (which Sting acknowledges). This is way too muddled to come to a conclusion but it's interesting that Sting's wife seems to have asked herself this question during a press event.

Is Hypocrisy a weak term?

Roger Simon, liberal turned not-so liberal (conservative in some areas), says that Mr. Simon was

"was struck by the amazing size of David Geffen's yacht and this morning we injected a photo into the story..."

and concludes [actually an interim conclusion] that

"...We are of course here at a level that makes hypocrisy a weak term. Sure, Geffen and Huffington (with her umpteen thousand square foot home ameliorated by a Prius) are hypocritical in the sense that "hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue," but there is something more complicated afoot."

I think Mr. Simon is saying that because Mr. Geffen is an advocate of reducing greenhouse emissions, he is a hypocrite.

Well there may be something to that but Mr. Simon does not cite any source noting Geffen's advocacy on that point and I couldn't find anything decisive myself when I browsed a few times.

Not guilty by lack of half the evidence.

Incidentally Geffen apparently is only a part owner of the yacht. The other owner is Larry Ellison (CEO of The Oracle Corporation, Inc.).

The yacht, named 'Rising Sun' is said (by Wikipedia) to be about 450' ft long and is one of the world's longest yachts (however, Ann and I have been on cruise ships that are over twice this length, specifically the Golden Princess and the Diamond Princess).

This subject came up because an admirer of Senator Obama had posted some information on what the Senator had said about Pennsylvania on a website and the owner of the website was on Geffen's yacht at the time and didn't review the posting for a few days.

Naval Officer who worked in prostitution ring taught leadership and ethics at the Naval Academy

Here is the first part of a newspaper article today on the subject:

A Navy officer who taught a leadership and ethics course at the Naval Academy faces dismissal after she testified Thursday that she moonlighted as an escort for the so-called D.C. Madam.

Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca C. Dickinson, 38, admitted in federal court Thursday that she performed sex acts with men in exchange for money as a call girl for Deborah Jean Palfrey (who is in the image above holding what was purported to be a client list) from October 2005 until April 2006.

I don't know for sure what she taught at the leadership and ethics course but its a safe bet that she told the midshipmen not to do anything reasonably perceivable as unethical.

Well, there you go, a true case of hypocrisy. The damage will be very significant for LCDR Dickinson. She will likely lose rank and be discharged under less than honorable conditions. This will decrease, maybe eliminate whatever pension rights she might have accrued (she has been in the service since 1986 and has been a commissioned officer since 1993).

The damage to society is probably much less. There will likely be extra scrutiny provided to other Naval Academy instructors and other minor effects.