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Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy By Peter Schweizer

4/18/06

For the past two weeks, I've been sneezing and wheezing and hurting in my throat, which makes my newfound commitment to chastity that much easier.

I've got that same puffy hungover look I displayed on VH1 last night.

Despite my suffering, I put on a dark blue shirt, a red tie and my black undertaker suit and drive to the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills for the latest meeting of the Wednesday Morning Club.

11:40 a.m. I walk in and see a vibrant Cathy Seipp dressed all in green with a green scarf containing her raunchy blonde hair talking to movie producer Ed Myerson.

Isn't there a [Harold] Meyerson who edits or writes for a prominent liberal magazine? It's not that guy.

Ed was the location manager for Papillon, my brother's favorite book (much of the book was plagiarized I learn from Ed).

"Wasn't that shot in New York?" I ask.

No, he says it was shot in Jamaica.

Then I realize I'm getting Papillon mixed up with Serpico.

Ed producer the miniseries Mahabharata "a wonderful realization of one of the world's great religious-mythic epics."

I ask him if there was any sex or nudity in it. After all, it's an Indian classic and they boast the Kama Sutra.

He says there was some sex but no nudity.

Oh well, you can't have it all.

Back in the 1950s, Ed's father took him to rock 'n' roll shows thrown by disc jockey Alan Freed. Now Myerson has a 12-year old daughter.

Ed's one of the board members of the Wednesday Morning Club. He's been friends with Cathy since she first wrote about the WMC for Buzz magazine. He's known writer Lionel Chetwynd since circa 1973.

I'm careful to avoid grains as I pick at my lunch. It's still Passover.

I tell the table that I'm looking forward to bombs over Tehran, but only if it's shown live on TV. I love pictures of bombs exploding. I particularly enjoyed the Shock and Awe campaign on Baghdad. There should be smart bombs that only kill bad Muslims.

TV is good for wars and football.

Cathy does not like my relish for war so I switch to bemoaning the morals of the younger generation. This 21-year old hottie sent me intimate photos of herself. I'm still recovering (from her standing me up, I thought I had found my future bride).

Cathy does not appreciate this topic either (she says it is not a matter worthy of the Four Seasons) so I lapse into a gloomy silence for five seconds. When no one notices and sympathizes with my miffed feelings, I join Cathy in bemoaning the spread of pornography across the internet. Some fake blogs with naughty pictures have seized her name and excerpts of her writings to drive traffic to hardcore sites. She's not happy.

I try to comfort her but I'm only one man and her needs are enormous.

She promises to cook me a big bean dish if I transcribe generous portions of today's speech.

The average age of the WMC crowd is about 50. I'm not likely to find my future virginal bride here.

Peter Schweizer is a terrific speaker with a powerful powerpoint presentation to go along with his words.

From Publishers Weekly:

Working with a broadly inclusive pantheon of "the Left" that places Ralph Nader and Barbra Streisand on equal footing with Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, Schweizer (The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty) suggests that liberalism's heroes conduct their lives in ways that prove their philosophy to be "ultimately self-defeating, self-destructive, and unworkable." While acknowledging that conservatives can be high-profile hypocrites as well, Schweizer employs a double standard, arguing that "when conservatives betray their publicly stated principles, they harm only themselves and their families," but when liberals misbehave, they harm their principles first and foremost. Sometimes his research uncovers significant contradictions, as when Schweizer points out that Noam Chomsky, who tends to demonize the military establishment, wrote his first book, Syntactic Structures, with grants from the U.S. Army, the Air Force and the Office of Naval Research. But many of his charges are egregiously hyperbolic, as when he suggests that Cornel West is a "segregationist" because he bought a home in a largely Caucasian suburb. Schweizer clearly knows the limitations of his argument, since he backpedals from many of his most damning statements in his closing remarks. For all its revelations, in the end, this volume reads less like a critique of liberal philosophy than a catalogue of ammunition for ad hominem bloggers.

Schweizer says that Michael Moore and Al Franken support affirmative action yet they employ almost exclusively white people. Out of the 134 people who worked on Moore's films and TV productions, only two were black (and one white person majored in African-American studies). Out of Franken's 112 employees, only one was not white.

Michael Moore says it is racist to live in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly white yet Moore lives in Central Lake, Michigan, where not one of the 2551 residents is black.

Ralph Nader denounces multi-nationals who overwhelmingly use nonunion labor yet most of his investments are in multinationals who overwhelmingly use nonunion labor.

Ted Kennedy supports a 49% inheritance tax yet he employs numerous overseas trusts to avoid paying such taxes. Over the generations, the Kennedy's have transferred $300 million and paid $132,000 in tax, a rate of .004%.

George Soros, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky favor stiff inheritance taxes but employ trusts so they can pass on their wealth to their children tax-free.

Liberal Fox TV host Allan Colmes says it is difficult for liberals to be hypocrites because they are not judgmental.

All this talk about hypocrisy makes me uncomfortable and I don't like it.

Peter Schweizer:

When [former speaker of the House of Representatives] Tom DeLay engages in behavior that raises ethical questions, Republicans step on him and say this is wrong and cut him off. When was the last time you heard anybody on the liberal-left apologize for anything? Even Bill Clinton's apology was kind of an apology.

Young people are looking for something genuine. If word gets out about Michael Moore [investing in] Halliburton [which he's strongly criticized}... Moore is the only [one of the eleven subjects] who's commented on the book. 'Some crazy person says I've invested in Halliburton, I've never invested in Halliburton.' [Moore] has stopped saying that because I challenged him in Front Page Magazine. Are you saying that these documents are not accurate?

There are people who are trying to live the liberal-left way and sacrifice for it and they're going to be angry when they find out what their leaders are doing.

Schweizer says his next logical step is to do a documentary on these themes.

It would be a lot of fun. You could put someone to work in one of the Nancy Pelosi restaurants who tries to organize the employees. You could put out a fake book of Michael Moore stock tips -- 'Picking Stocks With Mike.' You could do a fake book with a picture of Ted Kennedy called 'Tax Tips With Ted.'

...Noam Chomsky spoke in Pakistan circa 2002. He was asked by a reporter, 'How do you have the courage to say the things that you say?' Chomsky replied, 'It's very easy for me to say what I say. If someone in Pakistan said this, they'd be thrown in jail. But I can say it because I have an American passport.'

Some of them know better. They know that the United States provides freedom.

The liberal-left has tried to change our notion of morality. It used to be that morality was a matter of how you conduct yourself. Starting with the Clintons, the liberal-left has said [implicitly] it doesn't matter how you conduct yourself, it matters that you believe in the right causes. It doesn't matter how you treat women. It matters that you are pro-abortion.

I walk Cathy back to our vehicles. The sun shines.

"Aren't you hot?" she asks me.

"Nope. I'm a cool cucumber."

We hug and kiss goodbye.