Hypocrisy for Dummies

By Kevin D. Williamson

Friday, August 26, 2022

 

As it happens, I don’t co-own a bar with Charlie Cooke in Tampa, Fla.

 

I like the idea, though: It is a great sit-com setup, although it might also be a great bankruptcy set-up for both the Cooke and the Williamson households. There’s a scene in Being the Ricardos where William Frawley invites Lucille Ball out for a drink. “It’s 10 a.m.!” she protests. “It’s 10:30 somewhere,” he sniffs.

 

I do a podcast called Mad Dogs and Englishmen with Charlie, and there is a bar and grill called Mad Dogs and Englishmen in Tampa. (Everybody recommends the burgers.) Some profoundly stupid lefty activists — amplified by a profoundly stupid lefty podcaster with a large social-media following — spent part of the week spreading the lie that our podcast had received a six-figure benefit by means of federal loan forgiveness under the Covid-induced Paycheck Protection Program. Charlie and I both oppose Joe Biden’s imbecilic and illegal student-loan-forgiveness scheme (Charlie has been particularly vocal about it), and the idea was to point out our supposed hypocrisy.

 

Never mind, for the moment, that the whole thing was made up. (To repeat: We never received any federal loan or had any federal loan forgiven. They made up similar claims about Ben Shapiro.) Even if it had happened, it wouldn’t have been hypocrisy.

 

Hypocrisy is a favorite charge in politics, because people are . . . I am tempted to write stupid, but it’s really more like busy. They have few incentives to dig into the details and little free time in which to do so. (Economists call this rational ignorance.) We remember Bill Clinton’s sex scandals and not Hillary Clinton’s almost-certainly criminal cattle-futures shenanigans because most people know what sex is and understand that you’re not supposed to cheat on your spouse, but trying to explain futures trading to the typical voter is like trying to get a dachshund to bark in terza rima — they just aren’t equipped. But people naturally get hypocrisy, or at least a dumbed-down version of it.

 

There are, of course, people who oppose the student-debt giveaway and supported both PPP and PPP loan-forgiveness — different programs enacted at different times for different reasons in different contexts. There is also the fact that PPP was the result of a law duly passed by Congress, while Biden’s loan-forgiveness scheme is pure presidential unilateralism, which worries those of us who cling to the quaint notion of the rule of law.

 

But, here’s the thing: If either Charlie or I were availing ourselves of student-loan forgiveness, that wouldn’t be hypocrisy, either. (I don’t think either of us had student loans; I attended the University of Texas back when it was cheap, and Charlie had the good sense to attend a very affordable community college with a picturesque campus.) Hypocrisy is pretending to have a virtue that you do not possess, or pretending not to have a vice that you do possess. Thinking that student-loan forgiveness is a bad policy and then availing yourself of the benefit of that policy once you’ve lost the political fight isn’t hypocrisy — it is living in the world you live in.

 

Against expectation, I have ended up in the federal-income-tax-paying half of the population, and I continue to oppose — as I have long opposed — elements of the tax code such as the mortgage-interest deduction. Do I take the mortgage-interest deduction? Of course I do. If by some miracle there is still something like Social Security when I am retired, I’ll cash those checks and enjoy it. I’d oppose Uncle Stupid’s giving out the kind of money to little political magazines and columnists that he’s giving out to “green” entrepreneurs — but, if there’s money on the table, I’m going to pick it up.

 

As I have argued in the past: Failing to get your way in politics doesn’t impose on you any special obligation to put yourself at a financial disadvantage. Hypocrisy is saying, “Oh, I’d never accept a student-loan giveaway!” and then secretly accepting it. But: “That’s a dumb policy — now, where’s my ten grand?” is just life. Frankly, if I could have figured out how to squeeze $160,000 out of Washington by means of my podcast, I’d have done it. I’m a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t.

 

Next time around, maybe I will. And if I do, I’ll see you at that bar in Tampa — drinks are on me.