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It Is Not The Hypocrisy; It's How Banal and Trite the Hipocrisy Has Become

Jun 17, 2009
By .
Politics & Current Events

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who is married, admits to an affair with a staffer who was married to one of his aides.

So you've got betrayal (of wife), betrayal (of the man who worked for you), bad-judgment-fraternization (top man in office boinking a staffer).

Then, as dramatic convention increasingly requires, you've got the banal hypocrisy:

When Bill Clinton's adultery came to public light, Ensign not only voted to remove the president from office, but insisted the president should resign as a result of the personal scandal. When former Sen. Larry Craig was caught up in a sex scandal, Ensign not only called for Craig's ouster, but led the charge against him.

Ensign has also been a fierce opponent of marriage equality, and supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. In 2004, the Nevada Republican lectured his colleagues, "Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation."

And did I mention that Ensign is a longtime member of the Promise Keepers, a conservative evangelical group that promotes strong families and marriages?

I'm not thrilled about stuff like this continuing to tank the Republican brand, because the Democrats are so very bad in so many exciting different ways. However, I do appreciate that Sen. Ensign (not in a red shirt, regrettably), Sen. "Huggies" Vitter, and Rep. Craig are bringing closer the day when Republicans cannot bloviate about matters of sexual propriety without everyone snickering and idly speculating about whether the pockets of their impeccable blue suits are stuffed with smuggled Thai anal beads made out of the polished bone of dead hookers.

Last 5 posts by Ken

9 Comments
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9 Comments

  1. Linus  •  Jun 17, 2009 @3:17 pm

    I dunno. Unless we are just going to go with "people who have affairs are bad people, and shouldn't be let anywhere near power or government", I don't think we can go too far down the "hypocrisy" road. To me, the idiocy and problem with Ensign is the affair (and the circumstances of it, as pointed out above), not the fact that he had previously come out "in favor of marriage" (whatever that means) and therefore he is a hypocrite. Seems to me he's just human, and made a mistake (ok, a whopping mistake).

    I mean, I wouldn't exactly count it in a politician's favor if he advocated cheating on a spouse, and then was caught cheating. What's his rallying cry? "I may be a douchebag, but at least I'm a consistent douchebag?" I don't think I'd much like a society filled with people like that. That's why I'm not crazy about the hypocrisy charge.

  2. Jesse  •  Jun 17, 2009 @3:23 pm

    Damn it! That last sentence is sooo sig worthy. If only it had been posted elsewhere!

  3. Ken  •  Jun 17, 2009 @3:30 pm

    Well, Linus, I don't know if I'd go as far as saying people who have affairs shouldn't be let anywhere near government. Without getting into whether the philosophical question of whether bad behavior makes one a bad person, I think that betraying a spouse by having an affair is bad behavior. And I've never particularly bought into the notion that I should trust someone in affairs of state if they have demonstrated that they can't be trusted in their vows to their spouse. I felt that way about Clinton and feel that way about this guy.

    I'm not sure I follow you about why the hypocrisy argument is flawed. Ensign did not merely fail to admit, in advance, to being a flawed human being. Rather, Ensign was a public and professional morals scold, about marriage in general and infidelity in particular. One of the articles points out that Ensign started this affair only a couple of months after throwing Larry Craig under the train. That makes him a classic hypocrite, in addition to being the sort of politician who thinks it is the government's job to instruct us about marriage and personal relationships.

    I don't see the problem with pointing out that sort of hypocrisy. I rail about being asking intrusive and obnoxious questions to adoptive parents all the time. If I started doing that, someone ought to call me a freaking hypocrite.

  4. Linus  •  Jun 17, 2009 @4:00 pm

    "And I’ve never particularly bought into the notion that I should trust someone in affairs of state if they have demonstrated that they can’t be trusted in their vows to their spouse. I felt that way about Clinton and feel that way about this guy."

    I agree.

    My concern with the hypocrisy thing is not that it's not hypocrisy. It's the emphasis. And I don't mean you, or Popehat, but my gestalt reaction from the media on stories like this. Like the bloggers or reporters are telling the story of the scandal and finish breathlessly, "And, WORST OF ALL, he is a HYPOCRITE!" No, worst of all, he's a liar and a cheater, and a dumb liar and cheater.

    It bothers me because the hypocrite thing is the easiest charge to make, because all the commentator has to notice is the inconsistency. He doesn't have to take a potentially unpopular stand and say "people who cheat on their wives with a subordinate who is the spouse of a friend are douchebags". Again, you're not doing that; you did take the potentially unpopular stand. It's just an irritation of mine with these kinds of stories.

    "Douchebag" is a Popehat-sanctioned word, right?

  5. Patrick  •  Jun 17, 2009 @4:44 pm

    It bothers me because the hypocrite thing is the easiest charge to make, because all the commentator has to notice is the inconsistency. He doesn’t have to take a potentially unpopular stand and say “people who cheat on their wives with a subordinate who is the spouse of a friend are douchebags”. Again, you’re not doing that; you did take the potentially unpopular stand. It’s just an irritation of mine with these kinds of stories.

    You assume we're in the business of blogging about hard moral questions.

    If one's marriage is broken, but one still has kids and wants to wait for them to turn 18, or one still loves one's spouse, but experiences a second love with another, outside the marriage, that's Tolstoy. It's tragedy. We'd rather not get involved.

    But if one has that experience while swearing, loudly, in public, from a Senator's microphone, at others who practice the same vice, that's Marx Brothers. It's comedy. It's fun.

    We follow the path of least resistance. We'd rather not write about Madame Bovary, because we appreciate her pain. We'd rather write about Rufus T. Firefly. We'll take comedy every time. We're doing this for fun.

    And as a side benefit, adding our tiny voice to publicizing that a powerful person is a hypocrite, that the Emperor has no clothes, is a greater public service than publicizing any private tragedy.

    I don't think Bill Clinton ever once, in his public career, condemned any adultery except his own. In that sense, he wasn't a hypocrite, though he was in many others.

    “Douchebag” is a Popehat-sanctioned word, right?

    There's a search button on the right side of the page. It would shock me if you didn't see dozens of times we've used it.

  6. Legally UnBound  •  Jun 17, 2009 @4:49 pm

    I've never really believed that sexual activity or proclivity would per se disqualify a person for public leadership, no matter the right of left association. However, I do fully agree with Ken on this one, AGAIN.

    In my small peanut of a mind, the issue is mostly two-fold: (1) what or who did you betray in your sexual escapades, if anyone?; & (2) Have you finger-wagged at someone else for similar behaviors?

    (1) If you will betray your spouse, which is arguably the most true, deep and meaningful commitment a person makes in their lifetime, you will certainly betray a bunch of unnamed and faceless voters to whom you have a very vague obligation and commitment.

    (2) If you will use a person's sexual preference or indiscretion for your own chance to stand on the soapbox, then in turn, act in similar fashion in the closet with ropes, handcuffs and, what did Ken say?, "smuggled Thai anal beads made out of the polished bone of dead hookers", then you truly have poor judgment and likely have poor judgment on issues of serious importance such as those for which you were elected to office.

    We are ALL hypocrites to a certain degree. So, it is not so much that a person is a hypocrite. The more concerning issue, like Linus said, is that "worst of all, he’s a liar and a cheater, and a dumb liar and cheater." It is not the hypocracy that makes a person a nit, but the decisions, which are sometimes hypocritical.

  7. Shaun  •  Jun 17, 2009 @5:34 pm

    Is it just me or is cognitive dissonance seemingly completely absent from politicians these days? Maybe I'm just being wishful in thinking that some politicians ever had it in the first place.

    Linus, the way I see it, the reason politicians should be taken to task over massive hyprocrisy has to do with representation. Let me say straight up that I abhor the inequalities in rights between same-sex and hetrosexual couples. That said there are people, like Ensign, who run on a platform of "moral crusading" and there are people who want to vote for people like him. When something like this happens not only have they had their vote essentially made useless, but the positions their representative holds are made less solid for all who hold those positions because there is now a prime example to hold up for ridicule.

    Once a position can be effectively ridiculed it is harder to keep it afloat as a legitimage position.

    Personally, I detest people like Ensign. People who go out into the public and try to push certain morals heavily grounded in their own religions, like the evils of homosexuality, on the general population disgust me. As sorry as I feel for his wife to be treated like this by a useless douchebag there is a certain amount of schadenfreude that I'll take away from this.

    Also, love the red-shirt reference.

  8. Scott Jacobs  •  Jun 17, 2009 @6:07 pm

    Although, if one were to convert this to a simple metric between Pres Clinton and Sen Ensign, one of them freely admitted to the affair and the other one lied under oath.

    Not that I excuse Sen Ensign, mind you. I have little to no respect for people who cheat on a spouse (a shame, too, because before the admission, I really liked the guy).

  9. Linus  •  Jun 17, 2009 @6:12 pm

    "You assume we’re in the business of blogging about hard moral questions."

    Nah, I really didn't. I come to Popehat to laugh, and I'm never disappointed. I was just making a comment about my own feelings about this kind of story. Guess I didn't express myself very well.