Nobody booed you, God. Stop listening to Hannity…
Remember a year ago, during the Republican presidential primary debates, when unruly Republican boors in the various audiences , in sequence, cheered an accounting of the convicted murderers put to death by the Texas penal system, shouted “Yeah!” to Wolf Blitzer’s questioning whether uninsured Americans should just be allowed to die without medical care, and jeered a videotaped soldier who declared himself as gay before asking if the candidates would support the recent elimination of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” as military policy? Neither did I, until I started researching this post. Boy, the pundits and the Democrats had a great time with those incidents, attributing the nasty attitudes of a few jerks to the entire party and the candidates themselves. The candidates, including Mitt Romney, didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory either, as none of them had the wit, courage or principles—any one of the three might have sufficed—to tell the jeering, cheering and blood-thirsty audience members that they were a disgrace to the party.
As anyone who thought about it could have predicted, now the shoe is on the other foot, and the Golden Rule has come full circle. Now it is Democratic jeerers who are objects of criticism, and they stand accused of booing not gays but God himself. Like the Republicans in 2011, the Democrats and their candidate, President Obama, are being painted by their adversaries as being one with the catcallers. I could be wrong, but I think this incident is rather more consequential than the GOP embarrassment in the primaries, if only because 1) it’s closer to the election and 2) many more people are paying attention now.
The Republicans, in the person of gonzo Florida Congressman Allen West, are even making the convention floor discord that accompanied the Democrats decision to return God and Jerusalem to the party platform into an attack ad-–a clever one, as dishonest and unfair ads go—saying that the Democrats “denied God” three times (neat tie-in to Peter and that crowing cock there). Meanwhile, the conservative media is tut-tutting that the Democrats—not just some Democrats, but “the Democrats”—booed God. That’s a lie, of course: it was obvious that the booing was in response to the dishonest tallying of the voice vote, in which an even split between “Yeas” and “Nays” was ruled a two-thirds majority for the former.
And now the ethics lessons:
1. If the partisan critics of the Republican booers in September 2011 had been fair, and not attributed the vocal actions of a few to the whole party and the candidate, they could justifiably complain about the current attacks without opening themselves to legitimate counter-claims of hypocrisy and a double standard. But they didn’t. “Golden Rule? What Golden Rule?”
Lesson for the Democrats: Following the Golden Rule sets ethical precedents that can benefit you in the long run.
2. If the GOP candidates, or at least one of them, Mitt Romney, had exhibited the courage and principle during the primaries to tell the boors and booers that they were an embarrassment to the party, the current incident would allow the Republicans to point to a parallel past event that showed its candidate in a good light. Now, however, it will be about 30 seconds before someone on MSNBC resurrects the video of Republican partisans showing vocal disapproval of gays, justice and mercy.
Lesson for the Republicans: In addition to being the ethical course, taking the high road puts you in a safer position to point out that someone else took the low one.
Lessons learned by either party:
None.
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Graphic: West Seattle Blog
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Excellent point.
Interesting how taking the high ground actually pays off even on the low ground in a not-very-long timeframe.
As anyone who thought about it could have predicted, now the show is on the other foot, and the Golden Rule has come full circle.
Nope. This isn’t the same shoe. The prior situations were some people booing a positive thing and cheering a negative thing, and those some people were taken as representative of the whole This situation is people booing X, but being attacked for booing Y.
While you have ethical ideas, this wasn’t an appropriate time to espouse them where you could put blame on both democrats and republicans.
Nope. Wrong. The shoe is “attributing attitudes to an entire party based on the controversial vocalizations of the few.” The fact that the offense was compounded in the case of the booing Democrats, with their vocal minority being used to hang the whole party by a misinterpretation of what they were booing about, is irrelevant to the Golden Rule point I made. Golden Rule: Would you want to be unfairly held accountable for the vocal views of others when you were uninvolved in the incident at issue? Answer: NO. But now the Democrats, who eagerly tarred the GOP candidates and the party with the outbursts of a few idiots, are getting the same thing based on their own minority’s jeers. The fact that the booers are misunderstood in this case is not germane to my point…though I made THAT point too.
I could cut it the other way, you know: at least the booing convention delegates really are official representatives of the Democratic party, unlike the audience members who were obnoxious in the GOP primaries. Hell, they could have been Democrats. By that measure, the Democrats were more unfair to the GOP. I’m not going there either. Both parties unfairly blamed the many for the few. That’s wrong, and the Golden Rule should have told the Dems not to do it, but they did. Touche to them.
And to you.
That would work, but only if you claim the republicans are attributing to the entire democratic party a dislike of kangaroo courts. You mentioned the lie in one line, and ignored it as part of the ethics calculus, even though it is the more important issue. Saying that all republicans are like a specific example is wrong, but saying that republicans include and tolerate a specific example is fine. There’s a fine point there, but it’s an important distinction. The willingness to flat out lie about what occurred is a much more troublesome issue.
It’s like you saw that someone jump a turnstile to commit murder, and you decided to point out when a cop jumped the turnstile as well. Yes, jumping the turnstile is not good, but that’s a side issue to what occurred here. The equivalence you made is wrong.
No, because I am very convinced that most of the pundits et. al. who are saying the Democrats “booed God” really believe it. They also believe that the Democrats were “denying God” by kicking him out of the platform, where it doesn’t belong. I must say, I thought God was being booed when I first saw the clip. I agree—fabricating the offense is materially different (the Democrats put the worst conceivable interpretation on some of the debate outbursts, if you’ll recall), but this is confirmation bias at work, not lies.
You just claimed that no matter how untrue something is, if people believe it, it’s fine to pass on. I’d say you added another unethical wrinkle on top: passing along damaging information without vetting it. After the initial storm, it should have been clear what happened. Putting out attacks ads at that point is clearly misrepresentation.
Also, which debate outbursts had the “worst conceivable interpretation” taken by democrats…where that interpretation was not accurate?
If people who circulate an interpretation believe it, it isn’t a lie. So it does harm—the truth does harm too. The issue is that both parties do the same thing to each other. If your category is “dubious claims that people shouldn’t believe, but do” like Biden’s outsourcing accusation, fine, focus on that. My category was “parties blaming the other party for the perceived opinions of a vocal few.” I made it crystal clear what the parallel in the booing situations were, and you keep moving the ball.
I think that it’s self-evident that voter ID is a requirement for fair elections and that claims that it’s race-baiting are cynical and dishonest—but you buy them. OK , you’re not lying, you’re just deluded. You ignore the fact that anyone who wants an ID can get one, cheaply, but still insist that it’s voter suppression. But I don’t think you’re lying. Neither is Sean Hannity. I don’t think Hannity does lie, actually. He’s just an idiot.
If people who circulate an interpretation believe it, it isn’t a lie.
Agreed, but still an ethical failing. And passing on falsehoods is very bad.
So it does harm—the truth does harm too.
You’re equivocating on the word harm. Truth does accurate harm. Falsehoods do inaccurate harm.
If your category is “dubious claims that people shouldn’t believe, but do” like Biden’s outsourcing accusation, fine, focus on that. My category was “parties blaming the other party for the perceived opinions of a vocal few.”
And, my claim is that your category was silly, like talking about jumping a turnstile when they committed a murder. You can talk about what you like, of course, but picking out that issue here, and jumping to the other side did it too, is just weird.
I think that it’s self-evident that voter ID is a requirement for fair elections and that claims that it’s race-baiting are cynical and dishonest—but you buy them. OK , you’re not lying, you’re just deluded. You ignore the fact that anyone who wants an ID can get one, cheaply, but still insist that it’s voter suppression. But I don’t think you’re lying.
You just misrepresented the facts. It doesn’t matter what you actually believe, you still passed on falsehoods and you have the ethical duty to not do that.