Living in an Perfectly Hypocritical World

Do you believe what I'm saying now or what I said 8 years ago?

If only Cheney had looked sorrowfully into the camera and said, "it's a private matter between Hillary... I mean, Harry and me. I have certainly caused pain in my marri... errrr... friendship with Hilla.... ahhh... Harry. But if Harry has forgiven me, I think the country should just move on. This is not a public matter. It's a matter between me and Hill...(cough) arry, that is.

You know, Brit, every time a President has sex with an intern in the Oval Office or a VP shoots his friend, I think the public realizes that these are purely private matters."

I realize that there isn't perfect symmetry here. Cheney's shooting incident did not disgrace the office he holds and was likely more akin to putting Gerald Ford behind the wheel of a golf cart. And ... at least not yet... Cheney hasn't committed perjury in an attempt to hide his private act.

But the reaction of the left and right is perfectly hypocritical. Republicans, who rightly saw Clinton's disgraceful indulgence with a government employee as a public act, couldn't run to a microphone fast enough to declare disingenously that the Vice President's actions were "private".

Not to be outmaneuvered in the Beltway parlor game of Hypocrisy, former Clinton apologists (the most hypocritical of all being Lady Hillary) stepped to the podium and declared dismay at the Vice President's failure to make this matter public. (In fact, he did... just in an amateurish fashion, which rightly drew criticism).

To their credit, these same Republicans and Democrats gathered on the Capitol steps on Thursday to sing A Day at the Fair's "Who You Guna Believe, Me or Your Lying Eyes".