Eliot Spitzer and Barak Obama: Profiles in Hypocrisy

The recent revelations about the private life of ex-governor Eliot Spitzer and the recent revelations about the convictions of Barak Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have a common denominator: hypocrisy.

The whole Eliot Spitzer affair (no pun intended) is disappointing on several fronts. First, his professional reputation was made, among other things, by aggressively going after those involved in prostitution. To find out that he himself was involved in prostitution at that very time, is the height of hypocrisy. The public has a reasonable expectation that law enforcement officials who hold others to the law are doing so themselves. Spitzer has helped create the illusion that strong “law and order” type prosecutors are actually living outside the law themselves. A similar thing happens when some pastor who preaches strongly about sexual morality is himself a closet homosexual or serial adulterer. These kinds of events create the impression that no one really lives a moral life. It is an unusual application of the old rabbinic hermeneutical rubric that reasons from the harder case to the easier: “if it is not so in this case (and it should be), how much more is it not so in this case (where the expectation is not so high).” If even a prominent prosecutor, who more than the average person should be living a law abiding, moral life, does not, then how much more so should we expect that the average person does not live a law abiding, moral life.

Second, the Spitzer affair is painful on the personal front. Think of the shame that he has brought down upon his precious wife, a kind-hearted, Baptist, North Carolinian who has spent significant resources contributing to charity and teaching her daughters the importance of thinking of others. Did his wife really not know about his sexual escapades? If she didn’t know, she looks naïve and gullible; if she did know, she is a willing participant in the charade. What a sad situation to put one’s loved one in. Think of the shame he has brought upon his daughters, who will now forever be known as the daughter of a disgraced governor. Think of his wider family, his friends, his associates who believed in him and in what he was trying to do. These are all casualties of flawed moral decisions.

Finally, the Spitzer affair is saddening when you consider the individual, the man Eliot Spitzer. What was he thinking? What drives a man to engage in such reckless, self-destructive behavior? Sex? I suspect it was that, but also much more. There is something deep within, something deeply wrong, that drives a person to risk so much for so little. A bright future – possibly the first Jewish president, I heard one commentator say – has vanished amid the jokes of late night talk show hosts.

The whole Spitzer affair can be summarized in one word: hypocrisy.

How does all this bring us to the Obama / Wright issue? Because, at its core, the problem is the same: hypocrisy.

Obama has cast himself as a person who transcends race. Being half-white/half-black himself, he certainly appears to be uniquely positioned to give expression to the best hopes and dreams of our nation, that people of all racial groups can settle and live here together and lead productive, prosperous lives. Barak has tapped into that dream, that hope, the deeply held conviction that our country is profoundly good. Here we do not find a Jesse Jackson like candidate, who is angry, and so race conscious. Here we find someone who appeals to both black and white people of all socio-economic and political perspectives. Barak portrays an America we like.

The recent revelations about the theology, the racial perspective, and the political convictions of Barak’s pastor have destroyed all those hopes and dreams. Some have attempted to pass this off as something inconsequential, that Barak doesn’t really hold to every conviction of his pastor. I can understand that, and at first I was inclined to believe it. However, much more has come to light since the story broke. I didn’t know that Barak had attended this particular church for 20 years; I didn’t know that Wright did Barak and Michelle’s wedding; I didn’t know that Wright baptized the Obama’s daughters; I didn’t know that the title of one of Barak’s books came from a Wright sermon; I didn’t know that Barak considers Wright a mentor. When all this information came out, I was deeply discouraged. Barak’s association with Wright is clearly neither distant nor minimal. When we heard the excerpts from Wright’s sermons, we began to realize that our picture of Obama was untrue. Barak is an angry man. His wife is angry. His pastor is angry. The racial reconciliation that we thought Obama embodied was a charade. Just as with Eliot Spitzer, we can ask this: if genuine racial reconciliation has not taken place in this case (and we thought it had), how much more should we not expect it in other cases. Obama is a hypocrite.