Got your holiday reading list yet?
You know … for those endless hours spent in your in-laws’ house, when you’ve given up making small talk with everyone?
I just unwrapped this book. Might be fun, and I’ll be sure to share the juiciest bits with you, since the economy’s tanking — and I’m sure nobody but us wealthy bloggers can afford to buy books anymore.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reviewed it yesterday. Here’s a few tidbits:
Barack Obama mocked Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy expertise until he didn’t.
Hillary Clinton savaged Obama’s ability until she praised it.
John McCain vaunted Sarah Palin as the best person in the country (after him) to be president until he lost, whereupon he declined to back her in 2012.
And Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich? Well, he told lots of kids, when he visited their schools, that it’s important to talk nice …
Hypocrisy, according to [author David] Runciman, is “inevitable” and “ubiquitous” in liberal, democratic societies. It’s also, he argues more surprisingly, “something we have to learn to live with” rather than eliminate. A greater risk, he believes, is not recognizing that “too great a reliance” on public sincerity – too much sanctimony – is a mistake, because “liberal democratic politics are only sustainable if mixed with a certain amount of dissimulation and pretence.”
What we need, Runciman asserts, are sharp antennae that distinguish appropriate political hypocrisies from “intolerable” ones. There is, he contends, “no way of breaking out from the hypocrisy of political life, and all attempts to find such an escape are a delusion.”
So I guess we’re stuck with phonies and fakers in politics — which doesn’t bode to well for Hollywood. After all, if Harvard- and Yale-educated presidential candidates can’t shoot straight, what hope do Khloe Kardashian and Pam Anderson have?
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I’m so buying this book.
If you’re conservative, a good book like this might be “Do As I Say, Not As I Do.”
I once read an essay on the difference between inconsistency and hypocrisy. Inconsistency happens due to human nature; nobody lives up to their own ideals and beliefs all of the time because we are all at heart screw-ups. Those ideals and beliefs just keep you on the right track most of the time.
Hypocrisy is based on a lie. It’s meant to give others a false impression about you. Hollywood and politics thrive on false impressions. Entertainers and many politicians create a persona for the public, a brand. A more sincere person will craft a persona that’s close to who they really are. After all, even I don’t think all politicians and entertainers are duplicitous creeps. But many of them are. For the politician, the truth may mean he’d never get elected or get re-elected. For the entertainer, the truth may mean nobody would see his movies or buy her music.
The difference is the politician holds the power of life and death over us. Khloe Kardashian doesn’t…unless she plans to sit on you.
Oversneer, look at it this way – if hypocrisy is “inevitable”, Deceiver.com will be in business for a LONG time.
Judge a person by his action not his words. Too bad that saying has lost its relevance in todays political areana where hoping to do something is better than actually attempting it.
find me a politician who doesn’t lie…they all do it…some are just more blatant than others…