Geese, Ganders, and Forgiveness
I think the thing that annoys me most about the state of political discourse in this country is the lack of consistency. Consistency is one of the things I value most highly, and I'm not entirely sure why, but I do. In the political arena, inconsistency rears one of it's ugly hydra heads; the one named hypocrisy. What makes hypocrisy the ugliest form of inconsistency is how often you see it, and the way that hypocrites seem oblivious to what they're doing and saying. This is especially galling in an age when everything you say is being recorded and parsed a thousand times over. But I digress, the lack of consistency is ever present and manifest (particularly on the Right) in a denigration of the less fortunate.
What brought this to the forefront of my mind was an article I read the other day about John McCain's wife, Cindy. Beyond my natural dislike for the Stepford wife variety of politician's wife, I just don't like this woman. She 's got step-silbings but refers to herself as an only child (even at the memorial service for her father attended by those same siblings), but that's not what really gets my goat. What really irks me is the speed with which her drug habit was forgiven and swept under the table. She says:
“When the kids were young and I was alone with all these babies, by Thursday I’d have a pity party, and John would walk in, see me hanging off the ceiling,” McCain told Harper’s Bazaar. “Did I get angry? Sure, I’m only human.” She has often referred to herself as a “single parent,” except on weekends.
But how is that excuse valid only for her? How many women in this country are actual single mothers, with limited incomes to boot, and have not succumbed to drug addiction? Or not for that matter. There is little sympathy for such women on the Right. Those women are "welfare queens" and cast out from sight of American society, and deemed unworthy of kindness. All the accountability that the Right continually harps on about is for them and not for it's own, despite their many advantages. That the press doesn't call this into question is both typical and disappointing - especially when the so-called pundits take the hypocrisy hard line despite their own dirty hands. I guess we only have the Daily Show for that.
This goes beyond the personal level and even in the professional sphere we see it (cf. Dept of Interior), where no accountability is required - after all, they've retired from government service so we can no longer pursue them or use their past criminal activities as a pretext to prosecute.