You talk about all the talk and no really answers.... by talking about questions but still provide no answers.  Its like listening to someone describe a circle

This is fucking key! They portray a sensible opposition without a real solution.

If HRC had connected any policy change to a reconsideration or opportunity to address negative consequences of the Clinton administration she'd be president.

"Don't make me reference the Matt Bors comic."

Please do an episode on animal rights/veganism

I always saw that sort of Daily Show/South Park worldview as being nostalgic for the space between 1991 to 2001 when politics meant nothing and everybody was fully engaged with trying to make money off the stock market or the short-lived New Economy. THAT was the "Sanity" Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert wanted to bring back, even though that worldview was fragile and being subverted by the No Fly Zones we ran over Saddam's Iraq and the short war with Serbia at the end of the decade.

Trump says he opposed the war in Iraq, but in fact said he supported it in an obscure interview in 2004. McCain was for the tax cuts before he was against them. Republicans say they’re Christians, yet support a philandering liar. Hypocrisy takedowns – which reached peak popularity during the heyday of The Daily Show – have been the bread and butter of liberal discourse for years.

Gawker founder Nick Denton famously said that “Hypocrisy was the only modern sin”––doctrine-driven ideologies had been replaced by the nihilistic ersatz ideology of not contradicting oneself. Consistency, even in the service of nothing and in defense of power, was the highest moral achievement.

But as outright lying and contradiction were not only ignored but embraced by Trumpism, this worldview began to lose any remaining purchase. And as the emptiness of this approach grew more stark, a new generation of politically engaged people sought out traditional ideologies based on first principles, on the left this broadly manifested as a resurgence of socialism, which offered an alternative to the self-contained cult of self-satisfaction.

On today's episode, we discuss the limits of hypocrisy-as-critique, when it can still be useful and why never contradicting oneself is often evidence more of cowardice than principle.    

Our guest is Roqayah Chamseddine.

Episode 53: The Increasingly Dull Edge of 'Hypocrisy' Takedowns

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

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