Professor Admits He is a Hypocrite but is he

At the left is Professor Hugo Schwyzer, who is a professor in the Gender studies department at Pasadena City College in California.

He is known for teaching a course on pornography, once bringing in a famous porn star to lecture the class (his academic training is in history and literature). He is also known for appearing on the Ricky Lake show to brag that he had a circumcision at the age of 37. He was also known an a principle contributor to the 'good men project'. One issue that he influenced was the doctrine that to be a 'good man' you should confine yourself to marriage and prior to marriage you should date women your own age.

He recently sent a series of tweets admitting to unfaithfulness with much younger women. In an admission to a reporter, he said that these things were acts of hypocrisy, but, that it was because he was weak willed. If he is telling the truth about the weak will he has found an exception to the hypocrisy definition but if he was just sorry he was going to be caught he is a hypocrite.

A tweet indicated that he would not teach further courses in gender studies and hoped to teach a Western Civilization course (which would be consistent with his academic study).

The above could be an article in The Onion but its not.

Professor Schwyzer's bio is available at wikipedia.
The interview noted above is courtesy of the Daily beast.

Matt Damon and Public Schools

Matt Damon has been an advocate for public schools, for more public spending on public schools, for more status for public school teachers, etc. His mother is a public school teacher and he attended public school growing up. The image shows Damon with his wife Luciana Bozán who was at the time pregnant with a girl who was later named Stella Zavela. He also adopted Luciana's three children from an earlier marriage. Matt and Luciana have three children together (that's six for the family).

Damon moved to Los Angeles in 2012. He recently enrolled all his kids in private school. Some people have accused Damon of hypocrisy.

Damon's argument against enrolling the family in public school was an odd one, it amounted to 'the public schools aren't progressive enough'.

Since I have no idea what 'progressive enough' means in that context and because Damon could have used the privacy argument in justifying private school and because Damon never actually advocated that rich people send their kids to public schools, I'll give Damon a pass on this. 

Interestingly enough though, Damon is starring in a movie called Elysium, about a  future in which rich people live in above ground luxury while the poor live in ground level slums.

A Huffington Post article on this is here.

An article in a Florida paper about this subject using the word 'hypocrite' is here

A wikipedia article on the movie Elysium is here.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_%28film%29

Grand Mufti of Kashmir and Jammu - music hypocrisy

The Telegraph carries a new report of a religious leader attending, and apparently enjoying a musical show. This same fellow, one, Grand Mufti Azam Bashiruddin Ahmad, had earlier given a fiery anti music sermon and fatwa. That's the Grand Mufti in the hat.

I wondered whether there was some distinction between listening to music (OK) and playing music (not OK) that would justify the Grand Mufti's actions. As near as I can tell, both listening and playing music are criticized by Mohammud. Also since Mohammud's actions are, per scripture, praiseworthy, they are to be emulated and besides the criticism seems to be divinely initiated.

I suppose that the Grand Mufti's actions could be defended if there were some greater purpose; that is, enjoying the music this one time would help some overarching objective but no such defense has come out. Thus I'm going to have to call this one hypocritical. As for the seriousness, it would seem it isn't trivial because, assuming Muslims aren't supposed to listen to music, the pictures of the Grand Sheik enjoying music would weaken the resolve against music (I'm assuming the Grand Sheik is pretty important). Of course if the entire hadith against music is wrong, then it is the sermon that was a problem and the enjoyment of music actually improved things.


article in Telegraph is here
quotes from anti music hadith are here (this source is anti Islam but no muslim has criticized this content as false)

Mira Sucharov Agonizes over Hawkings Supposed Hypocrisy

Several weeks ago, cosmologist Stephen Hawking said he would not attend a conference in Israel in protest of Israel's policy (Hawking claims Israel is occupying Palestinian land but the policy could also be called 'partially administrating' or something (I'm not sure whether Hawking thinks Israel inside the green line is an occupation).

Several opinions came out accusing Hawking of hypocrisy because he uses Israeli made devices to communicate (including the communication of his non attendance at the conference). 

The accusation of hypocrisy, is I think, incorrect because Hawking didn't say 'everyone should attend the conference and then didn't' or 'no one should denounce Israel and then did, both of which would be hypocrisy. Since the two issues are separate, I don't consider it hypocrisy.

However, I may be in the minority. 

An Haaretz blogger named Mira Sucharov, who is also a professor (the second image is her), assumes that this is hypocrisy and agonizes over it and over an event in her (Mira's) life that she thought was hypocrisy but justified, that is, she bought something from a store with a Nazi poster. (something I would not consider hypocritical unless she had previous said to boycott all stores with Nazi posters).


Mira's column is here.

An opinion piece in a British Newspaper on the Hawkings non attendance of the Israel conference is here.

An Endorsement of Hypocrisy

Larry Flynt (that's him in the image) is the publisher of Hustler magazine. In today's news was word that Flynt is endorsing former Governor Mark Sanford for a House seat in South Carolina. Flynt is also donating funds to Sanford's campaign.

The reason Flynt gives is that while he dislikes Sanford on policy, he likes Sanford for exposing the hypocrisy of traditional marriage.

Actually, Flynt means to say (I think) that Sanford is a hypocrite and also was a pro family value conservative.  (Sanford, while governor of South Carolina) famously flew to Argentina to carry on an affair while telling his wife and the media that he was hiking the Appalachian trail.

I'll not comment on whether Sanford was a hypocrite or Flynt is one. Its just interesting that someone puts money into his pro hypocrisy opinion.

News article on Flynt's endorsement of Sanford is here.

 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/larry-flynt-endorses-mark-sanford-449105

MJ Rosenberg says Hagel is a bad liar, not a hypocrite

M J Rosenberg is a political analyst, columnist and consultant (that's him with Obama).. 

He has had a long career. He worked at AIPAC, he worked as a political appointee in the Clinton administration. He was a foreign policy chief of the leftist org Media Matters.  He is currently known to be a critic of Israel's policy in the West Bank. Some would say he is more than a critic and has crossed the line to Israel hater. Whatever.

What concerns this site is his comments on Chuck Hagel, the nominee for DOD Secretary.

MJ Rosenberg asserts that Hagel was lying in his testimony to Congress and that Hagel's difficulty with lying made him (Hagel) come across as stupid. M J does not use the word hypocrite.

Here is a post by MJ on this subject.

Glenn Greenwald Resists the Hypocrisy Label

Glenn Greenwald is an American lawyer by training who writes a column for the British newspaper 'The Guardian'. He focuses on civil liberties related issues (that's him on the left - pun intended).

He recently wrote a column entitled,

DOJ kill list memo forces many Dems out of the closet as overtly unprincipled hacks

 The column points out some of the people and groups that harshly criticized President Bush for various executive actions taken (e.g., drone warfare) while either excusing or ignoring President Obama's actions of the same sort. An example is, 

" ... quoted Jennifer Granholm, the former Michigan governor and fervent Obama supporter, as admitting without any apparent shame that "if this was Bush, I think that we would all be more up in arms" because, she said "we trust the president"."

"... polls now show that Democrats and even self-identified progressives support policies that they once pretended to loathe now that it is Obama rather than Bush embracing them...."

The point to me is that Greenwald does not use the word 'hypocrisy'. Instead, as in the title, he declares what others would call hypocrites as 'overly unprincipled hacks' (how many hacks are principled I wonder?). Interestingly, while pointing out that former candidate Obama was one of the people who criticized the tactics President Obama now employs, Greenwald chooses not to call Obama a hypocrite or a hack. 

Interesting Greenwald cites the lack of hackery (or lack of hypocrisy - Greenwald uses neither word however) of the Republicans in this particular instance.

"  What also made this last week unique was the reaction of the American Right. Progressives love to recite the conceit that Republicans will never praise Obama no matter what he does. This is a complete sham: conservatives, including even Cheney himself, have repeatedly lavished praise on Obama for his embrace of Bush/Cheney policies in these areas..."

 

The Greenwald column is here.  

Related column in Salon webzine is here

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.