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Is there a breaking point for hypocrisy? Some point at which all these self-righteous, God-fearing, sinner-hating types have one illicit affair too many? One homosexual fling too many? One fall from grace too many so that suddenly all these Americans who really think politicians should help regulate morality rise up and say enough?
God, I hope so.
Maybe the breaking point will be Mark Souder, Indiana Republican Congressman and the most recent "upright" politician to get outed as a hypocritical bastard. Despite being a strong defender of the "traditional marriage," Souder was getting a little on the side with a staffer (unless what he meant by traditional was polygamy- which is, of course, the real traditional form of marriage?).
According to Souder's resignation statement, we should not use his own hypocrisy to judge whether or not politicians ought to use their religion to regulate our morality. Indeed,
THE IDEAS WE ADVOCATE ARE STILL JUST AND RIGHT.AMERICA WILL SURVIVE AND THRIVE WHEN ANCHORED IN THOSE VALUES.HUMAN BEINGS, LIKE ME, WILL FAIL, BUT OUR CAUSE IS GREATER THAN INDIVIDUALS.IT IS BASED UPON ETERNAL TRUTHS.BY STEPPING ASIDE, MY MISTAKE CANNOT BE USED AS A POLITICAL FOOTBALL IN A PARTISAN ATTEMPT TO UNDERMINE THE CAUSE FOR WHICH I HAVE LABORED ALL MY ADULT LIFE." (AN: capitalized by Souder)I hate to differ with someone as full of the Holy Spirit (or is that Holy Shit?) as Souder, and verily I do respect that the man still has the energy and sex drive to fuck around on his wife at the age of 59, BUT his case can and should be used as a political football. Why should any of us allow the state to regulate our morality, tell us what sort of relationships we must have in order to gain full civil rights, and generally make the majority of us Americans (who are not married) feel as though the only righteous life is a married one? Even more to the point, why should we allow our lives to be regulated by a string of self-righteous and pompous men who are themselves completely unwilling to abide by the rules they set for the rest of us? Souder's sham family values are just the latest in a long series of hypocrites wagging their fingers at the rest of us. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had the wonderful morality tale of George Rekers, homophobe extraordinaire and co-founder of the Family Research Council. Despite developing therapies to "cure" homosexuality, Rekers couldn't cure himself of homoerotic longings and got caught with a male prostitute on a recent vacation. The ensuing scandal led Rekers to pronounce that he is not gay. No, he's not, but he is a hypocritical son of a bitch who would happily make gay peoples' lives miserable in order to make his own homoerotic practices invisible. For instance, Rekers has spent much of his life trying to make sure gay couples cannot adopt. Or, as Frank Rich pointed out in a recent column about Rekers,
For all the farcical shenanigans they can generate, they do inflict real casualties — both at the micro level, on the lives of ordinary people, and at the national level...Rich is onto something here. The culture wars are damn amusing- a farce played out on a national scale, full of groans and knee-slapping guffaws. And the culture wars also do real life damage. Perhaps the biggest damage done by all of this is what I will call "Daddy Damage." Daddy Damage is what happens when we the People elect politicians who look and act like "Daddy"- think white men in suits with a tendency to lecture us for not living up to their expectations. Luce Irigaray, a post-structural feminist, would call this willingness to submit to Daddy the result of living in a symbolic system that always rewards those who can act as Daddy/possess the Phallus. This Phallogocentric system makes it impossible to exercise power without being Daddy/or like Daddy. At a level of "culture," it means we let these pompous men (and women) run our country and our lives in terms of sex laws, marriage policies, and all matters related to our hearts and minds. But at another level, the level of the economy, it means we let people who can do Daddy talk- who look like they know what they're talking about- be in charge. Watch the Gulf Oil disaster hearings and you get a sense that all these guys have been bullshitting from day one- telling us that "It will all be fine" and knowing damn well that there was a good possibility it wouldn't be. Watch the hearings around bank regulation and you get the same sinking feeling that the people in charge have NO IDEA WHAT THEY'RE DOING. And that's a scary feeling. If there's no Daddy, no one to lead us and mold us, who will tell us what to do? But perhaps the hypocrisy on display at the cultural level and the hypocrisy on display at the economic level (greed is good, we deserve our salaries, what can go wrong?) will be a breaking point for Americans. Perhaps it's just too much hypocrisy condensed into CEO bonuses, broken oil pipes, mining disasters, homoerotic homophobes, cheating family values politicians, and a general sense that it's time to stop waiting for Daddy to tell us what to do and take power into our own hands.
