What Difference Does It Make?

Secretary Hillary Clinton was testifying before the Senate on the issue of the Benghazi terrorist attacks. One of the highlights was a statement made in response to a question that had the words, "...we were misled..." where the statement seems to actually be a question of  'were we misled' regarding U.N. Ambassador Rice's statement on five different news shows that the Benghazi attacks were protest of a video on Youtube rather than a planned terror attack.

Here is a piece of the answer:

“With all respect, the fact is we have four dead Americans was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans,” Clinton shouted. “What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator.”

I seems to some people that the "What difference at this point does it make?" contradicts "It is our job to figure out what happened..." 

or is it

One possible way of looking at "What difference ..." is classifying it as a rhetorical question. If so, it does not contradict the "It is our job...". Of course, that way of looking at it would mean it was, in fact an admission that "...we were misled..." so that is not likely the way Secretary Clinton intended it but who knows.



Video of Q&A here

Colin Powell and dark vein of intolerance

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell defended former Senator Chuck Hegal's use of the term 'jewish lobby' a few days ago (reported by  Bloomberg new service as a remark that while insensitive was not really insulting (the phrase 'jewish lobby' was used in place of the more correct description 'pro Israel lobby' and of course, the pro Israel lobby includes a lot of non Jews)..

But at about the same time, (reported by Politico) Powell criticized Republicans for long ago remarks using phrases Powell deemed to be racially insensitive, e.g., criticizing President Obama as 'lazy' after his performance in the 1st 2012 debate (btw, I don't understand how that is racially insensitive but let's assume Powell actually believes it is).

The two events were within 48 hours of each other. 

Incidentally, NY Gov (a Democrat) used the phrase 'shucking and jiving' with respect to Obama back in 2008; an event which passed unremarked by Mr. Powell.

Hypocrisy?

Unless Powell is very, very forgetful or very stupid, this does appear to be a case of hypocrisy. 

But this brings up a question. Why would Powell be so oblivious to the hypocrisy problem? It seems that because he is viewed favorably by most people, especially in the media, he can get away with it.


Politico article is here
Bloomberg report is here       
Report on the 2008 incident by Huffington Post is here.      .

NBC's Gregory and the Efficacy of Armed Guards at Schools

Dave Gregory is a journalist. He has children who go to a private school and that school has armed guards.

Dave Gregory recently went on something of an on-line rant scoffing at the the notion that armed guards could prevent multiple killings at schools (this was during an interview with an NRA official). 

Hypocrisy?

Nope. 

Here's one reason: Gregory is not in charge of the school's security; for all we know he may not approve of it. 

Here's another reason: Gregory may approve of the security but on the grounds that the security at the school protects the kids (Sidwell Friends), not so much from crazed killers but from nosy journalists (since Gregory is a journalist himself this brings up a new layer of issues, but I'll ignore it).

Article on the issue is here. Picture of Gregory is from Wikipedia on him.

Senator Mike Crapo and the DUI

US Senator Mike Crapo (pronounced KRAY-PO) was arrested on Dec 23, 2012 for DUI in suburban VA. There was no accident and no one was hurt (he ran a red light). His blood alcohol was 0.11 (the upper limit there is 0.08).

All this is unremarkable except that Senator Crapo (R-ID) is also a Mormon, at one time a bishop in a church whose doctrine prohibits alcohol (there may be a medical out on this but Crapo didn't claim this) and one who has proclaimed his alcohol abstinence as a personal value.

Is this hypocrisy?

No. As I see it, it's sin.

If Crapo would, after being arrested, said something implying that it was OK for him to drink but not for others, that would have been hypocrisy. 

It reminds me of the joke where the Priest says to the Rabbi,  
"just between the two of us, have you ever had pork" to which the Rabbi says 'yes'. Then the Rabbi says to the Priest, "just between the two of us have you had sex since you became a Priest" and the Priest says 'yes'. Then the Rabbi says, "beats the heck out of pork, doesn't it?"

Newspaper article on the DUI is here.

E.J. Dionne and the Hypocrisy of Analysis

Eugene Joseph Dionne is a columnist for the Washington Post (that's him in the image).

In an analysis of the 2012 Presidential Election, he said that Obama now a strong mandate.

Back in 2004, after the Presidential Election that year, he said that Bush did not have a mandate.

Here are some sentences from the 2012 column,

"... now Obama will have the strongest argument a politician can offer. Repeatedly, he asked the voters to settle Washington’s squabbles in his favor. On Tuesday, they did. And so a president who took office four years ago on a wave of emotion may now have behind him something more valuable and durable: a majority that thought hard about his stewardship and decided to let him finish the job he had begun."

Here are some sentences from the 2004 column,

"...A decent respect for the outcome of an election never requires free citizens to cower before a temporarily dominant majority... A 51-48 percent victory is not a mandate."

Interestingly, in both the 2004 and 2012 election, a sitting President won another term. In both elections, the margin was about 51-48. In both elections the President's party had a strengthened majority in the Senate. One difference was that in the 2004 election, the President's party had a majority in the House but in the 2012 election the President's party had a minority in the House. Thus, it seems Bush's mandate in 2004 was stronger than Obama's mandate in 2012. I suspect Dionne is simply a partisan hack but one could argue that there was other complicating features that made the 2004 election not a mandate but the 2012 one a mandate. Thus I'll not call Dionne a hypocrite, though I suspect he is (and I also find him a boring one also).


Dionne's column of 11-7-2012 is here.
Dionne's column of 11-4-2004 is here.

Why Was Thomas Jefferson a Hypocrite

Almost always, the posts on this site will analyze whether or not somebody is a hypocrite.

Not this time.

Thomas Jefferson is nearly universally recognized as a hypocrite on the slavery issue. 

From his earliest writings, through the documents relating to the establishment of the United States, through his Presidency and his post Presidency, Thomas Jefferson denounced slavery on moral and ethical grounds.

Yet, not only did he have slaves, he also put advertisements in the newspaper to have run away slaves returned, he hired overseers to minimize unruly slave behavior knowing these overseers were inclined to violence, etc.

The historical question is "Why?". There have been three or four hypotheses for this. The one most favorable to Jefferson is that he sincerely believed that emancipation should be gradual to avoid problems for slaveowners, free farmers, slaves, etc. The least favorable to Jefferson is that he compartmentalized his moral position into a very small part of his thinking. 

The book, whose cover is above, seems to propose that Jefferson was seduced or overwhelmed by his economic interests. Per the books reviews, Jefferson had a number of major business problems as well as many cost overruns developing Monticello. His slaves provided the economic basis for a steady income (including income from selling slaves) and without that he couldn't have continued to build out the estate.

The amazon site for the book is here.

Obama and the Stafford Act

I haven't had a lot of comments about the 2012 Presidential election because there is so much material that its actually depressing. But this time it was worth doing because of an oddity.

Back in 2007, then Senator Obama was addressing a mostly black audience in SE Virginia. During the speech, he implied that the Bush administration's refusal to submit a waiver of the Stafford Act (a requirement for a local contribution) to Congress, was racist. This referred to the case of the the salvage and reconstruction of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Some people, in 2012, are accusing then Senator of using racially provocative language and racially provocative slang in the course of that speech.

The racist issue doesn't concern this post. What concerns the post is that, a short time before the speech (about a week before in fact), the Stafford issue had come up in the Senate and, then Senator Obama had voted against granting a Stafford Act waiver. The waiver was approved anyway.

Sounds like hypocrisy.

But its not.

The reason it is not hypocrisy is because of the complexity of legislation. The bill that contained the Stafford Act waiver also contained funding for Operation Iraqi Freedom (which Obama and about a dozen Democrats opposed enough to vote against the combined bill).



CSMonitor story on the reappearance of the 2007 speech is here.
A discussion of the 2007 legislation, including the complexity is here.
A listing of the vote on the 2007 legislation is here.

Paul Campos - Law School Hypocrit or Not

Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado writes a blog called "Inside the Law School Scam"

Several of his posts on that site show that law schools have used biased or unrepresentative or questionably information when 'selling themselves' to prospective students or to law school associations or to other organizations.

Several people commented at his site that he was a hypocrite for drawing a salary that is based, at least partly, on the proceeds due to such biased, unrepresentative or questionable practices.

This is pretty obviously not hypocrisy as I define it. Mr. Campos is not practicing the biased, etc. practices, his employer is. If the University of Colorado had an official policy saying, in effect, "We won't misrepresent the job placement of our graduates" and then did so, they would be hypocrites. If Campos did this, then he would be a hypocrite.

In some way, this is similar to the many cases where people say the Government should do (or not do) something and then take advantage of the fact that the Government does not do what they advocate. For example, there are probably thousands of people who feel that the interest for mortgages above a given limit should not be itemized as part of Schedule A of form 1040 but who itemize it themselves.

Basically, you shouldn't be called a hypocrite except for your own actions.

Professor Campos's blog post on the accusations of hypocrisy  is here.

The image on the left is from a Time Magazine piece written several years ago on another subject.

Harry Reid and tax form hypocrisy

U.S. Senator Harry Reid accuses former Governor and presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney of tax evasion and demands Romney release more tax returns (Romney has released his year 2010 return and his estimated year 2011 return). However, Senator Reid has not released any of his tax returns (fewer than 2 dozen US elected officials has released their returns, however Reid has filed a financial disclosure form which has different information than a tax return).

Does that make Red a hypocrite?

No.

Because a Senator is not a nominee for President.

Of course, this does not mean Reid is correct in that a Presidential candidate should be required to release tax returns nor does it mean Reid is correct that a Senator should not be required to release such returns. Neither action is required by the Constitution, neither action is required by law.  Thus whether someone should do so is a matter of opinion.

A satirical response to Reid has been initiated to the effect that there are rumors that he is a sexual molester and challenging him to prove that he is not.

A source noting that that Senator Reid is not one of the US elected officials releasing tax forms is here.
A story on the accumulation of wealth by Senator Reid during his Senator career is here.
A story on the Reid accusations is here and here. (leftist sources) and here and here (rightist sources)  
The satirical 'Reid is a pederast' campaign is described here.

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.

Transportation Hypocrisy or incoherence

A letter to the Montgomery County Gazette accuses elected officials of hypocrisy regarding transportation.

First, the letter writer notes that he likes light rail more than bus rapid transit. He then says that Montgomery county is proceeding toward a rapid bus transit decision as opposed to light rail. He then notes that Baltimore has a light rail line (all these statements are presumed to be true). Then he makes the accusation:

"Why should Montgomery County be handed only the choice of a dedicated bus line when the politicians from Baltimore, sitting in the positions of authority at the State House in Annapolis, commit hypocrisy given the light rail in their area? What hypocrisy.

So per the letter writer, because there is light rail in Baltimore, then Montgomery County must have light rail also.  This would be hypocrisy only if light rail and bus rapid transit were identical in their cost, impact, service characteristics, etc. but they are not. Think of the argument this way, if handicapped people get handicapped parking, why shouldn't non handicapped people get handicapped parking?

I think the argument is incompetent. No hypocrisy.

Letter in full available here.

Tim Noah's Definition of Hypocrisy

Tim Noah is a senior editor at The New Republic.

In an opinion piece for that publication he writes about Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard U. who is running for Senate in Massachusetts.

Warren claimed American Indian ancestry on her professor ID at Harvard (and earlier did so at another University). She denied remembering that she had made this claim but later admitted it. It also turns out that nobody has been able to identify any American Indian ancestry for Warren.

Noah, who perhaps for ideological reasons, seems to like Warren comes up with several points defending her. The one that interested me is this,

"...Warren may have used her Native American ancestry to get ahead in the cutthroat world of legal academia. We don’t know that she did, and she says she didn’t. But let’s assume she’s lying and that she did make an effort to inform potential employers that she was part Native American. That would be hypocritical if Warren were known to oppose affirmative action. But Warren, a liberal Democrat, almost certainly supports affirmative action.."

Apparently, in Noah's definition, if you support affirmative action, it is NOT hypocritical to lie about your ancestry it but if you oppose affirmative action, it would be hypocritical to lie your ancestry..

I can't follow the logic there. Lying about ancestry to achieve an appointment as a professor is a distinct action that would seem to undermine the whole point of affirmative action as well as being inherently immoral and.or unethical. But maybe Noah doesn't see it that way. .


Noah's opinion piece is here.

National Security Hypocrisy

The NY Times essentially states that the President of the US is a hypocrite in a long deeply sourced article. Here are some excerpts from the article (the image is from the article and shows President Obama with two advisers):

"...Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war...Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.. . a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.... the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers....A phalanx of retired generals and admirals stood behind Mr. Obama on the second day of his presidency, providing martial cover as he signed several executive orders to make good on campaign pledges. Brutal interrogation techniques were banned, he declared. And the prison at Guantánamo Bay would be closed. What the new president did not say was that the orders contained a few subtle loopholes. They reflected a still unfamiliar Barack Obama, a realist who, unlike some of his fervent supporters, was never carried away by his own rhetoric. Instead, he was already putting his lawyerly mind to carving out the maximum amount of maneuvering room to fight terrorism as he saw fit...a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies — rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention — that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks...Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent....In the wake of Mr. Awlaki’s death, some administration officials, including the attorney general, argued that the Justice Department’s legal memo should be made public. In 2009, after all, Mr. Obama had released Bush administration legal opinions on interrogation over the vociferous objections of six former C.I.A. directors. This time, contemplating his own secrets, he chose to keep the Awlaki opinion secret.." 

At least a few conservatives have essentially said "Hooray for Hypocrisy". Rich Lowry, of the National Review, essentially says that the Bush doctrine of counter terrorism was correct and now that Obama is doing it, the left agrees in that the left hasn't been critical of Obama. Mr. Lowry's view is capsulized in this quote, 

"..For most of the left, the highest principle of just-war theory is licet si Obama id faciat (it’s okay if Obama does it). This is how Gitmo, formerly a standing repudiation of all that we hold dear as a nation, becomes an afterthought when it is owned and operated by one Barack H. Obama...".

I like the support of hypocrisy. However, neither the NY Times nor Lowry actually gives a quote by candidate Obama that matches an action by President Obama. Without quotes it is just a plausible accusation rather than an example and it is also plausible that the candidate Obama used nuances in his, for example, seemingly anti Drone strike.

A similar 'I like the hypocrisy' opinion piece is in the Washington Post on-line. It is written by a Mark Thiessen. This one also does not provide any 'Obama is a hypocrite' documentation or citations but does provide a citation that Amnesty International called for arrest of George Bush. Thiessen implies that Amnesty International has not issued a peep of protest about Obama's actions (however, I don't see a good way to provide documentation of a none event other than get Amnesty International to make an actual statement saying they think Obama isn't doing anything wrong - and I'm pretty sure Amnesty Intl doesn't do stuff  like that).

NY Times article is here.
Lowry's opinion piece is here.
Thiessen opinion piece is here.

Doug Schoen: All Super Pacs are bad, except

Doug Schoen is a columnist for Forbes magazine.

He authored an opinion piece that denounced a super PAC for considering using an anti Obama ad that uses material from President Obama's former pastor, Rev Jeremiah Wright. He calls this inexcusable, disgusting and some other names although he seems to acknowledge that the ad was never produced.

Then he says it is a shame that a pro Obama super PAC was forced to put out anti Romney ads in response. Yes, it seems Schoen believes or, possibly is pretending to believe that an ad that didn't get aired is disgusting and shameful, etc. but that the attack ad in response was necessary to counteract the non existent ad.

If he is pretending to believe it, then he is a hypocrite but it is quite possible he believes it.

Schoen's opinion piece is here.

Frank Bruni (NYTimes) accuses

Frank Bruni was the food critic at the NYTimes for several years and now writes on general cultural subjects as well as on food.

In a recent opinion piece he had this to say (in speaking about Bristol Palin),

"...But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed."

Bruni's piece is full of lots of criticism of both Bristol Palin and Rush Limbaugh. However, I'm unable to follow his argument. As best as I can tell, the accusation of hypocrisy against Bristol Palin is that she has criticized gay marriage while, herself being an unwed mother. I don't understand what one thing has to do with another. Bruni also attacks the Palin assertion that children are better off in a nuclear family than otherwise. Bruni does not accuse Palin of having no facts on which to base the assertion (which would be true) but instead criticizes Palin's ex fiance.

With respect to Limbaugh, Bruni says that since Limbaugh has been married four times, he shouldn't criticize gay marriage. Again, I'm unable to understand what one thing has to do with another.

Bruni's opinion piece is here.

NR Editor Johnathon Cohn admits something

Johnathon Cohn is a senior editor at the New Republic (the image is from about a few years ago when Cohn was already working on the health care issue).

He is a fan of the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obamacare).

He recently wrote a piece stating that since the revenues raised by the insurance mandate are actually taxes, that then Obamacare is constitutional. I'm not going to comment about that.

Subsequent to his first piece on the subject, someone wrote to him and said that, if the mandate is a tax, then President Obama was breaking his 'no tax increases for people making under $250k/year' promise). Mr. Cohn essentially admits that this is true. If so, it would make Obama a hypocrite for saying one thing and meaning another, at least when the mandate takes effect (it is scheduled for 2014 as of this post) and assuming that Obama knew what Cohn knows which is likely. Interestingly, that does not bother  Johnathon Cohn in the slightest and I don't think it bothers many people either. The reason, I think, is that almost no one believed Obama when he made the promise.

Thus Cohn is admitting Obama is a hypocrite and implying that this hypocrisy was necessary for the common good. 

Cohn's article is here.


Note: my father subscribed to the New Republic for a few years before he died and my mom kept the subscription until she died - I renewed it once after she died in my own name but then did not renew it after that).

Context and Intent can nullify hypocrisy

Andrew Rosenthal has been editor of the editorial page of the NYTimes for several years. He has worked for the NYTimes since the 1980s. His father worked for the NYTimes. He knows a few things about newspapers and knows a few things about editorials.

He recently wrote a blog piece (which I don't think was in the paper edition of the NYTimes) admitting that then Senator and later candidate Obama harshly criticized former President Bush for the latter's signing statements and executive orders but now President Obama does the same thing. He has an interesting explanation for why this isn't hypocrisy.

Here it is,

"..I was appalled, and so was the Times editorial board (and so, in fact was Senator Barack Obama) when a Boston Globe reporter, Charlie Savage, documented Mr. Bush’s use of presidential signing statements and executive orders. But I am not appalled by the way Mr. Obama is relying on those instruments – as detailed in today’s Times by that same enterprising reporter, who now works for us. Context and intent make all the difference. ...."  

as Rosenthal explains later,

"..Unlike the Bush/Cheney team, Mr. Obama did not take office with the explicit goal of creating new powers for the presidency."

Really. Did the Bush/Chaney team have the explicit goal of creating new powers for the presidency? Mr. Rosenthal gives no evidence of this and I think I know why. No such evidence exists. Bush presumably didn't think he would have to issue signing statements at all. Obama presumably thought likewise. This is because many people simply do not have experience looking at actual statutory language, realizing how awful it is and having to try to find some way to work around that language. Given Rosenthal's experience, he not only should know this, he almost certainly does. Btw, I'm not accusing Rosenthal of hypocrisy here since he is simply carrying out an objective of defending the politician he likes while criticizing the one he doesn't like.

    Blog Post by Mr Rosenthal is here. The caricature used as an image is on Mr. Rosenthal's website.

Dr. Peggy Drexler and 'parenthood'

Dr. Drexler wrote something in the Huffington Post recently. She is against the automatic 'role assignment' of parents. Here is a quote,

"...To parent: It's a verb that barely existed a quarter of a century ago. By now, however, it is more useful than the verbs "to father" and "to mother," which were always of limited utility. "To father" refers to nothing more than the biological function of making a baby; it is the provenance of paternity suits...."


But here is Dr. Drexler at her own website, 


"...I am a long-married mother of a son and daughter.".

ooops.

Either she is a hypocrite or just tardy about updating her website to reflect her own research.

Post on the Huffington Post is here.
Dr. Drexler's website is here.