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March 14, 2008

Re: Hypocrisy Holds High Carnival, And

Other
Recent Travesties Of The Political/Media
Complex
By Lawrence Velvel

I gather it is common to become less tolerant of nonsense, stupidity and their like as
one gets older. Never having had a high threshold for these things to begin with, I
find myself getting even shorter with political bullroar (a 1950s Chicago word), and
with political stupidity, in my late 60s. So here comes some unvarnished, sometimes
(even mainly?) politically incorrect sentiments.
Let’s start with the imbecile, Geraldine Ferraro. Here is a woman whose husband and
son were indicted and sometimes were convicted of crimes ranging from extortion to
falsification to possession of a drug, and who herself had connections to her
husband’s business and had to pay back taxes owing. Yet somehow she was a vice
presidential candidate -- maybe she rose above it all? -- and said, of one of her
husband’s indictments and his guilty plea, that they “brought to an end the difficult
period my husband has endured stemming from my historic candidacy.” Right, it
was all because of her “historic candidacy.”
Now, two decades later, this loser, who had some kind of merely honorary position
with Hillary -- in an effort to mount some sort of comeback? -- opens her mouth about
Obama. She said:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.
And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this
position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the
country is caught up in the concept.
And she also is quoted thusly:
“Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call
it racist,” she said. “I will not be discriminated against because
I’m white. If they think they’re going to shut up Geraldine
Ferraro with that kind of stuff, they don’t know me.”
Now there are two possible major reasons for Ferraro’s first statement. One is that
Obama is not qualified because he has been in the Senate only a shade over three
years. If this was her reason -- and, forgive me, but I don’t think this really was her
reason -- she is a hypocrite. For she forgets that she was only in the House of
Representatives a bit over four years when she was picked to be Vice President, an
official who can become President in the blink of an eye, in the flash of a weapon.
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Of course, it is far more likely, and apparently most of us believe, that her reason
concerned race, in which case it has two possible sources. One is that Obama gets
votes because he is black. Well, big effing deal. Hillary gets votes because she is
white. Hillary gets votes because she is a woman. Ferraro was nominated for Vice
President strictly because she was a woman. For scores of years, Irish men and
women, Italian men and women, Jewish men and women, Catholic men and women,
WASP men and women and so on have gotten votes because they were Irish, Italian,
Jewish, Catholic, WASP or so on men and women. But it’s not okay for Obama to get
votes -- from blacks or whites -- because he is black. That is sheer racism.
But, as said, there is yet another possible racial source for her comment. It is that
Obama is not smart enough to be running for President, is not competent enough.
This would be recognized, and he would lose, if he were either a white man or,
because of prejudice against their sex, if he were a woman of any color. But since he
is a black man, nobody will say, recognize or care that he is not smart enough to be
President.
Now, this possible source for her comment is truly offensive because Obama is likely
far smarter than either Hillary or McCain, and probably is a lot smarter than anyone
else who has been in the race on either side (with only one or two merely possible
exceptions of guys who conceivably could be as bright as him). I have written of this
before, have pointed out that, while nobody talks about it, Obama succeeded
mightily in competition with the brightest of the bright at Harvard Law School, where
he was the President of the Law Review, while Hillary -- and Bill -- were no great
shakes when facing such competition at Yale.
You know, I’ve spent a lot of years railing against the kind of elitism just reflected in
these statements about succeeding at Harvard or Yale. But the older I get, the more
I think that, in politics, we should be looking for the kind of academic records that
Obama had -- just as the English used to make a point of mentioning it when a
politician had scored “firsts” at Oxbridge. For politics has now long been the home of
the second rater, the second or third rate mind who gets us in trouble because he is
dumb. The first rate minds generally want nothing to do with politics; it is too corrupt
and sycophantic for them. They want to succeed, and/or make money, in law, in
business, in medicine, in scientific or technological research, and so forth. They want
nothing to do with a rotten business like politics. So when we do find a politician
whose academic career shows a first rate mind -- which Bush Jr.’s did not, Kerry’s did
not, the two Clintons did not, McCain’s does not, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum
-- we should embrace the person. And Obama looks to be one to embrace.
Now, two things must further be said in this connection. I am certainly not saying
that everyone who performed well or even brilliantly in academia has the tools to be
a president, has the judgment, personality, speaking ability, and stamina that are
needed. Such a statement would be absurd. What I am saying, rather, is that if a
politician has a brilliant academic career and these other needed attributes, we
should likely embrace him or her, and we should be wary of a politician who wants to
be president, and may have needed characteristics of stamina, speaking ability,
desire, etc., but has not shown real brains such as are needed to do really well in
academia.
Nor am I saying that brains are the possession only of those who do really well in
academia. This too would be false. Lots of people did not do so well in academia for
one reason or another, or did not even have an opportunity to get a higher education
(e.g., because they were poor), but are really smart. Indeed, I often get emails from
people (in response to postings) who plainly don’t have higher educations but
obviously are quite smart nonetheless.
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So what we are left with regard to Ferraro is that she opened her big mouth, said
things showing hypocrisy or racism, and ended by appearing to argue, stupidly, that
she is being discriminated against because she’s white, and saying that “If they think
they’re going to shut up Geraldine Ferraro with that kind of stuff, they don’t know
me.” Geraldine, we know you. Shut up.
Let me turn now to a granddaddy of hypocrisy, the Spitzer affair (so to speak). That
Spitzer himself was a hypocrite is beyond argument, since he publicly excoriated and
prosecuted prostitution but was (or became) a customer of prostitutes. He was like
the Republican gays in Congress who excoriated homosexuality while engaging in it.
Of course, if memory serves, their positions on other issues were sometimes bad,
while Spitzer’s were heroic (albeit he apparently was purely obnoxious in pursuit of
his aims). But he, and they, had very similar forms of hypocrisy in common.
As well, the political/media reaction to Spitzer’s actions is the very height of
hypocrisy if viewed from what could rightly be called the systemic standpoint -- from
a standpoint that looks at a plethora of American actions, not just Spitzer’s patronage
of prostitutes. In seeing vast hypocrisy in the body politic and the political/media
complex, I find, to my amazement, that the views of a famous rabbi, Michael Lerner,
the editor of Tikkun, extensively coincide with my own. (Lerner’s views are set forth
in OpEd News in a piece aptly entitled Elliot Spitzer and America’s Ethical
Perversity). This is a country which perpetrates, condones, and/or ignores the most
awful conduct. We are fighting wars and killing people by the gross, but nobody with
power gives enough of a damn to put an end to it, neither the worthless Democrats,
nor the courts, nor anyone else. Indeed, it is sometimes claimed the public cares less
and less, and even left wingers profess that we cannot leave Iraq lest matters get
worse -- the old Viet Nam argument that led, and leads, to ever present war instead
of leading, for example, to dividing the country into three parts, giving each of the
three contesting ethnic or religious groups its own part, and getting out. The
Republican candidate, McCain, would continue fighting for a hundred years -- of him
it was recently said he never saw a country he did not want to bomb or invade, and
that (being third generation Navy) he thinks war the natural state of affairs -- as,
evilly, do so many of my generation. Nor do many stop to realize that war, about
which people care so little because it is not them that go to it, contributes mightily to
the horrendous economic situation that it is said they do care about.
Our hypocrisy extends to economics, where we favor or permit policies that are
screwing the poor and the middle class while enabling the already incredibly rich to
get even richer. Were Jesus to come back today and see this, who can doubt he
would quickly depart in horror? Our policies entrap people in poverty by denying
them a decent education as the way out. Our medical profession is a shambles. The
ignorant mental slut in the White House holds back vital medical research. The votes
of the poor and minorities are taken away from them defacto or dejure. What decent
person can doubt that Lerner is right when he says “that there is no moral outrage at
the entire system that produces this impact, is America’s moral perversity”? What
decent person can doubt that Michelle Obama has damn good reason, and has had it
all her life, not to be proud of America? There is one person who doubts this about
Michelle Obama, of course, because Obama went to Harvard and is a successful
lawyer, experiences which, one gathers, are supposed to disqualify her from seeing
the truth. That doubtful person is the super reactionary Dorothy Rabinowitz of the
Wall Street Journal, who never met a reactionary idea she didn’t love. But, then, I
asked what decent person can have doubt.
So, as Lerner and this writer agree, there is truly vast systemic hypocrisy. There is
also, in connection with the Spitzer case, a hypocritical refusal to discuss what may
be the truth about the relationships between men and women. This refusal to
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discuss the possible truth has gone on here for probably hundreds of years and is
rampant in the Spitzer matter.
Can anyone be unaware that, on a by and large basis, on the basis of something that
is generally true though not always true, men and women see the world differently?
(Illustrating this undoubtable fact in connection with the Spitzer case, last
Wednesday a New York Times article by a woman began by claiming that men and
women viewers had quite different reactions when the story broke on Monday, March
10th, that initially the opinion shows were dominated by men so that there was “a lot
of talk about ‘victimless crime,’” and that it was not until Tuesday morning’s shows
“that female commentators could really unload, and they did” on such subjects as
“‘Why Men Cheat’” and whether Spitzer’s wife was right to stand by him. (Like
Hillary did when she lied -- by saying something like she was no Tammy Baker
standing by her man -- so that Bill could become President and so she could have a
shot at it later). But that men and women often see the world differently is only the
part of the story that people will talk about. What they hypocritically refuse to talk
about is the possibility that, not only are men and women different, and not only do
they see the world differently, but they are so different and see things so differently
that, as a general matter, after the flush of first love and sex have passed, men and
women in a supposedly romantic relationship do not even like each other and sex is
dead. If they did continue to like each other, how come so many husbands and wives
barely speak to each other? (If memory serves, in his autobiography, which I read
perhaps 40 years ago, Arthur Krock, who was the New York Times’ leading columnist
before and around the middle of the 20th Century, had an unforgettable description
of his father refusing ever to speak to his mother. It was quite remarkable.)
So, if it is possible that as a general matter men and women in a “romantic”
relationship don’t like each other after a sufficient period has passed, and sex almost
certainly is largely dead, how does this bear on Spitzer? Well, in the obvious way
that nobody will talk about, except, God help me, Dr. Laura Schlessinger. (When I
find myself agreeing with her, it may be time to reconsider my own position.) Here is
what the Times said, in part quoting Dr. Schlessinger:
The biggest issue [on the TV talk shows) was not whether the
governor would resign or face criminal charges. It was whether
Ms. Wall Spitzer was right to stand by him, and even more
urgently, whether all husbands stray, and why. It got testy at
times.
“Are you saying the women should feel guilty, like they
somehow drove the man to cheat?” a visibly aghast Meredith
Vieira of Today asked Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a radio host.
Dr. Schlessinger replied, “Yes, I hold women accountable for
tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the
love and kindness and respect and attention they need.”
There it is: the elephant in the room that nobody in the political/media complex will
discuss or even speculate about -- and for which other female media people (besides
Vieira) blasted Schlessinger -- even though they speculate about every other thing
connected with the matter. Did Spitzer have a good marriage (unlike most people, I
would judge) or did he have an unhappy marriage, with little sex, that caused him to
seek out prostitutes?
We probably are unlikely to ever know the answer to this question, and that may be a
good thing. But it doesn’t mean the question doesn’t exist. Most women, I would
hazard, like Meredith Vieira, wouldn’t see it this way. And men and women alike are
quick to say, probably rightly, that men are driven by their Johnsons and that Spitzer
was, besides, an arrogant guy who thought he could get away with it.
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But the question does not down because of these easy answers. Okay, Spitzer was a
man, and men want sex as much as possible. (Do you remember Lyndon Johnson’s
comment that he had more women by accident than John Kennedy had on purpose?)
And, okay, Spitzer was an arrogant guy, and judging from what has appeared in the
papers, sometimes a mean, mouthy guy too (even if also a great white hope of
liberalism confronting what I think Theodore Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt called
economic royalists). But Spitzer presumably was not completely stupid, must have
known he was taking a huge risk that could destroy his political career (and he
doubtlessly wanted to ultimately become President), and, reflecting knowledge of
danger, tried to take steps (one of which he couldn’t manage to achieve) to hide
what he was doing. Why, then, did he do it in the first place -- unless one assumes
he simply was crazy, unbeknownst to the rest of us. Well certainly, though
Americans won’t talk about it, one possibility, at least, is a very unhappy, sexless or
nearly sexless home life (plus, as one colleague often says at the lunch table --
jokingly, but not really as a joke -- in our country affairs simply require too much of
an investment of time, so that very few really busy persons have time for one).
While, to reiterate, we probably will never know the situation in Spitzer’s marriage,
and everything is mere speculation, there are signs that have surfaced. As I
understand it, his wife wished he had gone into his father’s business and made
another pile of money instead of going into politics. She never wanted to be a
“political wife” (but, like Howard Dean’s wife, would probably have caught hell from
the crumbbums of the political/media complex if she had declined to be a “political
wife”). She sacrificed her own lucrative career to raise their kids and be a political
wife, and apparently is not happy about the sacrifice or the fact that all her outside
work is now charity stuff done for free. And she urged Spitzer not to resign, when it
is transparent that his resignation nullifies -- makes a farce of -- all the undesired
sacrifices she made for her husband’s career. Add this all up, and it does not seem
to spell a marriage made in heaven. (Few marriages are so made, of course). And,
though hypocritical America refuses to talk about the generally existing problem, but
buries its head and mind in phony pieties one way and another, it could at least
conceivably provide the reason why Spitzer risked career-destroying conduct.
And one thing we can be sure of is this. Until America begins to discuss the general
problem, it will never be solved -- if, indeed, there is a solution. (Maybe the French
have one -- their attitudes towards sex are far different than ours and, many think,
far saner.)
I shall close with a brief discussion of a subject whose grave importance, combined
with its comparative (not total, but comparative) inattention by the political/media
complex, yet again shows our systemic hypocrisy. I speak of the firing of Admiral
Fallon -- but please to call it resignation, to crib part of Tom Lehrer’s phrase about
plagiarism. It is claimed, especially by some well meaning former generals, that the
firing occurred not because Fallon disagreed with his Commander-in-Chief about a
possible war against Iran, but because he disagreed too often, too vehemently, and,
most particularly, publicly -- outside of channels. To which my answer is: gimme a
break. Do you think Petraeus would be fired for stating his views often or strongly to
Bush, or stating them publicly? Even with vehemence publicly? Of course not.
Petraeus says what the claptrap boob in the White House wants to hear. He would
never be fired for saying it either within or outside of channels, no matter how often
and how publicly vehemently. (At least not until Bush changes his own mind.) Fallon
went the way of Shinseki and Lindsey: that is, you disagree and you’re gone.
More importantly, why did Fallon speak publicly, and what, therefore, does his firing
portend? Fallon’s not a fool -- quite the contrary, apparently. He knows what
happened to Shinseki. He certainly knows what happened to MacArthur. He may
even know what happened to McClellan. So why did he risk his position and an end
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to his career by speaking out publicly? The logical answer, one that generals who
speak of staying within channels and the supposed likelihood of being more effective
that way will not want to hear, is this: Fallon -- an insider who is in the know -- is so
worried about the Administration’s desire and plans to go to war with Iran, and feels
so concerned over his inability to stop this by arguments within channels, that he felt
he had to speak out publicly in an effort to stop it. I’m sorry, but unless and until
proven wrong, this seems to me far and away the most likely possibility. But one
does not hear word one about this from, on or in the political/media complex.
Hypocrites and fools, virtually the lot of them.
War with Iran could well be nuclear or partially nuclear, you know. One would think
the political/media complex would be hellbent to inquire into and discuss the
reason(s) Fallon left before Bush and Cheney perhaps start telling us that Iran (like
Iraq) has or will get and use WMDs, that we have no choice, that we must
immediately act preventively, etc.
The media doesn’t show much interest in the problem, however, and it remains to be
seen whether relevant committees of Congress will have Fallon appear before them
to discuss the matter. So far, at least, we’ve gotten much discussion of Ferraro, even
more about Spitzer, but comparatively little about the truly important subject of a
possible war with Iran*
*
This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to
comment on the post, on the general topic of the post, or on the comments of others,
you can, if you wish, post your comment on my website,
VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com. All comments, of course, represent the views of their
writers, not the views of Lawrence R. Velvel or of the Massachusetts School of Law. If
you wish your comment to remain private, you can email me at Velvel@mslaw.edu.
VelvelOnNationalAffairs is now available as a podcast. To subscribe please visit
VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com, and click on the link on the top left corner of the page.
The podcasts can also be found on iTunes or at www.lrvelvel.libsyn.com
In addition, one hour long television book shows, shown on Comcast, on which Dean
Velvel, interviews an author, one hour long television panel shows, also shown on
Comcast, on which other MSL personnel interview experts about important subjects,
conferences on historical and other important subjects held at MSL, presentations by
authors who discuss their books at MSL, a radio program (What The Media Won’t Tell
You) which is heard on the World Radio Network (which is on Sirrus and other outlets
in the U.S.), and an MSL journal of important issues called The Long Term View, can
all be accessed on the internet, including by video and audio. For TV shows go to:
www.mslaw.edu/about_tv.htm; for book talks go to: www.notedauthors.com; for
conferences go to: www.mslawevents.com; for The Long Term View go to:
www.mslaw.edu/about_LTV.htm; and for the radio program go to:
www.velvelonmedia.com.
Authors Website: http://velvelonnationalaffairs.com/
Authors Bio:
Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, which educates
the working class, mid-life people, minorities and immigrants. He is the editor of a
journal called The Long Term View, hosts an hour-long TV book show called Books of
Our Time, which appears in the New England and Mid-Atlantic states on Comcast's
CN8 and is streamed on the internet, and hosts a radio program called What The
Media Doesn’t Tell You. The radio program, which is carried on World Radio Network
and is streamed on the internet, discusses important matters which the media
doesn’t disclose (or insufficiently discloses) and the reasons for the nondisclosure.
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Velvel wrote a 1970 book on the constitutionality of the Viet Nam War and civil
disobedience, and a recent quartet called Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam, comprised
of: Misfit In America; Trail of Tears; The Hopes and Fears of Future Years: Loss and
Creation; and The Hopes and Fears of Future Years: Defeat and Victory.
Velvel blogs at velvelonnationalaffairs.com. His 2004 and 2005 posts have been
published in Blogs From the Liberal Standpoint: 2004-2005.