"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.