Week of 05/16/2011

The Politics of Hypocrisy (2011 Edition)
– by David Matthews 2

Didjahear? Didjahear?

Didjahear what they found at Osama Bin Laden’s hideaway mansion in Pakistan when they killed him? Oh you won’t believe it! You just wouldn’t believe it…

POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORN!

Yeah, they found POOOOOOOOOOORN in Bin Laden’s compound! Bin Laden had POOOOOOOOOORNNNNNNN! The leader of the biggest Islamic terrorist group was watching POOOOOOOOOOORNNNNNNNN!!!!

Oh boy… here we go again.

I really don’t know what’s worse: the blatant hypocrisy by those in power, or the reaction from people who discover that THERE IS hypocrisy going on by those in power.

Let’s get the big stuff out of the way first. Am I SURPRISED to learn that Bin Laden had a “naughty” collection? No. It doesn’t SHOCK me, it doesn’t PHASE me, and, quite frankly, it doesn’t BOTHER me one bit to know that he had “POOOOOOOOOORNNNNNN” in his hideaway compound.

But WHY are we shocked at this? Seriously. WHY ARE WE SURPRISED TO HEAR THIS?

Do you remember all of the accounts of the 9/11 terrorists who supposedly “lived wantonly” prior to their attacks? Remember how they all supposedly were allowed to “sow their wild oats” before undergoing their “martyrdom journey”? Who do you suppose came up with that little wild exception to the rule?

How about the Taliban in Afghanistan? How about the news reports after we liberated that country that the Taliban had or did everything that they banned the citizens of that country from doing? They played rock music, they hired belly dancers, they carried on with the things that they told the rest of the people were “evil” and “immoral” and “criminal”, and they’d send out their foot-soldiers to beat and whip people who didn’t comply. Remember those accounts?

So WHY should we be shocked to discover that their leader had “naughty things” at his hideaway? WHY should this be considered “news”?

Do I REALLY have to remind people that Bin Laden is DEAD? HE’S DEAD! You can’t rake a dead man over the proverbial coals for his hypocrisy, especially when that dead man was buried at sea and is now FISH FOOD. (And no doubt some deep-sea creature is taking a bite of Bin Laden Corpse Flakes and is thinking “Hmm... tastes like pork.”)

Nor was this the FIRST TIME that we’ve caught so-called “devout” people leading hypocritical lives. We seem to have this endless stream of politicians and ministers that preach one thing and then we find out that they’re doing the opposite behind closed doors.

How about the account of one Marianne Gingrich, the ex-wife (number two) of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich? In a recent interview in Esquire magazine, the former-Mrs. Gingrich recounted a time when their marriage was coming apart and she realized it was because he was already sleeping with his next future wife. (By the way, she knew this was happening because he did the same thing with her previously. “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history”… etc, etc.) He had come back from a rousing political speech full of talk about “family values” and she asked him how he could be such a raging hypocrite. This is what he supposedly told her:

"It doesn't matter what I do… People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live."

This is the same man that championed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton over lying about marital infidelity, and who supposedly would like to run for the White House in 2012, and he was supposedly telling his soon-to-be second ex-wife “It doesn’t matter what I do.”

The cable channel Showtime is currently showing a series called “The Borgias”, which showed the hypocritical lives of the Borgia family, as championed by Pope Alexander VI. This was a family that reportedly was the inspiration of Mario Puzo’s classic story “The Godfather”, and they ran the Roman Catholic Church! Even today, mired with their various infamous scandals, this same church still feels they have the authority to dictate how other people should live their lives.

And yet despite the endless cavalcade of letdowns, regardless of faith, political parties, and nationalities, it still goes on. It still happens. The self-righteous continue to preach one thing and practice the other. And we still buy into the former and are shocked to learn the latter.

Let’s get brutally honest here… it’s not about faith; it’s all about POWER. It’s about a group of charlatans and manipulators that have figured out how to wrap the masses around their little finger by saying just the right words and pressing the right buttons. It’s all about getting their attention, or getting their money, or getting their support, or getting their love, or even all of the above.

And maybe at first… just maybe… they even believed what they were selling to the masses. They may even life the life they’ve propped up on a pedestal for them to barker about. But eventually as they get more and more money and more and more attention and more and more POWER over others, they believe that it is the MESSENGER that is more important than the MESSAGE. As former-Speaker Gingrich allegedly put it: “People need to hear what I have to say. There's no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn't matter what I live.” And that’s when they believe that the rules no longer apply to them. That’s when they believe that they can do anything they want, just as long as it doesn’t come out.

What makes the hypocrisy even more despicable is that the truly corrupt, the ones that are irredeemably evil to the core, firmly believe that even if that hypocrisy does get revealed, that they can still find ways to get around it. That they will still hold on to their power over others. They know that we’re gullible and stupid. They know that we’ll “forgive” them or rationalize their hypocrisy, because it’s easier for people to believe their leader was having a “moral lapse” than to realize that they’re being led about by a charlatan.

No, we should not be shocked or surprised to know that a supposedly “pious” leader is caught doing the very things that he or she condemns. We should not be whispering about what scandalous treasures have been uncovered among the truly despicable. Instead we should be asking ourselves what kinds of fools are we to be so easily led by such people… and also give SERIOUS THOUGHT to the value of the message if even the messenger cannot bring themselves to practice what they preach.