Materialism for me;

not for thee

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is mentioned below, reportedly made anti-materialism and anti-middle classism part of his sermonizing.

To the left is a retirement home being built for Rev. Wright. According to news reports, it is 10,000 sq feet, will cost about $1.5 million, is being financed mostly by the Church he served and is in a gated community withing the village of Tinley Park in Cook County about 15 miles southwest of the Hyde Park area where the church is. The village of Tinley Park was, per the previous census, about 90% white, about 2% black. It has a mean household income about 50% higher than the US average.

I don't have the exact words of Wright's sermons so one could build a non-hypocrisy case based on parsing the language. Or one could build a case base on the basis that the house is required to be this size and in this location because it will be used to host special church events.

Most likely, however, is that Rev Wright feels he is above his own words. That is, normal people should beware of materialism but people who have a high conscious, like himself, need not fear materialism.

This seems like a case where the only 'victims' are members of his own church.

Keith Olbermann: Hillary must renounce Ferraro Comments but Obama doesn't have to renounce Wright's comments.

Keith Olbermann is the host of an MSNBC TV show. It is opinion show and Olbermann has opinions. There is an group who evidently watch Keith Olbermann's show and write about it providing cases where they disagree with what Olbermann says. This group is called Olbermann Watch.

Obermanwatch has produced a video that shows Mr. Olbermann's comments about former Representative Ferraro's statement to the effect that Senator Obama would not be a serious (or as serious) a candidate if he were not black (she made the comment while serving on a committee in Senator Clinton's campaign). It then shows Mr. Olbermann's comments that essentially defend Senator Obama's decision not to leave the church he belongs to even though Senator Obama admits many of Reverend Wright's statements are wrong, bigotted, etc.

I have a hard time with this because I can't follow Olbermann's logic in either the Clinton-Ferraro case. It could be that Olbermann is being a hypocrite by saying, in effect, that in an identical case, candidate A must do something and candidate B doesn't need to.

In fact the cases are not alike at all. What Ferraro said about the advantage Obama has in being black was very similar, though not identical, to what Obama said about himself. Whereas Wright accused the U.S. of things like promoting drug dealing in black neighborhoods and developing the AIDS virus as a weapon against blacks - statements for which there is no evidence - and indeed don't even make sense.

Thus it seems to me (and I'm not doing a detailed study here because it would require watching a lot of Mr. Olbermann and I would find that quite unpleasant) that Olbermann's behavior here is not so much hypocrisy as meandering incoherence in service to an overarching policy. Thus, since what Olbermann really believes is "all polemics are legitimate in service to whatever people/cause I favor" he is being consistent even when he says, "2+2 doesn't really equal 4".

More to it than Hypocrisy

Well the post below is based on the assumption that there was nothing beyond adultry. The woman on the left is Diane Dixon, a former Olympic athlete (1980s) who claims to have gotten a job recently through then Lt Governor Paterson and to have been in a romantic/sexual relationship with Paterson at some time earlier.

Wouldn't Hyprocrisy Be Better

Earlier today, David Paterson, the new Governor of New York and his wife Michelle, mutually announced that they had both been in multiyear adulterous relationships.

I assume this is because the new Governor has the job Spitzer used to have before his involvement in a prostitution ring was revealed.

Personally, I don't see any hypocrisy and I can't find any angry rants accusing the new Governor of hypocrisy. However, even if David and Michelle had previously campaigned for faithful marriages visiting colleges and high schools, I would not have minded hypocrisy.

posted by Martin Weiss # 5:14 PM

Senator Obama and Reverend Wright

One of the posters on Democratic Underground has made the case that Senator Obama (on the left) is a hypocrite with respect to Obama's support of the Reverend Wright,

The specific charge is well stated,

"...You can't publicly preach "unity" and getting beyond race with a "post-racial politics" (and present yourself as the only available vehicle to lead us to this promised land) and then in private endorse for two decades someone (Rev. Jeremiah Wright on the right of the picture) who couldn't be more diametrically opposed to Obama's public rhetoric."

Senator Obama's statement in response to this charge (actually it is a response to the general situation - I'm pretty sure Senator Obama didn't read this particular comment) is essentially the church attender equivalent of the moron defense, that is, "I didn't know the Revered Wright was saying this stuff."

If you assume the moron defense isn't true, it makes Senator Obama a hypocrite in the sense that a lot of politicians are hypocrites. This, in my opinion, may make Senator Obama a better person and maybe a better potential candidate because he is forcing himself to come to terms with the specifics of Reverend Wright's sermons, (e.g., America is bad, America invented the AIDs virus, whites all hate blacks, etc.).

Incidentally the odds that Obama is a hypocrite here is strengthened by another incident, namely the visit which an economic adviser to Obama made to the Canadian consulate in Chicago and allegedly told the Canadians that Obama didn't really mean the anti NAFTA comments he (Obama) made before the Ohio primary.

Senator Obama's response to the controversy was reproduced on the Huffington Post. The response was probably because of mainstream media reports such as one on ABC news.

Here is some of the response in which he denounces "the statements, without noting which they are",

"... Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue."

and here is the moron defense,

"...the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn. The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation."

Governor Elliot Spitzer:

He Prosecuted Prostitution Rings; Now He's Caught in One

Naturally, some people are accusing Governor Spitzer (I think he is soon to be ex Governor Spitzer) of being a hypocrite.

One such accusation is at a blog called "Protein Wisdom". Dan Collins, the author of the blog accuses, Spitzer of being, "Mr. American Hypocrite".

Here is what the blog post says,

"... he previously prosecuted — quite aggressively and publicly – several citizens for the “crime” of operating an adult prostitution business. That hypocrisy precludes me from having any real personal sympathy for Spitzer, and no reasonable person could defend him from charges of rank hypocrisy. And he should be treated no differently — no better and no worse — than the average citizen whom law enforcement catches hiring prostitutes. (in the original the underline was a hot link to a political cartoon)"

OK. So what specifically makes Spitzer a hypocrite.

Did he ever say, "No one should ever use prostitutes".

Did he ever say, "No one should ever assist in the transportation of prostitutes across a State Line"

Did he ever say, "No one should ever intentionally transfer funds with the intent of disguising the source of the funds."

Maybe, but Dan Collins gives no example.

What Dan perhaps means is that Spitzer engaged in egregious moral posturing while Attorney General of NY State and now it has been demonstrated that he is culpable of immoral activity.

If so, that would be classified as a lowish level of hypocrisy as it self corrects assuming Spitzer will no doubt resign and leave government in disgrace.

In the image, the Governor's wife is on the left, the Governor on the right. The image was taken at a press conference where the Governor admitted an ambiguous wrong doing and declined to take any questions.