Hypocrisy isn’t interesting?

July 10, 2007

There are basically two ways to look at the David Vitter/DC Madam story: shame (senator cheats on spouse) and hypocrisy (moralistic blowhard champions sanctity of marriage, gets caught as an adulterer). CBS News’ Brian Montopoli reports today that the mainstream media is focusing on the prior, while the blogs care about the latter.

The blogs are having a field day with that hypocrisy…. The mainstream media, however, has largely steered clear of focusing on Vitter’s past statements, opting instead to play the story relatively straight. The Washington Post, noting only about his rhetoric that Vitter is “reliable conservative vote in the Senate,” didn’t front the story, opting instead for A3. Rather, it’s the blogs and liberal sites like Salon that are jumping on the story and hammering Vitter for statements at odds with his behavior.

If you want a straight news story, then, you can stick with the traditional media. But if you want a spotlight placed on Vitter’s hypocrisy — and the rush of satisfaction that comes with experiencing schadenfreude that you can justify — you can head over to the blogs. Is it any wonder that the latter get so many clicks?

I haven’t the foggiest idea what this means.

That Vitter championed “family values” is pretty much the only thing that makes this story interesting. Why would traditional reporters sidestep the obvious? (I haven’t seen any television coverage; is Montopoli’s report accurate? Are news outlets ignoring the hypocrisy angle?)

As for why the blogs “get so many clicks,” it seems pretty clear that if traditional outlets are missing the most obvious significance of the story, news consumers will go where the information is. The question answers itself.

Why would traditional reporters sidestep the obvious?

Because they’re tools?

  • yes, I do remember how they went with just a straight low-key news story about Monica Lewinsky

  • “The mainstream media, however, has largely steered clear of focusing on Vitter’s past statements…”

    That’s because the MSM has no memory. If it wasn’t spoon-fed to them five minutes ago then it didn’t happen as far as they’re concerned.

    That’s not ‘playing the story straight.’ That’s just their typically stupid Modus Operandi.

    …”so many clicks” indeed!

  • Oh, they’ve got ‘memory’ alright, Haik Bedrosian.

    It is that ‘memory’ that leads them to not spotlight the hypocrisy here, which should be the focus of any story on this particular issue. That is, the ‘memory’ of loss of access. Memory of the attacking Republican machine against any news entity that ‘goes too far.’

    One wonders why can’t the MSM multi-task on this one; i.e., spotlight both the ‘shame’ and the hypocrisy? Because they really, really like the cocktail weenies served within that oh-so-important Washington, insider party-circuit.

    Tools, indeed.

  • Looks like this story has already exposed to two of the seven deadly sins:

    Vitter – Lust.
    Monpoli – Envy.

    Go ahead CB – Let loose with a little “Neener! Neener!” You and your fellow reality-based bloggers have more than earned it.

  • The hypocricy is on more than one level. Vitter vehemently fought against allowing amnesty for illegal immigrants, saying that those immigrants would not be legally punished at all, and not spend one day in jail, for breaking the law. Yet Vitter himself has basically admitted breaking the law in soliciting a prostitute and no doubt thinks because he has cleared this with his wife and his God (how he knows the latter is one great mystery) he need not be punished legally by imprisonment.

  • Why would his having an affair even be a “story”. It’s the fact that he so loudly proclaimed ‘family values’ and how shameful it was that the president indulged in such behavior etc., the whole time he was doing 10X worse. Hypocrisy is the only story here.

  • I often find myself bemused by how readily Americans ignore or forgive hypocrisy. To me, the hypocrisy is often worse than the actual transgression and the shame. It ought to rule a politiician ought of consideration, but people tend to focus on whether or not they can forgive the transgression, rather than on how it shows the politician to be a slimeball who espouses easier standards for himself and his buddies versus harsher standards for everyone else, and therefore has no real standards at all.

  • And once again, let’s not forget those words, spoken by Mr. Vitter himself, in 1998 regarding philandering politicians (ones that didn’t even break the law in their philandering):

    “I think Livingston’s stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess,” he [Vitter] said. [Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 12/20/98]

  • Because “Clinton did it too” (albeit not with a prostitute, but I digress), it lays the groundwork for some wonderful future efforts to tar both parties with the same brush. If they acknowledge that Republicans cheat on their wives like Clinton did, that gives them cover for holding up William Jefferson to prove that even Democrats are corrupt.

    And as to the hypocrisy. . .well, making the case that someone is hypocritical is just so unseemly, and there’s just too much mudslinging already in political reporting. (This, of course, fails to mention that the MSM fuels or otherwise encourages most of said mudslinging, but there I go digressing again.)

  • Two points about the MSM: first, as #4 Haik said, they have no memory. World history begins anew everyday. Inconvenient facts are just ignored entirely, and stories either are run without proper context or without any at all.

    Second, there seems to be some kind of “Gentleman’s Agreement” among public figures not to turn on each other or call bullshit on each other except in certain circumstances. People who do not abide by this are marginalized – at least those not aligned with the right. See: Moore, M.

    The second point is especially harmful as media figures have become celebrities themselves, and have now joined that class of people who let each other get away with murder. It’s like they are in some club and don’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun, no matter how depraved or un-deserving a person might be.

  • Montopoli (should an MSM outlet really hire people with names so close to Monopoly?) really shows most everything wrong with the MSM in that short little statement.

    It is bad enough for the media to get one aspect of the story wrong — the notion that the hypocrisy is irrelevant — but to get two aspects of a single story completely wrong is stunning. Note to MSM: I know how much you dateless nerds get your kicks peeping through keyholes, but extramarital affairs in one’s private life really are not news. It is only the hypocrisy of Vitter’s use of his public position to challenge the morality of others that makes this newsworthy.

    To accuse the blogs of schadenfreude while the whole point of the MSM these days is to delight in abetting the fall of those more powerful, more privileged, more wealthy is the worst case of potkettle disorder i have seen in a long, long while.

  • I saw on TPM that a Hustler reporter got that Vitter’s number was on the list. Wasn’t Livingston outed by Hustler? If so Hustler is 2 for 0 with an assist. And what’s funnier, Hustler not all that long ago ran one of those full-page WaPo ads looking for people who had or knew of a politician who had had an affair.

  • I don’t know, cheating on your spouse is an immoral thing, and I think you shouldn’t do it unless your spouse beats you or rapes you or something, in which case I’d say it was excused, maybe, or justified. But it’s a nasty thing and if you want to cheat on someone you should just leave them. Relationship stuff always gets reported incompletely or inaccurately by people thaking the other person’s side anyway, so even if you really belive there’s nothing wrong with you cheating, you set yourself up for the next person not hearing about your whole side of the story and thinking that you’re a person who might cheat.

    Hypocrisy relates more directly to the kinds of faults that have more to do with a person’s ability to govern (someone can be immoral w/ regards to one thing, but not to another- think it’s ok to cheat but not to swindle the public by misappropriating public funds, or by otherwise abusing public office- and it might even be that something typically immoral is not that immoral in the particular case when the politician does it, say when a marriage is basically over and neither spouse has any romantic interest in the other anymore and the politician cheats), because it specificially has to do with acting rationally in accordence with one’s beliefs or honestly in accordance with one’s promises and words.

  • Hypocrisy relates more directly to the kinds of faults that have more to do with a person’s ability to govern … because it specificially has to do with acting rationally in accordence with one’s beliefs or honestly in accordance with one’s promises and words.

    I’m not exactly sure what you’re getting at, Swan – but part of marriage and the marriage contract includes vows of fidelity – and someone who is cheating on their marriage vows is exhibiting exactly the behavior that you are attributing to the hypocrisy involving acting in accordance with one promises and words.

    And obviously you aren’t gay – because otherwise the hyprocrisy of someone ranting about and wanting to codifying into the law legal discrimination because of a belief that homosexuality is some sort of grave threat to the “family”, while, in fact acting in such a way which constitutes the actual gravest threat to families, would be readily apparent and right up front. Maybe it is this fact, and that the blogs are actually more realistically closer to reflecting the real lives and interests of the people than the corporate interests could ever be (does anyone really think that “Will and Grace” accurately depicts real life for gay Americans?) that might explain why the blogs are so adamant of seeing the hyprocrisy that the corporate media is blind to.

  • Instead of tracking their wanton hypocricies to speak truth to power, the MSM seems to be embracing the Right’s mantra for the early 21st century: Just give us a do-over, or allow us a re-do so our original baffoonary won’t be penalized with accountability. I grew up tremendously a long time ago when I realized my parents were telling me to do as they said, not as they did. Just another example why so many of these WH charlatans should be kicked to the curb! -Kevo

  • Ethel-to-Tilly-

    Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, but breaking a vow can be hypocrisy (that’s why it made more sense for me to emphasize things the way I did). Let’s say is both the parties to the vow don’t expect it to be upheld any longer, and each of them knows this. The distinction I drew in my comment was between what’s more purely moral fault (I think it’s easier to generalize cheating as examples of moral fault, although as I showed, there are cases where this is more fuzzy) and hypocrisy of moralizing about morality when you actually cheat yourself.

    You can’t attribute to me knowledge of Vitter’s specifically opposing gay marriage as part of his opposition to cheating or infidelity, because I didn’t have it and I certainly didn’t express that I did. If CB mentioned that today, I didn’t read that in the blog posts, just having skimmed over them. Your bizarre criticism of me in your second paragraph is something you just pulled out of thin air.

    Anyway, the point of my comment was not that Vitter’s act was an episode of moral fault but not hypocrisy, or vice versa. Not only did I now write that, but I think it’s probably both. The point of my comment was that I think it’s justified to critize Vitter for either one. As far as why the media emphasizes one or the other, I could hazard some guesses, but I won’t, because I think drawing a conclusion on that is too speculative- except for maybe that the moral fault aspect is more salacious or sensational. As far as why the blogosphere emphasizes the hypocrisy aspect, I think the left is uncomfortable with making judgments about moral fault in some contexts, and although I have a lot of opinions on this, it’s way too complicated for me to discuss now, when I have little time on my hands and it’s way too tangential to the topic of this post.

  • If a person is getting elected by saying we should do one thing on the stump, but then doing another in his private life, this guy is deceiving us and is obviously a bad leader, because he can’t be trusted to not be using public office for his own gain solely and not the people’s. Check it out- Clinton didn’t make his reputation on criticizing cheaters. That’s hypocrisy that has to do with being a leader.

    If Clinton just breaks his vow to his wife, but didn’t try to get elected by promising to stick up for values he claimed to be important including marital fidelity, then he may be immoral as far as his wife, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with whether he’s an honest sentinel of the public trust, the way the acts of the politician I described in my previous paragraph would.

  • Swan – it wasn’t meant to be a “bizzarre criticism” of you – just that to gay people, being held up as this “threat to the family” to justify discrimination as people like Vitter (and Vitter specifically) have done, the outspoken views of people like Vetter are always in the consciousness – and the hypocrisy – because it really is the behavior of people like him that is the real “threat to the family” is very upfront. It wasn’t meant as a criticism of you – just that if you were gay, that aspect of the hypocrisy would probably be much more apparent to you. I probably could have worded it better. But my point in relation to blogs (hyprocisy) vs the MSM (straight news story) stands – the MSM will bend over backwards to be deliberately blind to this aspect of the issue because the blogs are much closer to the sentiments of real everyday diverse Americans rather than the homogenized corporate “powers that be”.

    But I will take issue to your statement about “both the parties to the vow don’t expect it to be upheld any longer, and each of them knows this” – there are more than 2 parties to the marriage vow, as long as the state confers rights and privileges upon those who are married. Anyone who breaks a marraige vow is not only committing fraud against their marriage partner (and you seem to be making a distinction that if both partners don’t expect the vows to be kept then it doesn’t really count or isn’t that bad) but is also committing fraud against the state and society that conferred accepting those rights and privileges on them when they said those vows.
    Maybe it’s just another aspect of marriage that is highly sensitive to gay people and not to others.

  • The mainstream media, however, has largely steered clear of focusing on Vitter’s past statements, opting instead to play the story relatively straight.

    Straight as a dog’s hind leg, as we used to say.

  • Chief Osceola has some great points in re., the reporters themselves have now become part of that upper caste of folks who know things about others like them, but are bound by the code of that group not to inform other people of those transgressions. See: Congressman Mark Foley Hypocrite Party- PageBoy Fla.)

    And Montpoli is just darned wrong. No one, but God, your spouse and your Priest gives a flying eff about an affair… the ONLY story is in the hypocricy of the thing.

    That’s why no one cared about Lewinsky. No one even really cared about the lie during Clinton’s testimony. And it explains why Clinton’s popularity never suffered. And why Livingston had to resign, and all those other guys could not become speaker. It was the effing hypocricy!

  • There’s hypocrisy, and then there’s the “traditional” media’s own style of meta-hypocrisy : covering up for one their favored hypocrites (and calling it ‘straight’). ‘Twisted’ would be a better epithet.

  • While I agree that this is a flagrant example of hypocrisy on several levels, I’d also like to remind those who are discussing extramarital “affairs” that this was not just a fling, it was a case of paying for the services of a prostitute. Which, last time I checked, is a crime.

    Not just hypocrisy, but breaking the law as well.

    Anyone think he’ll be charged?

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