Conservative Hypocrites Exposed

Posted by Amanda Marcotte at 11:17 AM on April 14, 2008.

Hi, everyone! This is Amanda Marcotte, and I spend most of my time as the executive editor at Pandagon and as a columnist/podcaster for RH Reality Check. I'm also the author of the new book It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments. I'm going to be your PEEK blogger for two weeks, and I'm looking forward to the opportunity to share all the things that I'm reading but not usually taking the time to blog about at Pandagon. Here's a post grabbed from my own blog this morning.

Glenn Greenwald sent me a copy of his newest book Great American Hypocrites, and I have to say that I liked it even more than his last one. It's Glenn at his best---he never fails to muster the proper outrage at right wing behavior, even when lesser humans start to lose our ability to be outraged because it's just so common. And his sense of humor is on full display, causing me to laugh pretty hard throughout the book.

The topic is hypocrisy, which is a rich source of material, because to condemn someone for a hypocrite doesn't necessarily mean you are making a statement about what they're hypocritical about. To say that Ted Haggard is a hypocrite because he condemns gay men while having gay sex doesn't mean you disapprove of gay sex. In fact, you're probably pro-gay to call out such a hypocrite in this instance. In this book, you have a buffet of hypocrite flavors. You have the conservatives preaching small government while driving the country's economy into oblivion with overspending on war, and conservatives who claim they want the government to leave you alone while endorsing intensive spying on American citizens. Of course, you have your conservatives who talk about family values while being avid about trading down old model wives for new ones, visiting prostitutes, paying for abortions while condemning the right to have one, condemning adultery while being a big fan of it, having anonymous gay sex, and even more. And then you have chickenhawkery, which Glenn defines not just as agitating for wars you won't fight in, but thinking that your penis gets two sizes bigger because you sit in your air conditioned home or office, promoting the war. Anyone who lays claim to the idea that starting or cheerleading for wars you won't fight in is a sign of "toughness" is a chickenhawk.

It's the chickenhawk thing that really inspires Greenwald's definition of modern conservatism that makes this book so knee-slappingly funny: John Wayne conservatism. Wayne really was the model for so much modern wingnuttery. Wayne was able to become an icon of masculinity despite the fact (or perhaps in part because of it) that he was a coward and a degenerate who treated women like they were disposable, all because he looked gruff on camera and never met a war he wouldn't champion other people to die for. Greenwald then launches into a gendered analysis that draws heavily on Stephen Ducat's theories in The Wimp Factor, which thrilled me. Feminists like myself have insisted on this gendered analysis of why chickenhawkery is so prevalent for a long time now, and it's great to see that finally get a wider audience. Glenn convincingly draws a picture of a conservative movement filled to the brim with men that are insecure with their soft, pampered lives and think that making other people go to war somehow absolves them of their own masculinity issues. He goes so far as to quote Jonah Goldberg condemning men who oppose the war as rumpled, emasculated, glasses-wearing, khaki-panted sorts that are soft around the waist (I'm paraphrasing) and then provides you a picture of Goldberg to drive home the point: He's describing himself. And he hopes that the death of some 20-year-olds from the working class who enlisted because of the education opportunities will give him the manhood he craves.

Where do women fit into all this? Well, that's an interesting question that Greenwald tackles in his section on how conservatives tout themselves as big family men with happy housewives, as opposed to those decadent liberals with our liberated women and sexifying ways. He then carefully details hows these "family men" are all too often wife-traders who alienate their own children (current nominee of the Republican party John McCain went years without his children from his first marriage speaking to him, they were so angry about the way he dumped his first wife to get a prettier, younger, richer model that fit his political aspirations more), adulterers, johns, and even closeted homosexuals. Greenwald notes that the Republicans coddled their own who stomp all over the women and children in their lives, but are willing to cut the strings on the outed gays, but to my mind this demonstrates a consistency that will always resonate with the anxious masculinity voters. Basically, the more adulteries and trophy wives, the more the gun humpers are going to think of these politicians as "family values" sorts, because "family values" is a code word for "male dominance", or really, the patriarchy, because as the oppression of gay men shows, only certain kinds of men get to dominate. That John McCain talks about family values after trading his old wife for a younger, richer model is hypocrisy, true, but it's also probably just going to make the sexists like him more. Still, they are wild hypocrites---after all, the official argument for the patriarchy is that it serves women's interests to be second class, because we get male protection. The behavior of prominent conservatives shows how much a lie that really is.

The sections on the big government/small government bullshit should be mandatory reading, because it really demonstrates how casual lying has become so normalized for conservatives. Conservatives say they want "small government", but they don't tell you that the definition of "small government" is "a government that spends itself into huge debts letting corporate donors steal from the coffers and actively works to reinforce oppression, but certainly lets the very rich and powerful get away with murder without holding them accountable." People vote for "small government", thinking that means lower taxes and lower government interference for them, but actually it means higher levels of both for them, because someone has to pick up the slack now the the rich are above paying taxes or being responsible to society.

Tagged as: books, conservatives, hypocrisy

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the popular blog Pandagon. She's also the author of the book It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments