Pubdate: Fri, 05 Dec 2003
Source: Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)
Copyright: 2003 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987
Note: apparent 150 word limit on LTEs
Author: Andrew Bard Schmookler

HYPOCRISY: MORALISTS HAVE MUCH TO ANSWER FOR

The recent saga of Rush Limbaugh and his drug addiction raises important 
questions.

The crucial thing is not that Limbaugh was a drug addict who fed his habit 
on the black market. That private vice is small change compared with his 
larger, public sin.

The real issue about Limbaugh is brought into focus by asking: What does it 
say about a man if he can talk with contempt, without a shred of 
compassion, about the shortcomings of other people while knowing that he is 
no better than they?

And that raises the still larger question: What does it say about a society 
if it repeatedly grants high moral authority to people who practice such 
hypocrisy?

First, about the man. Even in a moralist who is himself above reproach, the 
lack of compassion for sinners would be troubling enough. Especially since 
most of Limbaugh's contempt has been directed at groups that have, 
historically, been the least privileged in our society, one would hope for 
moral condemnation to be leavened with human sympathy.

We in America talk a lot about things like sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll 
when we address issues of sin and morality. But, the red letters in my New 
Testament talk a lot more about the dangers of mounting the kind of high 
horse Limbaugh rode into fame and fortune.

Which raises the question about the society that gives such a dishonest 
voice so large a megaphone, making him the Godzilla of talk radio to spew 
out the "hate the sinner" kind of moralism.

If Limbaugh were the only instance, the question would not arise. But 
consider the other most prominent voices of American moralism in the past 
decade. Surely, even a very short list would also include the voices of 
William J. Bennett and Newt Gingrich.

Bennett is a less blatant instance. The man who became Mr. Virtue for the 
1990s - with his best-selling "Book of Virtues" - and whom we've since 
discovered has gambled away millions of dollars in what might have been a 
gambling addiction, did climb onto a high horse. But he never treated with 
scorn those who lacked the virtues he represented himself as having.

The same can hardly be said of Gingrich, the most prominent Republican 
moralist in the 1990s. His disappearance in disgrace from his position as 
speaker of the House cut short our marveling at how a man could so 
viciously denounce the sexual misbehavior of Bill Clinton while at the same 
time, as we eventually learned, he was conducting a similar and much more 
serious sexual adventure of his own.

So there's a pattern there, and we're compelled to ask, what does it mean?

It connects to our having the most punitive of penal systems among Western 
democracies. For we humans are never so eager to punish as when we make 
others scapegoats for our own unacknowledged sins.

It connects to our failure to notice how bizarre it was for our president 
to denounce Osama bin Laden as a coward for sending young men off to die 
while remaining himself protected from danger. There's something in our 
culture that can make it difficult to see ourselves in the same moral 
perspective we apply to others. The unquestioning assumption of our own 
righteousness can reflect blindness to the perspectives of others, as well 
as to what lies within ourselves.

We need to be able to talk with each other about the moral challenges we 
face and about how far short we fall in meeting them. But our conversation 
about the problem of sin in our society needs to be about "us" and not 
about "them."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom