Paul Giorgio: Hypocrisy

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Paul Giorgio, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Paul Giorgio

Noun: hypocrisy; plural noun: hypocrisies

The practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
synonyms: dissimulation, false virtue, cant, posturing, affectation, speciousness, empty talk, insincerity, falseness, deceit, dishonesty, mendacity, pretense, duplicity;

Today’s political and grammar lesson is on the word hypocrisy and how it has been used in politics three times this week by Republicans. My favorite synonym for this word is mendacity. It was made famous by Burl Ives’s character Big Daddy in the movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, when he exclaimed “Oh the mendacity of it all.”

Big Daddy would have been shocked by the mendacity of Republicans this week.

Schock is a shock.

The first example I point to is Republican Congressman Aaron Schock who abruptly resigned from Congress when it was discovered that he first redecorated his office al la Downton Abbey, the widely popular PBS show. Schock also spent taxpayer money and public campaign funds, staying at 5 star hotels and traveling on private jets. He hired a young private photographer who he took on vacation to chronicle his exploits. Schock has also been accused of some shady real estate deals involving the selling of his home at an over inflated price, to a large campaign donor.

The hypocrisy: This is the same congressman who voted against feeding children, by cutting funding to the food stamp program and also opposed Gay Rights.

Telling your mistress State Secrets.

The second case involves General David Patreus who was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for leaking classified documents to his mistress. This has happened at the same time that Eric Snowden has had to flee the country for leaking documents to the media. Snowden faces possible charges of treason if he returns to the United States from exile in Russia (dumb move).

The Republicans however, while hounding Snowden, have given General Petreus a pass on this.

The hypocrisy here is that it appears to be ok to give you mistress top secret information but not give the Washington Post information. At least in Snowden’s case he said he did it because the public had a right to know and that he loved his country. Patreus just loved his mistress and betrayed us.

Is Ted Cruz eligible to run for President?

The third case of hypocrisy involves Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement that he is running for president.

Senator Cruz is a first term Senator from Texas who was born in Canada.

But since he is a darling of the TEA Party you won’t see any criticism of him on Fox News. Where is Donald Trump on this issue? Cruz took the extraordinary step of renouncing his Canadian Citizenship.

Can you guess what the hypocrisy is here? A whole movement was built up because Barak Obama’s father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansa. Obama was born in Hawaii, an American State, which makes him a natural born citizen. On the other hand Cruz admits that he was born in Canada. This is a foreign country, although some Americans don’t think so.

So the duplicity here is that it is Ok for Ted Cruz to be a first tern Senator, who was clearly born in a foreign country and run for president, but it is not Ok for a first term Democratic Senator who was actually born in this country to run. What is the difference between the two, party affiliation or the color of one’s skin?

To paraphrase noted American Author Ralph Waldo Emerson, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. But then again as Big Daddy said, “Ah, the mendacity of it all”.

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Paul Giorgio: Hypocrisy

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