Recent admissions of extramarital affairs by Mark Sanford and John Ensign resulted in heavy media coverage and constant generalizations about Republicans’ hypocrisy concerning family values. The mainstream media’s fascination with GOP affairs is likely fueled, not by a desire to “get” Republicans, but by a worldview that makes it difficult to view those who preach conservative social values as sincere. That said, it’s fair for the media to highlight hypocrisy. I just wish the MSM applied a more bipartisan standard to hypocrisy, such as when sensitivity-preaching Democrats make racially insensitive remarks (e.g., Joe Biden), pro-labor liberals shaft their workers (e.g., Al Franken), or self-righteous greens contribute far more than their share to mankind’s carbon footprint (e.g., Al Gore). Instead, the opposite rule seems to apply: a politician’s history of liberal rhetoric is taken as evidence that no harm was intended by what would otherwise be viewed as hypocritical behavior.
Cross-posted at Politico.
It’s painless for us, of course; rather, that pain is being felt in the necks of those who want to insist that a bow to a Saudi king isn’t a bow, that an omnibus spending bill with 9,000 earmarks is the beginning of earmark and fiscal reform, that indecisively waiting four days while an American ship’s Captain is held hostage on a rubber raft by four Somali pirates (before being bailed out by swift action by the hostage and a SEAL team) is bold, new leadership — and that a staged event with Obama voters only and a bunch of cameras handed out as props is a real sign of soldiers’ devotion to the new, inexperienced, non-military-friendly Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces.
