Hypocrisy

by tristero

One of the most tedious aspects of the rightwing assault on liberal, and therefore American, values is that they are using arguments that have been refuted long ago, sometimes, as in the case of the ontological existence of God, centuries ago. Here we are in the 21st century, a time when we should be literally agog at the astonishing wonders we now know the process of evolution has generated, and equally amazed that so much of that history has been comprehensible over the space of ionly around 147 years of concentrated human effort. Instead, brilliant women and men like Eugenie Scott, Pz Myers, Ken Miller, Richard Dawkins, and Barbara Forrest have to expend a great deal of effort explaining to the American public that idiotic notions like the Blind Watchmaker or the downright blasphemous God of the Gaps – two of the primary “philosophical” assumptions behind “intelligent design” creationism – are utterly fallacious. Meanwhile, are you aware that scientists have learned that whales once had legs? That they evolved from land animals that returned to the sea? And they have extraordinarily fascinating paleontologic evidence to show how this happened?

And so we return, as Digby notes below, to the defense of hypocrisy. With all due respect to Roy, especially for recalling the Diaghilev anecdote in this context, the only thing that would have astonished Diaghilev is that the right is trying again to defend hypocrisy.

In the 19th century, numerous American evangelicals published defenses of hypocrisy, of the importance of preaching and expounding things you knew weren’t true or that you didn’t follow yourself.* Here is an excerpt from a 1995 interview with Gertrude Himmelfarb, author and mother of William Kristol who spells out Victorian values, and argues for them:

R&L: The Victorians, especially with their strong emphasis on morality, virtue, and the like, are often criticized for hypocrisy – their high rate of prostitution, for example. How do you interpret this?

Himmelfarb: First of all, many of the charges of hypocrisy are grossly exaggerated. The rate of prostitution, for example, was probably no higher in the early Victorian period than it had been before, and it was almost certainly lower later in the century. In any case, I believe firmly in the old adage, “hypocrisy is the homage that virtue pays to vice.” Violations of the moral code were regarded as such; they were cause for shame and guilt. The Victorians did not do what we do today –- that is, “define deviancy down”– normalize immorality so that it no longer seems immoral. Immorality was seen as such, as immoral and wrong, and was condemned as such. Men might be weak – they might have recourse to prostitutes, for example–- but the moral principle remained the same. (And the same, incidentally, for men and women. Men violated the principle more often than women, but the principle applied to both. In this respect, there was no “double standard”.

Recently, in 2003, Jonah Goldberg made much the same argument in excusing Betting Bill Bennett’s hypocrisy when his spectacular addiction to gambling was exposed. In a typical rightwing rhetorical blitzkrieg**, Goldberg employs a “fire on all fronts” approach, advancing numerous contradictory arguments in the hopes that something will hit the enemy – that’s you and I, dear reader – and we will be overwhelmed and surrender . And so, earlier in his article, Goldberg asserts that Bennett really isn’t a hypocrite, but those who reported on his gambling are. While you’re trying to wrap your brain around that one, Goldberg shoots from the exact opposite angle: if Bennett was a hypocrite, what’s wrong with that?

Bennett is a big, sloppy Irish Catholic guy from Brooklyn who believes in old-fashioned morality and decency. He’s not perfect, but he’s been focusing our attention on the right things. When charged with hypocrisy, Max Scheler — the moral philosopher who dallied with the ladies — responded that the sign pointing to Boston doesn’t have to go there. America is a better place because Bennett pointed in the right direction.

There is also much amusing discussion of Madonna by Jonah, which I’m sure she found very touching. Who knew anyone still cared?

And then, published earlier this year is In Defense of Hypocrisy: Picking Sides in the War on Virtue by Jeremy Lott which I suspect is where Frum may have cribbed his argument (although I’ll grant that Frum is morally perverse enough mahybe to have thought it up ex nihilio). Lott, too, defends Betting Bill Bennett and raises the ante, invoking the name of the Savior of Mankind to his cause.

No, not George Bush. The other one, the Jew. Jesus, says Lott, would “not find common cause with our many modern anti-hypocrites.” And dig the sneaky use of the phrase “common cause” here, as in Common Cause, as in liberals, which enables Lott to say Jesus is no liberal but a righwinger without actually saying exactly that.

Having a book to fill with defenses of hypocrisy, Jeremy doesn’t limit himself to the odd couple of Betting Bill and the Holy Anticipation of George Bush. No, Lott slams both left feet into those evil scoundrels who would denounce poor Britney Spears as a foul hypocrite. Well, I have to admit I don’t follow pop culture very closely so it comes as quite a surprise to learn that the purpose of watching Britney Spears is to listen to her ideas. Thanks for the heads up, Jeremy. I’m sure your book is full of all sorts of useful goodies like that.

And here is a blogger who last August summarized much of the modern rightwing take on hypocrisy. And slide over, Rick Santorum and poodle – talk about strange bedfellows! Here, Paris Hilton joins NAMBLA to sock it to the liberals:***

Given a choice between the real thing and a faker, I’ll take the real thing anyday. But more and more that’s not the choice I’m given. When I have to pick between the slimy pretenders and the people proudly trumpeting their vice to the world, I’ll take the slimeballs.

The hypocrites are at least acknowledging that what they are covering up is wrong, or at the very least, socially unacceptable. As François de la Rochefoucauld famously said, “Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.” There is still an operative sense of shame and a tacit acknowledgement that what they are keeping under wraps is wrong.

Contrast that, for instance, with NAMBLA and its avowed aim to “leave” children “free to determine the content of their own sexual experiences.” Or with Paris Hilton and her open quest for the venal, the superficial and the narcissistic.

Somehow, they evoke in me a much deeper sense of horror. And quite apart from my own personal feelings, which really don’t much matter to anyone who isn’t me, there is the fact that these people serve as magnets for the like-minded and together, they enable and embolden each other. It’s like removing a quarantine; the sickness spreads more easily.

Hypocrisy is indeed a vice, but in the long run it’s preferable to shamelessness.

To which, incidentally a commenter with the nom de net “Jeremy Lott,” he of the book defending hypocrisy asked, ” Is hypocrisy always a vice?”

Now, I have as much interest in “engaging” rightwing arguments on the subject of hypocrisy as I do in engaging Heaven’s Gate followers as to whether there really was a spaceship behind Hale Bopp. They are intellectually at the same level, and I don’t find it interesting that you can’t logically prove there wasn’t a spaceship behind the comet nor that there may be times when lying is defensible. Oh, and by the way, “live” backwards spells “waste of my fucking time.” But I will say this:

Hypocrisy on the level of influence Ted Haggard had directly harms millions of lives, both gay (Haggard’s enthusiastic support for a constitutional amendment declaring certain Americans ineligible for marriage) and to a much lesser extent, straight (by feeding one of the ugliest, stupidest, and most manipulated prejudice in modern American culture, with all the anguish and even violence that flows from stoking such hatred). Such hypocrisy is grossly immoral.

To defend hyypocrisy of the sort that Ted Haggard practiced, where he went out of his way to preach that perfectly normal behavior is a deep sin while repeatedly, and in secret, enjoying the behavior himself, is to advocate precisely the kind of moral relativism the right accuses liberals of practicing (but we don’t). There is nothing shameful about same-sex attraction and there is nothing morally wrong with two consenting adults doing whatever intimate acts they both enjoy. Haggard’s hypocrisy was not that he hid an immoral act. It is that he enjoyed his perfectly normal desires while enthusiastically preaching the lie that they are abnormal.****

What is morally wrong is to deny any couple that is prepared to celebrate that love in the public ceremony of marriage all civil rights a culture bestows on married couples. [Update: Including the right to marry itself.]

As I said earlier, if I were an evangelical, I would conclude that Haggard’s fall was Christ’s message to us. And the message is to stop the persecution of gays, stop trying to write bigotry back (again) into the US Constitution, let couples who love each other marry, and accept – love – them as your neighbors, friends, and family. Because that is, as with straight couples, what gay couples simply are.

*I haven’t yet re-located the reference in which I learned this. I believe it was in a book by Gary Noll. Any help from people who have this info on the tip of their brains would be deeply appreciated. The rest of you, if you don’t believe me without a reference, well, I don’t blame you. You shouldn’t. I hope to have a reference soon. FWIW, the 19th cent. arguments I recall seeing were, to some extent, similar to what Himmelfarb says.

**Ooops, by using blitzkrieg did I just make a sneaky association between Goldberg’s tactics and Nazi propaganda? Of course not. I meant no such reference. Honestly, the things people read into what I write!

***To those not up either on pervertspeak or rightwing propaganda….ahem…well anyway, NAMBLA stands for North American Man/Boy Love Association. And, if you ask anyone you care to on the right, since I’m a card-carrying member of ACLU, I therefore fully support the homosexual rape of minors. I also heart Oliver North. Don’t ask me why this doesn’t make any sense. I already know that.

****Haggard also betrayed his marriage vows. But that is between him and his wife. What concerns us is the hypocrisy that affected us, his lying words, his characterization of normal sexuality as immoral, while at the same time practicing his sexuality.

[UPDATE: One sentence immediately removed after posting which called Victorian hypocrisy the Victorian double standard. Not quite.]