the 941

It’s always important to do what you think is right. Unless you can predict that doing what you think is wrong will bring about an event that is more right than your initial wrong was wrong. And, uh, consult a psychologist beforehand. A team of psychologists, and a panel of ethical philosophers.

Let me start over.

I cringe whenever someone’s personal life is brought into the political arena. I don’t think Obama’s pastor, Clinton’s blow job, or George Bush’s history with alcoholism/cocaine should have anything to do with their electability. My feelings on the subject are expressed nicely by Noam Chomsky:

 ”If we had a free market of the kind economists discuss, in which informed consumers make rational choices, General Motors would post on television the characteristics of the cars they’re selling. They don’t do that. What they do is try to create illusions, using complicated graphics, a famous actress driving up to heaven, or something like that. The point is to delude and marginalize the public, so that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices. When you market candidates, it’s the same thing - keep away from the issues, that’s too dangerous because the public doesn’t agree with you on the issues. So what you have is character, trivialities, personal issues - somebody’s pastor says something, Clinton made a mistake when she talked about Bosnia.”

So part of me wants to spraypaint “Who cares?” over every headline about Bristol Palin’s extramarital pregnancy. That’s what I think is right. Sure, it exposes some hypocrisy when it comes to ultra-conservative issues, but we should hope Sarah Palin doesn’t have absolute control over her daughter. Besides, we’re not electing kings or gods, idols of perfection who will bring us into the next decade like Jason leading the Argonauts. We’re hiring people to do the things we asked of them on election day — servants, basically. If I run an Apple store and I hire someone to sell Apple computers, I don’t care if she uses a PC at home as long as she knows her stuff.

So I don’t think the pregnancy should matter. But, I do want McCain to lose, and I know that the (specious and irrelevant) appearance of hypocrisy could alienate conservative voters. So when I see those headlines, I feel that they’re wrong but I still want them to succeed in their missions. It’s like hiring brutal mercenaries to help you overthrow a brutal tyrant. Or stealing from the rich to help the poor. Or pulling out a terrorist’s fingernails. No wait, I’m actually against that. Goddamn, ethics are hard.

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