Hypocrisy in all its forms

Today, the Baltimore Orioles told Rafael Palmeiro to take his ball, his steroids and go home.

Not along ago, Palmeiro was standing before Congress in the steroid hearings swearing up and down that he never took steroids.

Then he failed a test and got suspended, just in time for the O's to cancel an event honoring him for his 3,000th hit.

Which circle of hell is for the hypocrites, Raffy?

This post actually gets back to a post I was going to write a while back about Karl Rove, from the George W. Bush ("The buck stops there!") administration.

Rove, the architect of Bush's campaigns - you know, a guy who helped make a male cheerleader look tougher than a thrice-wounded Vietnam vet - was the subject of much rumor during that whole "who outed the CIA agent" scandal.

You know, the one where Dubya said anyone involved would have no place in his administration, then after it might have been his boy Karl, said, hey, innocent until proven guilty, right?

See, the thing is, to me, as a (halfhearted) Democrat, I think what my party needs is, basically, more assholes like Rove.

(That comment ought to get me one of those "celebrity" FBI files I was reading about...)

The thing is, Rove may be an asshole, as Lee Atwater was before him in the GOP, but the thing is, he wins - as Atwater did before him. And the Dems sure could use a winner. The Jim Carville way just isn't working if you don't have the charisma of Bubba Clinton - which John Kerry didn't, and Al Gore sure as hell didn't.

I noticed the other week, as I was covering the Raiders/Pats game, Tom Brady, the Patriots' boy wonder quarterback, has the exact same annoying smirk as Dubya. But like Rove, Brady's a winner, too. And no matter how much he bugs the snot out of me, I've got to give him that. He wins.

What does this have to do with hypocrisy, you ask?

It has to do with calling people on it.

George Bush, as many people pointed out pre-election, stood up and talked about how if he weren't re-elected, it would make the country less safe. He all but stood on the ashes of Ground Zero, wrapped himself in that torn flag and sang the national anthem.

Um, George, when 9/11 happened, you were the president. "My Pet Goat" can't have been so good a book that you forgot, can it?

So let me get this right, I should vote for you because... you were in charge during the most collossal fuck-up in the history of our national defense? Because you're a "wartime president" - who started a war he can't seem to finish?

The point isn't actually Dubya-bashing here. The point is, despite this serious leap in logic - remember when the mission was "accomplished"? - Bush got re-elected.

So Karl Rove did something right. Something really, really right.

And where was the Democrat to stand up and go, "Dude, you can't even prove you were at the job you got to dodge the war, and you're knocking a guy who went, fought, and got shot for saying that maybe war sucks? You've been no closer to war than I am watching 'Tour of Duty: The Complete Season 3' on DVD." How would you know if it's good, bad or indifferent?

There's a judge in New Jersey who's on trial in a kiddie porn case. This is a guy who lost a leg and his more important below-the-waist bits in Vietnam, and is now claiming insanity as a defense.

How many crooks is that going to turn loose on the streets if the guy who went "Guilty! And may God have mercy on your soul!" is a whack job - pun fully intended?

Hypocrisy is everywhere.

I'm as guilty as the next guy, but at least I can admit it. Unlike some presidents who can never come out and say they did something wrong. I do stuff wrong every day. I confess.

How about the deeply religious folks who ignore that whole bit about loving your fellow man? They hate gays. They hate foreigners. They hate minorities. They hate Jews. They hate anyone who isn't just like them. Hell, Pat Robertson suggested assassinating the democratically elected president of Venezuela the other day. Maybe the members of the 700 Club shit light, sweet crude oil or something, but $3-a-gallon gas aside, and even if this guy is a nut, wasn't "Thou Shalt Not Kill" one of those rules a minister's supposed to follow?

You know, it's somewhere on the tablets with "Don't Fuck the Altar Boys" and "Don't Cover for the Ones Who Do."

Whenever I think of hypocrisy and religion, with typical Jewish guilt, I think of the seder I went to that included a prayer with the line, "wherever there is suffering, Jews are there," meaning Jews understand the suffering of others, as they have suffered.

And God help me, I keep thinking, "Tell that to the Palestinians."

Links:
• Rafael Palmeiro's official Web site (God knows what they sell in the shop)
• Exposing Karl Rove (not that way, mercifully)
• An excerpt from a book on Lee Atwater
• A great "Tour of Duty" fan site
• The two faces of Judge Stephen Thompson
• Venezuela wants Pat Robertson... in jail!
• The Pope and pedophilia
• The Passover seder

I don't like negative posts. They make me sad. But sometimes, I just have to rant. I guess that's hypocrisy, too.