A big thank you to Glenn for pointing out this gem of a column in the Guardian, regarding the hypocrisy of the hip. You absolutely must read the whole thing; that is an order. It’s impossible to excerpt this without violating all sorts of “fair use” restrictions, but I’ll try:
But unenlightened, repressed people have an excuse for being hypocrites – that they are unenlightened and repressed, and so presumably don’t know any better. No, it’s the hipocrites who fascinate and repel me; the enlightened, unrepressed, liberal thinkers whose deepest governing belief would appear to be “Do what I say, not what I do”, and who seem to believe that the rest of us are too thick to notice the yawning credibility gap opening up between their feet as they pontificate. …
You expect Ms Dynamite and Justin Timberlake to mouth off against American war in Iraq/US cultural imperialism just before signing massive deals with Pepsi and McDonald’s. You expect Catherine Zeta-Jones to say stuff like, “I find divorces repulsive. I grew up in a small, strictly Catholic fishing village on the coast of Wales. The people there have a different attitude to life than those in Hollywood – people stick together” – having left said Eden at 15 in order to fulfil a destiny that included going to Hollywood and marrying a divorced ex-sex addict. Was his divorce repulsive? Or just everyone else’s?
If that’s not enough to make you read this column, how about this … the next target is Sean Penn.
Aha. Made you look.
Thanks, Glenn. Now if you’d just mention me, just once, dammit … Good night, everyone.