Regressive Hypocrisy (Yawn…) Again

[depakid]

Hey, what time is it? Does anybody know? Is it one o'clock? Two? Six? Ten?

It doesn't matter. Whatever time of day it is, there is always one thing you can be assured of. You'll never have a shortage of regressive hypocrisy on your hands. You'll never have to deal with painful withdrawal symptoms.

Nobody does hypocrisy like the right in America. Nobody does it more shamelessly, more wantonly, or more promiscuously.

Speaking of which, for example, you can pretty much bet that any right wing freak -- whether playing with himself under the clergy's robes or dressed up in the politician's suit -- any one of them who preaches the loudest about matters of sexual morality is guaranteed to be the most twisted case when the cameras are switched off. Can you say "Ted Haggard"? "Newt Gingrich"? "Larry Craig"? "Wide stance"?

Lately, though, the regressive right has been setting all kinds of personal best records for astonishing levels of hypocrisy, ranging from the merely laughably buffoonish all the way to the sickeningly pernicious.

One of my favorites in the former category is the Neanderthal obsession with Barack Obama's use of a Teleprompter. I don't really quite get this, although perhaps it somehow makes them feel slightly better about having supported a president for eight years for whom proper English was a foreign language. But, lordy lord, talk about the ridiculous hypocrisy of this critique, over and beyond its absurdity (what, are we supposed to believe that Obama is really a dummy because he uses a Teleprompter?).

What makes this whole affair astonishingly hypocritical is the fact that Ronald Reagan did the same thing, only worse, in a low-tech fashion. Reagan almost never said anything in public without his ubiquitous 3 x 5 cue cards. Guests at the White House would sometimes be astonished that Reagan would stand there and exchange one on one small talk banter with them, reading off of cue cards.

One time he even mistakenly pulled out last week's set of cards from his suit coat pocket, and blithely went along reading the wrong introductory comments to the guests assembled for a meeting. Needless to say, however, Reagan has since been turned into a virtual deity of the right. So isn't it a little rich that the same people who worship at the Throne of The Ron have a problem with the current president reading his speeches off a Teleprompter?

Another one that I like a lot is this silly trope that Obama is seeking to take over the country, à la Stalin. (Of course, given the president's clear socialistic tendencies, this one has an extra ring of plausibility.) Why do they say this? Because he is actually beginning to demand that corporations receiving bailout money use it properly, and make (often highly novel) intelligent decisions in exchange for being rescued with taxpayer funds. Is that arrogant or what? Shouldn't he really do what Bush did, and just give the banks hundreds of billions of dollars without any requirements for what they do with the money?

Again, here's another case where, just in its own right, stupidity abounds. But regressives are only getting started. Idiocy is a mere hors d'oeuvre. The truly fun part is the hypocrisy of it all. Remember how they wailed when George Bush shredded the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights at Guantánamo?

Remember how loudly they objected as W used over 1200 signing statements to write Congress out of the legislative loop, thus destroying separation of powers, pretty much the most prominent single idea in the Constitution? Remember how angry they were recently when it was revealed that John Yoo and others had penned legal memos allowing the president to do absolutely anything, including shutting down the press, and arresting anyone, for any reason, any time, without any guarantees of any sort of due process? Remember how the right screamed and hollered and shouted at those massive assaults on American liberty by the former president?

More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/04-3