Centerfield

What Makes a Hypocrite?

Well, Rush Limbaugh returned to the airwaves with what initially struck me as a slithery defense against critics’ claims of hypocrisy. I checked RushLimbaugh.com for the transcript and it was there, but the quote I heard on the radio( from another talk show host that was miffed about Limbaugh's parsing) didn't show up.

So I'll paraphrase. He says that despite what his critics claim, that he’s not a hypocrite because he was right that taking drugs is bad and destructive behavior. So he wasn't wrong. He was right all along, and hence not a hypocrite.

Now I was all ready to pile on until I read the def'n of hypocrisy, which says that hypocrisy is the feigning of beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess. So what's the deal? Leaving aside Limbaugh, let's consider it in the abstract. If you truly believe that say, drugs, or whatever is wrong, but can't resist them, are you a hypocrite, or just weak?Inarguably, someone who says over and over that drugs are evil and destructive, but doesn't really believe that, and uses them liberally, well sure, that person is a hypocrite. But if you truly believe in and aspire to a moral standard, but can't meet that standard, are you also hypocrite, or are you just a bad role model?

And yeah, you can PARSE the def'n and focus on the pretense of a virtue you don't possess, but I'm not interested in hanging Rush Limbaugh high. What I find interesting is that it seems to me that the public espousal of a moral standard one don't really believe in is a higher crime tha the public espousal of a standard one truly DOES believe in even though one can't meet that standard.

So if one classifies both cases as hypocrisy, then what seems to me to be an important distinction is lost. The funny part in all this is that Limbaugh's defense is, well, Clintonesque.