#1049 Dishonest Mistake

Every now and then, someone screws up. I know I do often enough. But when they do it’s usually not a matter of malice. It’s just an honest mistake. It happens out of ignorance or ineptitude but rarely was there immoral intent.
These small errors we call honest mistakes. I suppose to distinguish them from dishonest mistakes. Or possibly lying mistakes.
Like the one I heard the other day. You may remember William Bennett, the corpulent uber-conservative who has gone in and out of the rightwing spotlight. He was the drug czar for Reagan. He once published a book on the fading virtues and morals of American society in which he then told us the morals we need to honor.
One of the virtues he extolled was self-control. He had no patience with people who lamented afterwards, “Oh, if only I had stopped myself...” Shortly after, he was revealed to have a gambling addiction.
Oops.
That briefly labeled him with the scarlet H of Hypocrite.
Recently Mr. Bennett was on a Fox talk show and he was talking about Obama’s response to the protests in Iran. He said Obama needed to show toughness, show the “…clenched fist of the Statue of Liberty.”
Here’s the funny thing. When I heard this, I instantly conjured up a mental image of the Statue of Liberty, and in that image I visualized/remembered her with a raised clenched fist ala the Black Power protest movement of the sixties.
But the Statue of Liberty has no such fist. As she is welcoming the tired poor huddled masses to our shores, she is holding high the torch of freedom. Not the fist of freedom.
What is insidious about the metaphorical image Bennett chose to use is that either he’s stupid or he knows exactly what the Statue of Liberty looks like and yet thought he could deceive his audience by drawing the false image in their minds.
Now that is the definition of a dishonest mistake.
So here’s a suggestion from my book of virtues. Doctors have to take the Hippocratic Oath. Politicians and Pundits should take the Hypocritic Oath.
Especially when they make a name for themselves as critics.
America, ya gotta love it.