----- Original Message -----
From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>I don't care about hypocrisy: it is a venial sin at worst; and I don't
think
>he's guilty of it here anyway. Please, let's do get back to attacking his
>political views, and not his private life! --jks
While hypocrisy is embarrassing, proving it does not disprove the spoken view because the speaker falls short of its standards. Some of the greatest moralists (in the positive sense of great) have been great because they had such a personal sense of their own weaknesses. It is no virtue to resist temptation when one is not tempted. There is actually good reason why most people flock to reformed sinners, and even the penitent who falls off the wagon occasionally, more than to the always-pure, since they empathize more with such a leader and trust that leader to empathize with them more.
There is a puritan strain in the Left that rather than building allegiance through its honesty and consistency just alienates sympathetic average folks who may respect its leaders but feel little kinship, mostly because they sense little kinship for their often morally compromised aspirations. To give one example, folks on this list periodically rail against high salaries earned by union leaders. Now, on one level, a lot of members could be pursuaded that the money would be better spent on organizing and other needs, but there is a message by a lot of leftists that even if there was infinite money available, there is just something immoral in the leaders not donning hair shirts. Since one of the reasons why many folks join unions is at least partly for crassly materialist goals, they have great sympathy for union leaders wanting something for themselves and, if they deliver for the members, don't begrudge them the pay. There is a hypocrisy in union leaders rhetoric of equality while taking home so much pay, but its a very human hypocrisy that members often sympathize with more than the hair-shirt morality of the Left.
There is an irony that Clinton was trusted by people not despite his hypocrisies and lies but often because of them, since while it meant people could not trust his actual word, they felt it meant that in his heart he understood their needs and hopes, and they trusted that far more than the abstract platform of a lot of other folks. A guy like Nader suffers the exact opposite problem- people believe every word he says and feel no kinship for him as a person (and worry the feeling is visa versa). Michael Kinsley noted this problem years ago in a column he wrote called "Saint Ralph."
Oddly, this whole incident will probably help Sullivan, not only for the publicity and backlash sympathy, but by humanizing him and taking a little of the edge off the rigid British purism he often emoted. When he talks about the joys of committed marriage for gays, people will not dismiss it as coming from someone unknowing of the joys of promiscuity, but of someone who understands them but can still aspire to something better.
Hypocrisy is only fatal to a leader when it is discovered that the words reflect not a higher aspiration but an attempt to dupe the followers and live completely by a different code. But the difference between the two kinds of hypocrisy are in the hearts of the people and play out very differently. Clinton's publicly lived moral hypocrisy was of the sympathetic kind, while Newt's and other religious right types were coded in the double standard mode. Conversely, Clinton's moneyed pardon scandals hit him much harder, since his claims of equal opportunity were seen as more rigid, while a Republican would have been largely unscathed, since their hypocrsiy around the rhetoric of equality is so publicly lived.
What this means is that the quest to expose "hypocrisy" is often misguided in its targets, since often the only response is the shrug of "shock, shock, that there is gambling in Casablanca." The purists may be outraged but the rest of the population is unmoved.
-- Nathan Newman
>From: "j.f. noonan" <jfn1 at msc.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Subject: RE: Sullivan on the Barebacking Story
>Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 23:52:42 -0500 (CDT)
>
>On Thu, 31 May 2001, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> > Let's give it to him, wish him success in in his private
> > pursuits, and get back to the business of attacking his
> > political views. --jk
>
>Those 'political' views include his previously espoused views
>about how other people should conduct their sex lives. In this,
>he shows himself to be a hypocrite. For reasons I have never
>been able to understand, some people think that hypocrisy is not
>an error. I do.
>
>Frankly, I give not one shit what Sullivan does with his
>recreational time (assuming there is informed consent amongst
>the other(s) participating). But *he* made sexual propriety
>part of his politics, not me, and he can live with looking
>foolish for it.
>
>One side note: M. Signorelle has been an offensive and
>moralizing prick himself, was this issue what really caused him
>to break with Andy, or was it something else?
>
>Not a fan of either of these assholes myself.
>
>
>--
>
>Joseph Noonan
>Houston, TX
>jfn1 at msc.com
>
>
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