Wednesday, August 04, 2004

Since I've been gone for a while, I'm going to start slowly. So first, The Bitter Shack of Resentment goes on my wad of links, for being good.

Second, I make fun of something conservatives say a lot. It's a really easy one, but I'm out of practice.

I assume you've all heard Clinton's speech at the Democratic convention. You can read it, listen to it, and watch it here if you haven't. It's fairly badass and most of it is totally irrelevant to the point that I'm going to make. The relevant bit is here, when Clinton talks about the distribution of Bush's tax cut:

When I was in office, the Republicans were pretty mean to me. When I left and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. At first I thought I should send them a thank you note—until I realized they were sending you the bill.

Now, I've heard many people criticize Clinton for this. They say he's a hypocrite, because he criticizes the wealthiest %1 of Americans while being one of them. Good job guys. As always, I'm going to use an analogy that you'll understand one sentence in, thus negating any point of writing the whole thing.

So, imagine a theoretical white person in the mid 1950s.

This theoretical white person says, "You know, it's really unfair how much official discrimination there is against black people. I'm going to work hard to make this country more fair towards all people, even if that may make me less wealthy or powerful in the long run, because it's the right thing to do."

Now, is it more accurate to describe this person as "a reasonable human being with a conscience and a strong sense of right and wrong" or "a hypocrite who flip-flops and didn't really go to Vietnam somehow?"