Another hypocrisy column: this time in USA Today

Glen Reynolds, a professor of law at Tennessee and a relatively well known blogger (he is on the right in the first image which also has his two brothers), writes a weekly column for USA Today. Yesterday, the title of the column was,

Sen. John McCain's funeral put Washington's vicious political hypocrisy fully on display.

The column makes the point that, in 2000, a number of Republicans said nasty things about McCain and in 2008, a lot of Democrats said nasty things about McCain (the image shows Madonna at a concert where she compared McCain to Hitler and Robert Mugabe) but at McCain's funeral, former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama praised McCain.

The point is a good one but I have a problem with calling it hypocrisy. This is because, neither Bush nor Obama were the people who said nasty things about McCain in 2000 and 2008.   Also, the people who did say nasty things  back are not quoted with respect to McCain in 2018. 

I've made approximately the same distinction in other posts but since this column was in USA Today, I thought I'd redo the distinction once again.

 

 

The column is available here.

Madonna's image is from an article on that 2008 concert.

The photo of the Reynolds brothers is from a post on the Instapundit blog.

 

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