Gore on the Lake

I've discussed before the situation in which former VP Al Gore uses a remarkable amount of electricity and natural gas in his home in Nashville.

One of the reasons that this might not be a case of overuse of energy (and thus on the way to hypocrisy) is because the home (10,000 sq ft) in Nashville might have a complicated security system or a complex of offices or something similar.

Now, Mr. Gore has purchased a 100' long houseboat from a local boat manufacturer. The boat is evidently to be equipped with solar panels to generate electricity and is to burn bio diesel (although the wave runner visible at the stern probably uses gasoline like other craft of its kind). Because of these factors, Gore has named the boat bio solar 1 (which the anti Gore community refers to as BS 1). The lake on which it docks is Center Hill Lake. The lake is property of the US Corps of Engineers and docks are the property of the US. The lake is part of the Tennessee Valley project. It is a rather large lake, with 18,000 acres of water surface and 415 miles of shoreline so the boat is not out of place from a visual standpoint.

The boat manufacturer is obviously hoping to sell more such boats based on his famous customer.

Here are some threshold questions that have to be answered before getting into the hypocrisy issue.

Is it possible that Al Gore does not realize that it took a huge energy input to construct this boat?

Is there a conceivable public use or environmental use for the boat or is this simply a prestige purchase with some minimal energy mitigation thrown in to fool people?

McCain Ads vs. Obama - Hypocrisy?

Slate writer, John Dickerson writes an article titled,

""Voters don't mind negative ads. Do they care about hypocritical ones?"

The article is written so that I'm not even sure which of McCain's negative ads was supposed to be hypocritical and also I'm not sure what the hypocrisy is.

I'm guessing that Dickerson thinks that when McCain's ad criticized Obama for not visiting injured soldiers in Germany that was hypocritical because Obama did visit injured soldiers in Iraq.

If my guess is correct, it may or may not be a bit misleading (there are a lot of other factors - chose to give a big speech in Germany and passed up a visit to the injured - however, in Iraq there was no opportunity for a big speech). Notwithstanding the complexity, I can't figure out the hypocrisy.

John Edwards and Hypocrisy

Today's Slate has an article on former Senator John Edwards (left in the image) called, " Why the Press Is Ignoring the Edwards "Love Child" Story". As part of the Slate article it takes as a given that if Edwards had denied that he had fathered a child with Rielle Hunter (right in the image) and if he had in fact fathered the child, he would be a hypocrite. Here is a relevant selection from the article,

"...If Edwards had no affair and fathered no love child, it should be easy to erase the hypocrisy charge, and the press owes him that, pronto. If we give Edwards the benefit of the doubt, which he deserves, visiting the woman who recently gave birth to the out-of-wedlock child of a married campaign aide is completely OK. But meeting her at a Beverly Hills hotel in the early hours of the morning and running from tabloid reporters when approached and hiding in a hotel bathroom for 15 minutes, as the Enquirer reports Edwards did, is not completely OK. Not if he wants to avoid the hypocrite label...."

Now let's assume he did father the child. I'm not sure why it makes him a hypocrite. He didn't tell other people not to have an affair with Ms. Hunter. What this makes John Edwards is not a hypocrite but a liar.

Full disclosure - I probably loath Senator Edwards more than any other person who has been a Senator or Governor in the past 10 years. Notwithstanding that, I'm trying to be fair.

Al Gore Yet Again

Former VP Al Gore was in DC yesterday to promote an energy/greenhouse program.

As noted by the group, Americans for Prosperity, Mr. Gore and his entourage showed up in two Lincoln Town Cars and an SUV despite the fact that public transit is quite convenient to the venue (the image is from the Washington Post report of the event).

The group charges Mr. Gore with hypocrisy.

In defense of Mr. Gore, he may be obliged by security protocols to avoid public transportation (I don't know). In addition, if there were a lot of people in each Lincoln Town Car and in the SUV, it would have actually been fairly efficient from a carbon emission standpoint.

What I did find annoying was that the newspapers, in general did not report that the basic block of Mr. Gore's plan was a very significant carbon tax (how much is impossible to tell from the newspaper report or any site Mr. Gore has that I could find). Instead, the newspapers said that Mr. Gore's plan would replace all carbon emissions in 10 years. This is not hypocrisy, however, just incomplete reporting.

Hypocrisy at the G8 Summit

Apparently, the G8 (comprised of 8 countries with advanced economies) had a summit on the food crises.

The London telegraph article reporting on this event, had this to say,

"...Gordon Brown and his fellow world leaders have sparked outrage after it was disclosed they enjoyed a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner at the G8 summit where the global food crisis tops the agenda..."

Deeper into the article they have some additional juicy and delicious details. This was the 2nd course of the eight courses:

Second course:
Folding Fan Modeled Tray decorated with Bamboo Grasses for Tanabata Festival
Kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto Beef shabu-shabu, asparagus dressed with sesame cream
Diced fatty flesh of Tuna Fish, Avocado and Jellied Soy Sauce, and Japanese Herb "Shiso"
Boiled clam, tomato, Japanese Herb "shiso" in jellied clear soup of clam
Water Shield and Pink Conger dressed with Vinegary Soy Sauce
Boiled Prawn and Jellied Tosazu-Vinegar
Grilled Eel rolled around Burdock strip
Sweet Potato
Fried and Seasoned Goby with Soy Sauce and Sugar

I wonder how the sweet potato got into that course and why was it just served plain. Possibly it was a symbolic diss to the US (the sweet potato being native to the US).

Since so much of the food was flown in from far away it probably also had a huge carbon footprint.

So here is a case of hypocrisy but given that very few people are really naive enough to expect the G8 to do anything good at their conferences, it seems to me fairly harmless.

Also for what its worth, the G8 countries are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. There are also an "outreach" five consisting of : Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Thus there may be a G 13 soon.

Is Satan a Hypocrite?

WRAL, a TV station that covers news in Durham county, NC has a article on some arrests related to cult inspired child abuse. The persons charged (who are also affiliated with the Democratic party in Durham county) are said by the assistant DA to have a shared interest in Satan worship.

However, a spokesperson for the local Church of Satan said,

"Our church is, without exception, against all illegal acts. Our dogma is clear and concise on the issue of sexual abuse and crime in general: If you do it, you can be excommunicated," Ygraine Mitchell wrote in an e-mail to WRAL.

At the least this seems to be a dumbing down of Satan worship. Or it could be that Satan says one thing to followers and his spokeperson says another thing to the media (which would be hypocrisy). This might therefor be a virtual hypocrisy.

Saletan On Hypocrisy Again - The Moral Issue

Will Saletan has commented on Hypocrisy before. The previous time quite recently. On that occasion I basically agreed with him. On this occasion I partly do and partly don't.

This time he comments on an obscenity case pending in Florida. The State is, near as I can tell, charging someone with selling obscene material. Here is Saletan's report:

The defendant is accused of purveying obscene material from a Florida Web site. To be judged obscene, the material has to be found patently offensive or prurient by "contemporary community standards." According to Matt Richtel of the New York Times, the defense attorney in the case, Lawrence Walters, will use Google Trends to argue that the community's standards are lower than advertised. Walters "plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like 'orgy' than for 'apple pie' or 'watermelon,'" Richtel reports. (Evidence here.) The point is "to demonstrate that interest in the sexual subjects exceeds that of more mainstream topics—and that by extension, the sexual material distributed by his client is not outside the norm."

Saletan takes the position that the meaning of "community" differs from "neighborhood" of "county" and that searching for porn on line is more than just thinking about porn but less than viewing porn.

Fair enough. However, there is also a difference between selling porn and browsing on the term "orgy". More importantly is the substance of the claim about community standards. If Pensacola has 60,000 residents (the city) or 600,000 residents (the metro area), does having 200 people in the area browse on "orgy" make it a community standard (its hard to believe you would have very many people doing that - after they his "orgy" once or twice they would have favorite sites to go to directly. Suppose the attorney representing the accused hired a bunch of people to browse on "orgy" from various computers at the public library or other available places. That would 'game' the statistics.

Obama on Equal Pay for Women (suggested by George)

On June 22, 2008, Senator Obama made a speech in New Mexico. The speech was, as reported by the newspapers the next day and as near as I can tell, to a group of women employees at a bakery. Senator Obama said he would be better than Senator McCain on the issue of equal pay for women.

It turns out that what he meant was that he would support a bill (which may or may not have been introduced in the Senate) that would extend the time that a person had before they could sue for gender discrimination under existing law . The existing law establishes a period not to exceed 180 days after a paycheck that was less than it should have been and was less because of gender discrimination. That law was declared constitutional earlier this year. Senator McCain does not favor changing the law because he feels the potential for excessive lawsuits is too high.

By June 30 people had gone through the published records of compensation for Senator Obama's staff and noticed that women had lower average salaries than men.

(although not directly related, it seems that on Senator McCain's staff women had average salaries higher than those of men).

So does that make Senator Obama a hypocrite.

Actually, Senator Obama did not say in the June 22 statement that he favors equal pay for all work. However, interestingly, in 2007 , he did use the phrase, "...That’s why I’ve fought to ensure equal pay for equivalent work in Illinois and in the U.S. Senate..."

So what we have here are problems with understanding what phrases like "equal pay for equal work" or "equal pay for equivalent work" means.

What I would say is that Senator Obama is being slippery here. He wants people to believe the connotations of his comments (more pay for women) while holding himself only to the denotation of his comments (favors changing the law on lawsuits).

Slippery isn't hypocritical.

More information on the entire issue is on a nice cyber news service article that George sent me.

Senator Obama on Vouchers

Back in February 2008, there was some possibility that Senator Obama would be pro-school voucher. After all, his kids are in private school and part of his wife's compensation package is tuition support for dependents.

Since then, he has, apparently reversed his position.

Does the fact that he essentially receives a voucher for private school for his kids constitute hypocrisy given that he is against extending this priviledge to everyone.

Not the way I look at it.

Similarly, I don't think taking advantage of a tax management device that you believe is unwarrented, makes you a hypocrite. Nor is watching public television even though you believe govt shouldn't subsidize it.

Furthermore, on the subject of taking public funds for campaigning for President, Senator Obama once pledged to do this and now says he won't do so.

This is simply a matter of changing his mind - change you can believe in I guess.

However, it is not hypocrisy.

Gore Mansion Again



Back in February 2007, there were a number of reports that the family mansion belonging to former VP Al Gore in Nashville, TN used many times the amount of electricity and natural gas that similarly sized mansions did elsewhere in Nashville (and of course many, many times the amount used by an average house). I commented on these at the time.

Subsequent to these February 2007 reports, spokespersons for Mr. Gore stated that energy saving measures and alternate energy generating devices were being installed and subsequently work was done.

A new report indicates that the electricity consumption of the mansion has increased, rather than decreased since then. This new report does not contain information on natural gas consumption. A Gore spokesperson notes that the energy saving products were not completely installed until Nov 2007 and requests more time before a before/after comparison is made.

As noted back in 2007, although this looks bad for Mr. Gore, he may sincerely believe that the carbon offsets he purchases and the 'clean energy program' he participates in with the local electricity provider make him innocent of carbon-hogging. In addition, as noted before, there may be offices in the mansion and if, say, there are more people working in the mansion this year than in a previous year, it might account for some of the discrepancy.

Where to Drill for Oil; Where Not to Drill

President Bush has urged Congress to rescind statutory restrictions on oil exploration in various off shore areas but has not rescinded an Executive Order (dating back to 1990) that also restricts oil exploration. According to an Associated Press report, he considered doing this latter step but determined to delay doing so.

Is this hypocrisy (George thought it might be)?

Unfortunately, I don't really have the information to determine this. There are times that Congress passes a law that has some loose ends and the President issues an executive order that, ostensibly, allows the executive branch to tell the rest of the executive branch how to deal with the loose ends without making administrative blunders. I'm not sure if this is such a case.

UPDATE: On July 16, President Bush issued a new executive order allowing drilling.

Saletan is pro-hypocrisy on Hymenoplasty

(but with a caveat).

On the left is a doctor who, per his own testimony, performs 100 to 200 hymenoplasties a year. The patient is 23 years old.

This operation, is a type of plastic surgery which creates an artificial skin cover over the female sex organ. The skin cover is called the hymen. It is, from the point of view of the physical health of the patient, medically unnecessary. In ancient cultures having a hymen was a sign of virginity, although in many cases the hymen is torn off by action other than sexual intercourse.

Will Saletan, of Slate (a webzine owned by the Washington Post) dislikes the cultures (mostly Moslem but some others also) that gives women an incentive (and sometimes violently coerces them) to have this operation. However he acknowledges the existence of the culture and does not want to eliminate the choice of having this operation.

Saletan's article contains this core argument:

"...The virginity fetishism these women endure is sexist, hypocritical, and totally unrealistic. The pressure applied by families and communities to enforce it is obscene. One woman interviewed by the Times says her fiance's family is insisting that she go to Morocco so a doctor of their choosing can inspect her for proof of virginity. Don't even get me started on the mental sickness of insisting that your wife bleed on your wedding night. And to top it off, the procedure is a sham. Restoring your hymen doesn't make you a virgin.
You and I can sit here all day rehearsing these complaints. And some day, God willing, the twisted culture of virginity hypocrisy will wither away. But until it does, hypocrisy is its own best remedy. Help these women deceive their husbands and parents. If they want artificial hymen restoration, let them have it."

and here is a second hypocrisy noted in Saletan's piece:

"...The Journal [I'm unable to determine which Journal he is referring to] reports that Dr. Bernard Paniel, a Paris gynecologist, has modified the original Tunisian procedure to reduce invasiveness and coital pain and bleeding. In fact, the blood reduction is so effective that it threatens to expose the fraud. That's why he "provides his patients with vials of blood that can be spilled on wedding-night bed sheets."
Let's hear it for Dr. Paniel and his fellow fraud artists. Two wrongs don't make a right, but sometimes, they're better than one."

I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the ideas noted in Saletan's argument. One problem I see is the cost. If the cost of these procedures is borne by society at large (via the French national health plan for example), the people who pay for these procedures are also victims of the culture that requires virgin brides. Another problem is that by using the procedure we may be perpetuating the culture.

I would consider this hypocrisy to be a fairly significant one, 4 on a 1-5 level (with 5 being very bad and 1 being harmless).

Another Blogger on Jet Setting Enviros

At a comment space on Amazon.com, a post entitled, Double Standards, Hypocrisy, and Hey! A Trip to Bonn notes,

"...is there anything quite like having 2,400 delegates from 162 Nations all jetting in to Bonn, Germany for a summit on--you guessed it--Climate Change?..."

I personally wonder if the author of this post did an analysis. If each of the people attending took public transportation for each of their trip and shut off all the electricity, etc. at their home during this conference, it might have made a slight decrease in total carbon emissions. Of course these assumptions are unlikely, however, what is likely is that each of the attendees considers their personal presence vital to this conference (on the other hand, this is, undoubtly, in many cases due to ego or bureaucratic game playing). The thing is that how many people are being hypocrites here is completely unknown.

Rabbi Berel Wein is against it.

Rabbi Wein titled a op ed "Hypocrisy". It was published May 16, 2008 in the Jerusalem Post.

He criticizes leaders who either argue for morality and don't practice it or leaders who overpromise (I can't tell which).

Here is a sample of each:

Morality - "Hypocrisy is the greatest enemy of religious leaders. Fallen clergy are the stuff of legend already, let alone popular literature and investigative media.

They are especially vulnerable because of their usual posture of moral self-righteousness and their penchant for criticizing sharply those whom they feel to be derelict in their behavior, policies or thoughts and attitudes.

Thus when their faults are exposed it is not only they that fall but they take down the faith that they represent as well. The tendency in certain religious circles and society to glorify its leadership to the extent that these people become superhuman only exacerbates the vulnerability to the accusation of hypocrisy."

Leadership overpromising - "I have always felt that part of Winston Churchill’s greatness in the leadership of Great Britain in World War II lay in his refusal to make sweeping promises or proclaim easy solutions.

He promised the English people “sweat, blood and tears” with the hope that eventually victory would come their way.

This promise in all of its forms was eventually completely fulfilled . There were no promises of settling ancient disputes in a matter of months, no brazen commitments for immediate victories and no hiding from the evident facts of the situation. This enabled him to escape from the plague of hypocrisy that has hounded so many of our leaders on the social, military and diplomatic fronts."

I personally can't tell what he defines as hypocrisy. If preachers preach good behavior but admit that people are frail, I don't see what the hypocrisy is when the preacher is frail. If leaders believe (mistakenly or because of ego) their own promises and can't deliver, they are simply mistaken or egomaniacs but not necessarily hypocrites.

Bottom line: Rabbi Wein didn't define hypocrisy and I can't backward engineer his definition from his article.

Are We Being Hypocritical?

This is a question asked by Trudie Skyler (wife of Sting - the entertainer). The Daily Mail (a British Tabloid) answers the question in the affirmative in the headline of their article.

However, I can't extract enough information to figure out if, Ms. Skyler actually acknowledged hypocrisy or what the specific charge was. She does acknowledge wanting to curtail use of Genetically Modified products but that's not quite the same thing as having a large carbon footprint (which Sting acknowledges). This is way too muddled to come to a conclusion but it's interesting that Sting's wife seems to have asked herself this question during a press event.

Is Hypocrisy a weak term?

Roger Simon, liberal turned not-so liberal (conservative in some areas), says that Mr. Simon was

"was struck by the amazing size of David Geffen's yacht and this morning we injected a photo into the story..."

and concludes [actually an interim conclusion] that

"...We are of course here at a level that makes hypocrisy a weak term. Sure, Geffen and Huffington (with her umpteen thousand square foot home ameliorated by a Prius) are hypocritical in the sense that "hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue," but there is something more complicated afoot."

I think Mr. Simon is saying that because Mr. Geffen is an advocate of reducing greenhouse emissions, he is a hypocrite.

Well there may be something to that but Mr. Simon does not cite any source noting Geffen's advocacy on that point and I couldn't find anything decisive myself when I browsed a few times.

Not guilty by lack of half the evidence.

Incidentally Geffen apparently is only a part owner of the yacht. The other owner is Larry Ellison (CEO of The Oracle Corporation, Inc.).

The yacht, named 'Rising Sun' is said (by Wikipedia) to be about 450' ft long and is one of the world's longest yachts (however, Ann and I have been on cruise ships that are over twice this length, specifically the Golden Princess and the Diamond Princess).

This subject came up because an admirer of Senator Obama had posted some information on what the Senator had said about Pennsylvania on a website and the owner of the website was on Geffen's yacht at the time and didn't review the posting for a few days.

Naval Officer who worked in prostitution ring taught leadership and ethics at the Naval Academy

Here is the first part of a newspaper article today on the subject:

A Navy officer who taught a leadership and ethics course at the Naval Academy faces dismissal after she testified Thursday that she moonlighted as an escort for the so-called D.C. Madam.

Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca C. Dickinson, 38, admitted in federal court Thursday that she performed sex acts with men in exchange for money as a call girl for Deborah Jean Palfrey (who is in the image above holding what was purported to be a client list) from October 2005 until April 2006.

I don't know for sure what she taught at the leadership and ethics course but its a safe bet that she told the midshipmen not to do anything reasonably perceivable as unethical.

Well, there you go, a true case of hypocrisy. The damage will be very significant for LCDR Dickinson. She will likely lose rank and be discharged under less than honorable conditions. This will decrease, maybe eliminate whatever pension rights she might have accrued (she has been in the service since 1986 and has been a commissioned officer since 1993).

The damage to society is probably much less. There will likely be extra scrutiny provided to other Naval Academy instructors and other minor effects.

Who is the Hypocrite on Free Trade?

Who isn't?

In the past few weeks, there have been some hypocrisy charges in the matter of the Free Trade Agreement with Columbia (FTA-C).

One set of charges is that opponents of the FTA-C, including representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives and Senator Harry Reid, the President of the US Senate and various labor organizations realize that the FTA-C is good for the US but oppose it anyway because the public mistakenly blames various problems on NAFTA. Part of the reason for this is said to be that elected officials (like Pelosi and Reid) have been demonizing NAFTA for years.

Another set of charges is that individuals in the campaigns of Senators Obama and Clinton actually support free trade agreements but pretend not to in order to keep working for the candidates they support. A interesting variety of this is that the Obama campaign accused the Clinton campaign of hypocrisy even though Obama advisers have basically done similar things.

This is pointed out at the link.

Assuming the Obama campaign realizes this, then yes, they are being hypocrites in accusing the Clinton campaign of hypocrisy.

This is the first case I can recall of a double reverse hypocrisy. Cool.

FWIW:

bloggress Wonkette charged Mark Penn with hypocrisy in talking to Columbia about promoting the FTA-C, while in a leadership role in an anti-NAFTA Clinton campaign; and,

The leftwing MotherJones magazine reported on Obama senior adviser telling Canada that when Obama denounced NAFTA, he (Obama) didn't really mean it.

Materialism for me;

not for thee

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is mentioned below, reportedly made anti-materialism and anti-middle classism part of his sermonizing.

To the left is a retirement home being built for Rev. Wright. According to news reports, it is 10,000 sq feet, will cost about $1.5 million, is being financed mostly by the Church he served and is in a gated community withing the village of Tinley Park in Cook County about 15 miles southwest of the Hyde Park area where the church is. The village of Tinley Park was, per the previous census, about 90% white, about 2% black. It has a mean household income about 50% higher than the US average.

I don't have the exact words of Wright's sermons so one could build a non-hypocrisy case based on parsing the language. Or one could build a case base on the basis that the house is required to be this size and in this location because it will be used to host special church events.

Most likely, however, is that Rev Wright feels he is above his own words. That is, normal people should beware of materialism but people who have a high conscious, like himself, need not fear materialism.

This seems like a case where the only 'victims' are members of his own church.

Keith Olbermann: Hillary must renounce Ferraro Comments but Obama doesn't have to renounce Wright's comments.

Keith Olbermann is the host of an MSNBC TV show. It is opinion show and Olbermann has opinions. There is an group who evidently watch Keith Olbermann's show and write about it providing cases where they disagree with what Olbermann says. This group is called Olbermann Watch.

Obermanwatch has produced a video that shows Mr. Olbermann's comments about former Representative Ferraro's statement to the effect that Senator Obama would not be a serious (or as serious) a candidate if he were not black (she made the comment while serving on a committee in Senator Clinton's campaign). It then shows Mr. Olbermann's comments that essentially defend Senator Obama's decision not to leave the church he belongs to even though Senator Obama admits many of Reverend Wright's statements are wrong, bigotted, etc.

I have a hard time with this because I can't follow Olbermann's logic in either the Clinton-Ferraro case. It could be that Olbermann is being a hypocrite by saying, in effect, that in an identical case, candidate A must do something and candidate B doesn't need to.

In fact the cases are not alike at all. What Ferraro said about the advantage Obama has in being black was very similar, though not identical, to what Obama said about himself. Whereas Wright accused the U.S. of things like promoting drug dealing in black neighborhoods and developing the AIDS virus as a weapon against blacks - statements for which there is no evidence - and indeed don't even make sense.

Thus it seems to me (and I'm not doing a detailed study here because it would require watching a lot of Mr. Olbermann and I would find that quite unpleasant) that Olbermann's behavior here is not so much hypocrisy as meandering incoherence in service to an overarching policy. Thus, since what Olbermann really believes is "all polemics are legitimate in service to whatever people/cause I favor" he is being consistent even when he says, "2+2 doesn't really equal 4".