Who is your favorite hypocrite?

Too numerous to even contemplate any one individual; or even many. LOL

Well, this is perhaps not exactly hypocrisy, but I had to chuckle when I read the bio of the relationship advice expert Barbara DeAnglis.... She divorced six times in her lifetime.
She sold millions of books and family therapists (including my own dear mother) use her approaches...Maybe she just enjoyed marriage too much.

Dammit, Dasha, this is such a hard question! Way too many choices for my little brain.

It's an overwhelming topic. Maybe I will come back with something.

I'd have to say Konrad Adenauer for saying Wir blicken in einen Abrund von Landesverrat (We are looking into an abyss of treason). I'd explain, but I don't think many American readers know who Konrad Adenauer was.

Well, Benjamin Spock's books changed the way we started raising our children, yet he himself was unable to give his own children the love they
needed.

http://www.vision.org/visionmedia/article.aspx?id=583

Expressing an ideal and living said ideal are not one and the same!

Assuming said ideal is, in and of itself merited, I for one wouldn't necessarily condemn the holder of said ideal to that same standard.

Why?

Because we are all human and thus fallible.

On the other hand, if the holder of said (assume merited) ideal attempts to impose it on others but not on himself, then that's good cause for ridicule.

Please explain.
I remember him.




David

I recall the name, but not who he was.

Looked him up on Wickepedia.

Isn't that a prime reason for explaining?

Aeschines

Does 'favorite' mean 'biggest' , Dagmaraka?

No -- it's the reason I'm so much cooler than American readers.

Konrad Adenauer was Germany's first chancellor. And to understand why he's my favorite hypocrite, you first need to know this piece of background. In Germany, we have a weekly magazine called Der Spiegel -- comparable to Time, Newsweek and the Economist, but more agressive in its reporting and critical in its opinions. Adenauer was a patriarch by temperament, and the Spiegel's irreverent and sometimes acid criticism had irked him since he became chancellor in 1949.

In 1961, Der Spiegel published an article criticizing Adenauer's cabinet in general, and defense minister Franz Joseph Strauss in particular. Because the administration mismanaged our armed forces, argued the Spiegel, there was now a real threat that Soviet forces stationed in East Germany could march through Germany into France, and we would not have enough military power to prevent it.

The criticized cabinet addressed the problem promptly: On learning about the impeding publication of the issue, the defense minister (yes, the same Franz Joseph Strauss whose mismanagement the article had just), ordered the German police to seize all copies of the issue. He ordered Hamburg police to raid the Spiegel building and arrest the editorial team, including Rudolf Augstein, the chief editor and founder of the magazine. Strauss did that without a warrant, of course -- he had, after all, no police power at all under the German constitution. Furthermore, knowing that an important Spiegel reporter was currently in Spain, he ordered the ambassador to ask Spain's fascist government to arrest him. And once again, Strauss lacked even the slightest constitutional authority to do that. He was, after all, the minister of defense, not the foreign minister.

This whole thing, known in Germany as the Spiegel-Affaere, was a blatant, hair-raising, toe-nail-curling, you name it, violation of the constitution.

A few days later, the Bundestag, our parliament, held a hearing about the affair in the Plenum. Adenauer spoke to the whole parliament, and didn't address the constitutional problems with one word. He didn't address the deteriorating state of national security either. For him, it was all about the Spiegel and its critical article, which he alleged to have sold out national security to the enemy. His flaming speech started with the now-infamous words, "We are looking into an abyss of treason."

Of course, the Spiegel had not revealed a single state secret, and Adenauer knew that very well. His whole outrage against the Spiegel was a sham. But for a few weeks, he appeared to get through with it. The parliament bought it. Germany's mainstream press, instead of standing up for the freedom of the press, quickly denounced their competitor. They didn't wake up until a journalist called Sebastian Haffner, writing in a variety magazine called Der Stern ("the Star"), hammered home that it was the constitutional breaches that were the real scandal in this affair. (Note to self: remember to make Haffner my next avatar.)

After Haffner had hammered home his point things returned to normal. Der Spiegel ultimate won all the lawsuits that flew out of the affair. Franz Joseph Strauss soon lost his job as minister of defense. Germany's young democracy had asserted itself.

Nevertheless, the hypocricy in Adenauer's abyss of treason speech had a certain chuzpah to it that I tacitly admire. And the way Adenauer initially duped all the watchdogs in government and society, which was scary and which I don't approve of it in the least, does deserve some grudging respect.

And that's why Adenauer is my favorite hypocrite in history.

I am my favourite hypocrite, because I am the hypocrite I live with.

I don't think I am especially hypocritical, but I know I can be, and I hate it.

I think it is a very common human trait.


That being said, I will now go away and try to think of my favourite FAMOUS hypocrite.

I vote for all the MegaChurch preachers who spew fire and brimstone at every sexual act you can imagine, and then seem to be the worst offenders.

Here's just one example among many...



I might extend the accusation of hypocrisy to evangelical religion in general, for it seems that in many cases their specific beliefs are often in conflict with the core tenets of the religions they preach.

Interesting stuff, Thomas, thanks.

That's what's cool about a thread like this.

You have to go look up all the people you don't remember what they did, or you never knew!


Heh...I'll trump your German exceptionalism version of coolness, and say Bob Santamaria.

Take that!

No, not necessarily. I picked DeAngelis, cause I always see her books scattered around my mother's house. I read some of her work since my mother swears by her (and my mom is a great therapist, if I may say so myself).... then I came across her bio and had to laugh.... so it's whoever you find interesting, whoever jumps out in your mind....and doesn't even have to be famous.