About Hypocrites

Hypocrisy is a form of lie. A lie for our purposes is to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive, to create a false or misleading impression, to make an untrue assertion whether believed or not by the one asserting, to create an impression that something is what it is not or vice versa.

I could stop there and simply say that liars suck, and I doubt a single person would disagree with me. Unless of course, if the liar is your sweet grandma who always tells you that you look nice even when she knows you don’t, then maybe it’s not so bad.

Lie isn’t really what I want to get at. However, it does provide the proper context for this rant about hypocrites.

According to my Webster’s, a hypocrite is one who affects virtues or qualities he does not have, one feigning to believe what one does not.

Everybody at one time or another says they will do one thing and does the opposite. I’ve often said to my wife and friends, as an example, that if I become an invalid and can’t take care of myself, just shoot me and put the body in the garbage can by the curb. I think I mean it. Yet, I have this sneaky suspicion that if I ever really found myself in that circumstance, I might very well say wait, I didn’t mean it, I was just kidding! I would be something of a hypocrite at that point.

I think most of us have these sorts of built in and ultimately innocent hypocrisies in one form or another. I think we can forgive each other the great majority of them. The truth is most aren’t really hypocrisies at all, but are just changes of heart or mind. We are allowed to change our minds or opinions, you know. In fact, we should do it more often than we actually do; we would all get along better if we did.

What are not forgivable are those hypocrisies that arise from the dreaded…gasp…ULTERIOR motive.

As it happens, I have a particular group in mind for which I believe their hypocrisies are unforgivable: journalists. Perhaps I should be more precise and say “The Media”, since we don’t really call them journalists anymore. Do you hear it referred to as big journalism? No, now its Print Media and Broadcast Media, and Whatever Media. Using the word media might actually be a step in the right direction, at least it puts “news” organizations on par with other entertainment vehicles like sitcoms and movies.

Just because I disliked the man so much I’m going to pick on Dan Rather and CBS News to make several points about why journalists are the worst kind of hypocrites.

You may remember the two Rather versus Bush stories. To rekindle your memory you might check out these two sites. Both do a decent job of portraying mostly unbiased facts, even if the ratherbiased.com agenda seems a little obvious.

http://www.ratherbiased.com/bush_attack.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy

Hypocrisy number one: Journalists are dedicated to telling the real story based on facts that they ruthlessly check and double check until verified or disproven.

Most living thinking people will recognize that this is not true as often as it is. It seems the media is more concerned with selling papers or advertising than telling a literally true story. Facts so often get in the way of a good, top selling story. Here is the Dan Rather example.

In early September of the presidential campaign as Bush was running against Kerry, Dan Rather reported that Bush failed in his National Guard obligations and that it was covered up. This was potentially election-losing stuff for Bush. The Democrats and liberals were all aghast. It was also a very nice foil to the Swift Boaters’ allegations of Kerry’s military misdeeds. As proof, Rather produced four documents made available to CBS by an “unimpeachable” source, Bill Burkett. Rather asserted and assured the public in his original broadcast, as did other CBS New broadcasts or statements in the following days, that the documents had all been rigorously authenticated by unbiased experts. That was a load of crap.

As was subsequently later proven, the documents were all forgeries, probably created by the “highly impeachable” Burkett on a modern computer and photocopied a bunch of times to look old. The authentications? They never took place. In fact, two of the “experts” CBS originally asked to look at the documents both told CBS they thought the documents had a number of problems that prevented them from being authenticated. There were so many problems with the documents that a first year journalism student could and would have easily fact checked them into disrepute, as did “bloggers in their pajamas” within hours of the original broadcast.

Not only were there big problems with the documents, most of the other “facts” turned out to be false as well. For example, the general who supposedly gave the order in the documents to cover up Bush’s alleged misconduct had been retired for the National Guard for a year and half prior to the dates in question and couldn’t possibly have given the orders. He was still alive at the time of the story, yet CBS never contacted him, let alone asked him if he did it.

For Rather and CBS, just a little earnest fact checking would have killed the story, but it was just too good a story to not be aired.

Hypocrisy number two: Journalist are rigorous professionals who don’t let personal bias interfere with the truthful recounting of the facts.

I don’t care if you watch CBS or FOX, you are going to get slant with your story. CBS is liberal, pro-Democrat and hates Conservatives and Republicans. Fox is the opposite. I think Fox does a better job of trying to get their facts straight, and not presenting just the ones that make their case. Still, none of “Big Media” seems able to stop themselves from letting their bias influence the story.

Here is how Dan Rather illustrates the worst of media’s actions. It comes in two historical parts. The first is an interview that Rather did with the first President Bush, when he was Vice President and running for President. Prior to this, Rather had done a series of benign profile interviews with the other presidential candidates. Rather saved Bush for last and through CBS contacts told Bush he wanted to do a similar type interview with Bush. Rather and CBS lied.

The Bush interview was an ambush. It started with a lengthy new documentary purportedly outlining Bush’s involvement in the Iran Contra affair of the Reagan years followed by the live interview that Rather devoted to trying to get Bush to say he was involved in Iran Contra. That interview was so aggressive, rude, and over the top that many in the press, including the liberal press, thought it was out of line, biased and unprofessional. By most accounts and opinions, the elder Bush got the better of the debate, and Rather came off looking bad. A number of sources say that Rather hated Bush with a passion after that. It wouldn’t be too much a stretch to assume that Rather transferred those feelings to the younger Bush when he gained prominence.

Now we fast forward to the younger Bush and Rather’s “expose” of the alleged National Guard affair. It seems likely that Rather was so eager to air the piece, accept the forged evidence, and to this day completely deny any possibility that he was wrong, simply because of that animus to the Bush family. I have little doubt of it.

Many others have written and published accounts of the whole affair. It is generally accepted that Rather and his staff were obsessed with seeing the second Bush defeated. Not only was this driven by his hatred of the family, it also arose from his self-professed liberal politics. Dan Rather had two very powerful reasons for wanting Bush defeated and Kerry elected, and those drove him to push the story relentlessly and with energy all out of proportion to that which he devoted to other probably more important stories.

There is nothing rigorously professional or unbiased in any part of how Rather approached both Bush affairs.

Hypocrisy number three: Journalists take very seriously their roles as members of the “Fourth Estate,” that they are an essential component to keeping government honest and accountable.

Wow, that sure sounds important and I’d love to feel good that they are out their protecting me. Unfortunately, it’s all a bunch of hooey and always has been. They only keep government honest when they don’t like the people who are running it at the time. Otherwise, they are willing conspirators with those they do like.

The Dan Rather episodes reveal a perfect example of the failure of the press to act in their role as the people’s check on government. One of the most troubling occurrences was that the “source” of the forged documents wanted access to Democratic candidate Kerry in exchange for providing the documents. Doesn’t that seem strange? Why would a man agree to give documents to a news organization on condition they give him access to a Presidential candidate? Unless he thought they could? How is it that he even thought they could or would? How is it they thought they could?

Worse, they did! Mary Mapes, Rather’s producer, called Joe Lockhart, Kerry’s campaign manager, and asked him to speak with Burkett. Two days before the original broadcast by Rather, Lockhart did just that and the two talked. Can you say quid pro quo? Sure sounds like the Dan Rather-Democrat Party’s mutual back rubbing association moved well beyond that to heavy petting and then to oral sex. (Which isn’t really sex, as we all know, according to Bill Clinton, so I guess it was all okay and nothing to really get concerned about.)

It is hard to argue that you are the Fourth Estate, and be convincing, when you’re in bed with the very people who you hope will make up the next government.

There is no way, for example, you can say that the New York Times is aggressively investigating and reporting on all the wrong doings, problems, dirty deals, and all the rest going on in the current Democrat dominated US government (as they were enthusiastically wont to do with the previous administration). They only report on negative stories when every other news organization already has done so, and then they immediately have their apologist opinion writers provide a couple thousand words about why it’s okay, or a right wing conspiracy, or just misunderstood by the idiotic public that is too ignorant to understand.

There are a whole delusional group of opinion writers that are fundamentally incapable of writing a complimentary thing about anyone who does not agree 110% with Obama, progressives, democrats, or all of the things they all stand for, no matter what the truth is. Obama ought to have Krugman, Friedman, Dionne, Huffington and Dowd dress up in skimpy little pleated skirts and knit sweaters and jump up and down waving pom-poms at all his press conferences. In that way, we can see them for the air headed cheerleaders they really are. At least Huffington and Dowd could come close to pulling off the look, though not so much.

The New York Times even gets a dishonorable mention in the Rather/Bush forged documents debacle. Even after it was conclusively shown that the documents were fake, and without doing any fact checking on their own, which would have revealed that the entire accusation was insupportable by any witnesses or real documents, including the people who were there and involved at the time of Bush’s National Guard Service, guess what the Times did? They ran a story about a typist who could not remember ever typing the memos in question, essentially had no firsthand knowledge of them, but thought they sounded about right. The headline for the story said of the documents that they were “…Fake But Accurate…” Now that’s solid journalism.

Can you imagine if someone had raised a credible possibility in the run up to the election in 2004 that George Bush was not a US citizen and refused to produce a birth certificate to prove he was? The New York Times, and the rest of the media, would have bankrupted themselves trying to prove he was not a citizen. They haven’t really taken that one on with Obama, have they? Of course, Dan Rather would have simply found someone to provide him an “independently authenticated” birth certificate and saved a lot of money not doing real journalism.

I suppose others have done and will do a much better and coherent job of making the argument against journalists as they exist in America today. I’m just a humble average guy, who had to get it off his chest. I feel better for doing so.

The bottom line is: I don’t trust any of them. I don’t believe much of anything they say. I think they are a plague on all of our houses.