Is Yale Hypocritical on Gay Stuff

There was a piece in Commentary a few days ago with a clever title, 

"Yale Gives Course in Hypocrisy"

The crux of the argument is that for many years Yale did not allow an ROTC pretense on campus, ostensibly because of the discharging of gays from the military. Soon, however, Yale will be opening an annex in Singapore, a country that criminalizes homosexual behavior (Singapore also has other authoritarian practices, e.g., speech is not anywhere as free as in the US).

There are some problems in labeling this hypocrisy. First, I don't have a good way to get at the details, e.g., was the anti ROTC action really because of the homosexual issue or was the homosexual issue a cover for a general anti military attitude (the ban on ROTC at Yale was initiated in the 1970s)  Second, the two actions may be (actually probably are) initiated by different parts of Yale.

BTW, I could have used the Commentary Logo for this but the Yale Logo is more fun (the words are Urim  Ve Tumim - which is fancifully translated as 'light and truth') and because some of the show Gilmore Girls was set there.

The Commentary piece is here.

Matt Taibbi Hypocrisy within two paragraphs

Matt Taibbi is a columnist for Rolling Stone and the author of about a half dozen books and a winner of the "National Magazine Award for Commentary".

He has an opinion piece in Rolling Stone's July issue criticizing Mitt Romney's speech to the NAACP. Here is part of the first paragraph,

"...Romney really showed us something in his luridly self-congratulating N.A.A.C.P. gambit, followed by the awesomely disgusting "free stuff" post-mortem speech he delivered the next night in front of friendlier audiences. The twin appearances revealed the candidate to be not merely unlikable, and not merely a fatuous, unoriginal hack of a politician, but also a genuinely repugnant human being, a grasping corporate hypocrite with so little feel for how to get along with people that he has to dream up elaborate schemes just to try to pander to the mob."

and here is part of the 4th paragraph,

"... Without accepting blame or admitting guilt, he could have talked about the increasingly strident tone of the national debate over racially charged issues, and wondered aloud if politicians on both sides perhaps needed to find a new way to talk about these things without fearmongering, stereotyping, or trading accusations. He could have met the racial-tension issue head on, in other words, just by saying out loud the simple truth that white and nonwhite Americans, and Democrats and Republicans both, need to find more civilized ways to talk about their political concerns...."

So after Mr. Taibbi declares Romney to be fatuous, unoriginal and genuinely repugnant, Taibbi comes for more civilized ways to talk.

I think Mr. Taibbi might not consider labeling Romney as fatuous, unoriginal and genuinely repugnant to be uncivil. This would be so if Mr. Taibbi considers such labels as objective truth. However, I can't find a specific fact that would lead to the labels established by Taibbi except that Romney said that there is no such thing as a free lunch (Taibbi doesn't actually use these words but acknowledges that Romney's speech to the NAACP was similar to a speech Romney gave to a mostly Republican audience in Montana later that same week and the 'no such thing as a free lunch' quote was in the Montana speech but not the NAACP speech). It seems Taibbi construes the 'no free lunch' comment as a racist as well as fatuous, etc. comment. The 'no free lunch' meme goes back many generations and, up until now it was, as near as I can tell, never considered racist or repugnant, but simply a general observation.

So whether Taibbi is a hypocrite depends on whether he believes something is obviously true (the 'no free lunch' comment is racist) even though there is no evidence that anyone else believes this. I gotta say 'NO' on this and therefore conclude that Taibbi is a hypocrite and manages to show it in a single published article (no wonder he is an award winner).

The Rolling Stone piece is here.

The transcript of the Romney speech to the NAACP is here.

I can't find a transcript OF The Romney Montana speech as of this posting. Nor did the Rolling Stone piece link to it but Ann Althouse, a Wisconsin based blogger, points out that Taibbi left off the explanatory part of Romney's Montana speech in his (Taibbi's) quote to make it seem more menacing than it was.

The Zoo Rabbi charges Hypocrisy

Rabbi Natan Slifkin is known as the zoo Rabbi because he has made a concentrated study of the zoology of the Tanach and Talmud.

He was at Beth Sholom one time (I was in Atlanta that week).

He has a blog that is not limited to zoology. In a recent post he charged the Haredim with hypocrisy for demanding draft deferments justified by a theology that deep Torah study protects Israel while also demanding continued social benefits (housing, food allowances, etc.).

Slifkin says that the former theology requires a belief that God will provide protection to the State by virtue of the Torah study but the second position means that the Haredim don't believe God would provide sustenance by virtue of Torah study.

He charges that this is hypocrisy.

Not all Haredim hold these beliefs but even if they did I don't think it is hypocrisy. 

Belief systems themselves may be complex or filled with distinctions but as long as one practices according to the belief, there is no hypocrisy.  There are, as Slifkin himself seems to acknowledge, a number of ways that the belief system can be justified. For example, the first theological statement, i.e., God protects Israel because of Torah study is qualitatively different from the issue of social benefits because it is the State of Israel, not God that provides said benefits. Another justification would be that the deep Torah study also allows the country to be sufficiently prosperous to subsidize the study. Many other justifications are possible.

As Slifkin seems to acknowledge, both theological statements are part of a belief system which simply justifies a particular life style.

In addition, the life style that is being defended is the life style of the Haredi Rabbaim because it is they who are doing the lobbying, etc. Personally, I doubt that the Haredi students are all diligent or even happily learning scholars because I've seen many, many Haredi-looking folk on the street shopping, etc. during normal learning hours.

Slifkin's post is here.