Hypocrites R Us

Well, it's starting to look like Senator Larry Craig (R - Idaho) is going down in flames. He's got some sort of announcement about his future planned for this Saturday, and the conventional wisdom (and the news media) says that he's going to throw in the towel. If this goes down like most other political retreats-under-fire, there will be a lot of blaming, but no-one will care, and attempts to salvage "dignity" (whatever that means in cases like this) that no-one will notice.

As per usual, the calls of "Hypocrisy!" have gone up from critics, some advocates for the homosexual community, some not. The basis of the charge lies at the intersection of very public hostility to homosexual rights coupled with what appears to be private homosexual behavior. While this formulation has become something of the public standard, I think that makes an assumption that you can't always back up - namely that Senator Craig would want, were he not a Republican Senator in a conservative state, expanded rights for homosexuals to be the law of the land. It would be like saying that a religious politician is a hypocrite for being outspoken in their support of the separation of church and state, and for laws that contravened the teachings of their religion. In the same way, it's possible to be homosexual, and sincerely opposed to laws that expand the rights of homosexuals. While we may find it bizarre that people could take such a stance, the charge that it is inherently hypocritical isn't really accurate.

Being a member of a given group is perceived as carrying an obligation to side with the party line of that group, whenever there might be a conflict. In that light, the term "hypocrite" may be better understood as sort of a euphemism for "traitor." Think back to the civil rights movement, and the anger that White supporters of civil rights faced from other Whites. Alternatively, being a member of a group is thought of as creating an insurmountable bias towards that group - for instance that while the childless might not favor legislation that favors parents, becoming a parent automagically changes one's feelings. Again, the idea that NOT following the party line constitutes a form of betrayal is often present, and it manifests itself with the label of "hypocrite."

No matter how you slice it, the result is going to be the same. A public flogging, that in the end, changes nothing. But I suppose there are worse pastimes.

Computer Games

"He was an 18-year-old Marine headed to war.

She was an attractive young woman sending him off with pictures and lingerie.

Or so each one thought."

If you're thinking: "Uh oh - THIS isn't going to end well," You're right...

The quote that leads off this posting is from an old Associated Press Article that made the rounds back in January, when this first came to my attention. This month's Wired Magazine picks up the story, both online, and in print, and goes into some of the rather bizarre details, including a seriously creepy IM exchange.

With two forty-somethings both pretending to be teenagers, and each thinking the other was on the level, there was no way that this story was going to have a happy ending. Their youthful alter-egos were even engaged to be married. Somehow this all makes people running around in the woods with boffer weapons pretending to be dragonslayers seem to be a perfectly normal pastime...

Park It

So I go to Costco to pick up a couple of things. Now, like most big-box stores, Costco's got a parking lot that could have its own Area Code. Being somewhat early on a Sunday, the lot wasn't what one would term "crowded" by any stretch of the imagination. But there was still a huge snarl in the traffic flow. Someone had decided to camp out, waiting for someone else to pull out of a parking space. They'd stopped right in the middle of the traffic lane, so there wasn't enough room to pass them on either side. And topping things off, someone else was waiting to get out of their parking space, but couldn't, because the camper was blocking them in. All this, when there were empty parking spaces in the next row over.

Why it's become so important to find a parking space as close to the door as possible is completely beyond me. What, is walking an extra 30 feet proven to cause cancer in laboratory animals or something? Generally speaking, I have found that it's faster to drive to the first open spot that you find, park, and walk back, than wait for a closer spot to open up. I routinely pass someone waiting for a space, go park my car, and walk back past that same person, who's still waiting for the space to open up. I understand that sometimes, you can wind up walking an extra hundred yards or more, but it's not like most of us wouldn't benefit from a little more exercise.

Laugh. Out. Loud.

My friend Ben has posted a link to a YouTube video for Atheist proselytization. Way too funny.

The angry reactions of some of the people to their door-to-door work brings up an interesting question. How many people dislike missionaries coming to their homes, but support their own churches doing missionary work? Something else that tends to fall under the "right makes right" rule. (I'm right, and therefore things that I do to advance my cause are also right.)

Like Ben, I don't have a problem with Mormons either - of those that I know, I only want to take a rake to one of them - but I do find that street missionaries tend to be annoyingly condescending and (unsurprisingly) holier-than-thou.

Another Teapot Tempest

About a month ago, two men "were seen behaving unusually aboard several Washington state ferries." So now the FBI is looking for them. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a short story about the FBI search, but they didn't run the pictures of the men, citing that the men were neither considered suspects or charged with any crimes. Thus starts yet another of the bizarre teapot tempests that pass for controversies here in the Emerald City. Some days, I'm positive that the Scarecrow would be right at home here. This whole thing has spiraled wildly out of control. Of course, the P-I didn't help matters any by making the story the subject of their Daily Haiku. It seems that someone in the conservative media decided that a little outrage was in order, and suddenly the P-I's weblogs were chock full of comments by anonymous users questioning everything from their patriotism to their intelligence. We'll see how long it takes for things to return to normal. I give it until the weekend.