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.