John Fund, Hypocrite.
September 6, 2001 1:18 PM   Subscribe

John Fund, Hypocrite. The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial writer and major critic of Bill Clinton, more recently Gary Condit, has been accused of some very "bad" things...like impregnating his former lover's daughter and approving of her decision to have an abortion. We've even got tapes!
posted by BoatMeme (22 comments total)
 
By the way, you can actually HEAR the recordings on the first link. The second link is just the transcript.

I feel a little twinge of guilt over the voyeuristic thrill I got from the recording. Just a little...
posted by BoatMeme at 1:34 PM on September 6, 2001


I'd been thinking of posting this for a few days- the always, uh, energetic MediaWhoresOnline.com has been touting this story heavily, as well it should. I'm always pleased to see those in the media and punditocracy who crown themselves the self-appointed arbiters of all things moral and intellectual get their just comeuppance. Now if they can only find that fat bastard Michael Kelly in some hypocritical web...

Besides, that John Fund always looked really evil- had one of those children's birthday party clown/pedophile things going on. That, or he looked like an over the hill Troll doll, sans pastel-colored 'fro...
posted by hincandenza at 1:36 PM on September 6, 2001



And this year's Kollossal Karmic Come-Uppance Award goes (quite rightfully) to Mr. John (are we having) Fund (yet?).

(former honorees (and I do mean honor): Jim Baker, the Honorable Henry Hyde...I could go on, but you get the point)

May he roast over a slow open-pit media barbecue until his career is but a cinder of its once and righteous self...

Can't you just picture the grin on good-old Bill Clinton's face?
posted by BentPenguin at 1:56 PM on September 6, 2001


I just went and read several of Fund's editorials on Condit, and now I'm confused. It's not as if this guy was simply saying "Condit had an affair, let's throw some mud around and dirty his image up."

Rather, we have:

"But it's clear he has abused the public trust in the course of a criminal investigation by withholding evidence and allowing himself to be compromised in ways that are far more serious than having a discreet affair."

I haven't read his Clinton editorials yet. Am I going to find more of the same? It seems like the guy is saying "Affairs, bad, but not really an issue. Covering up evidence and/or obstructing justice, inexcusable for a public official."

I haven't located an abortion editorial by him yet. Does anyone even know his position on that issue?

Is this "hypocrite" nonsense just mindless conservative-bashing? Or is there a point here? In what way was he a hypocrite?
posted by marknau at 2:19 PM on September 6, 2001


"I never told you I was a strict right to lifer. I have respect for life and I also make judgment calls and I also have variations on that theme." -- Fund, pro-choice when it comes to aborting his own fun babies, pro-life when it comes to yours
posted by rcade at 2:25 PM on September 6, 2001


I dunno. Unless I am missing something, all we have is a tape made by someone who clearly has some problems with Fund. That person presumably knew she was being taped as she talked to Fund, and therefore could tailor what she said to put him in the worst possible light. She could also hand-pick which conversation to release on the web.

I know that if my wife wanted to make me look like a far worse person than I am, she could easily hand-pick 15 minutes of some fight we had over the years. And if she decided to tape the fight beforehand, she could *really* make me look bad by being careful about what she said.

Not that I like Fund.
posted by Mid at 2:32 PM on September 6, 2001


I see that the touted mediawhoresonline.com lists Paul Begala and Geraldo Rivera on their "real journalists" list while somehow putting every right-of-center figure on their "whores" list.

I am still laughing.

Does anyone have a reasoned case here? Despite rcade's quote, I see nothing there that is necessarily inconsistent with Fund's views. I have yet to find a Fund editorial on abortion, so for all I know that is a perfect summary of his actual views.

Does anyone require facts before having an opinion, or is that passe?
posted by marknau at 2:35 PM on September 6, 2001


If anything, it shows how "the teachers of morality speak like angels but live like men." Fund's messy life doesn't make me disagree with his opinions any more than I already did.

I see that the touted mediawhoresonline.com lists Paul Begala and Geraldo Rivera on their "real journalists" list while somehow putting every right-of-center figure on their "whores" list.

And Christopher Hitchens. And Chris Matthews. And George Stephanopolous. And Maureen Dowd. It's equal-opportunity sniping, marknau. (Even if you take Hitchens' line that MWO is run by Clinton apologists.) Doesn't such selective reading count as "opinion first, facts later?"
posted by holgate at 2:41 PM on September 6, 2001


holgate: "Every member A is a member of B" is not "Every member of B is a member of A."

I said the first thing. You refuted the latter.

Basic logic, here.
posted by marknau at 2:56 PM on September 6, 2001


If you're going to be Bertrand Russell for the evening, marknau, then you'll have to do better at defining your terms first time up, I'm afraid.
posted by holgate at 3:04 PM on September 6, 2001


I haven't read through the transcript and the audio link is not working for me. I haven't made up my mind about this, but as a conservative, I see nothing wrong with exposing hypocrites. There's a lot of good guys out there and they get a bad rap by being put in the same category as liars, cheeters, etc.

Remember when Larry Flynt found negative personal information about some "conservative" politicians around the time of Clinton's impeachment? I wish he had disclosed that information.

If a politician can't be honest with his wife, he sure as hell won't be honest with me.
posted by Witold at 3:07 PM on September 6, 2001


If a politician can't be honest with his wife, he sure as hell won't be honest with me.

That's a rotten argument, hacked out on MeFi many many times, with many examples.

marknau: apologies for snarkiness. I probably agree with you that this is a non-story -- for entirely different reasons to yours. It's all hackery, it's all bollocks. Really, to expect that any high-profile journo has a private life that doesn't include some element of booze, sex and drugs is not to know about journalists. It shouldn't matter, if readers are mature enough to appreciate that lives are generally messy.
posted by holgate at 3:14 PM on September 6, 2001


If a politician can't be honest with his wife, he sure as hell won't be honest with me.

if he was honest, he wouldn't be a politician. basic logic, i think someone above said.
posted by quonsar at 3:17 PM on September 6, 2001


Is that lives in general or the lives of journalists, holgate? Not sure if they're so much messy as outright absurdist, in any case.
posted by raysmj at 3:23 PM on September 6, 2001


I quite liked the Bertrand Russell line. But back on topic...

I think holgate's comments about journalists apply to politicians as well, frankly. When it comes right down to it, I don't really draw any connection between personal moral failings and one's value as a politician. So long as those failings remain personal, so be it.

The idea that politicians are ever honest except as part of a calculated "honesty image" seems naive to me. Perhaps I'm too cynical.
posted by marknau at 3:24 PM on September 6, 2001


Marknau: yes. And quonsar, Fund is a journalist, a political pundit, not a politician per se.
posted by raysmj at 3:27 PM on September 6, 2001


Lives in general are messy, raysmj; journalists' lives, in particular, often come across as attempts to perfect that messiness. At least, all the journalists I know seem intent on such a career path.
posted by holgate at 4:04 PM on September 6, 2001


holgate: It's all hackery, it's all bollocks. ... It shouldn't matter, if readers are mature enough to appreciate that lives are generally messy.

I agree completely- excepting that at a certain point, to take the high road while those around you play dirty (sorry for the mixed metaphor) isn't noble, it's a tactical blunder. Folks like Fund make their living in part from ad hominem attacks and being self-appointed morality tsars- be they politicians or the pundit class- and their comeuppance isn't so much pointing out human foibles as pointing out hypocrisy.

For example, holgate, if it turned out you had had an affair and encouraged your secret paramour to get an abortion, that would hardly be newsworthy even in the MeFi community (damn surprising, but not newsworthy) and calling you on it would just be mean spirited- you're a pretty open-minded guy, and I don't recall you condemning anyone else for having affairs or getting abortions. However, if you spent your days ranting on MeFi about decaying morals, staking out your pro-life positions, and deriding the low character of others who have affairs then lie about it- well, you'd deserve to get raked over the coals. In a real-world situation, I recall when you criticized davidmsc for his generally anti-government, anti-labor rights viewpoints when he revealed that he was in fact getting his paychecks from the government as part of the USAF. Not "dishing it out" to guys like Fund simply because you don't think the principle of personal attacks is good politics or good journalism is similar to going into a street fight and declaring that you're a pacifist- the drunken lout about to kick yer ass won't much care that you don't believe in violence. Might as well hold these folk's feet to the fire that they started.

On the flip side, attacking his positions on political and social issues simply because he can't live by them himself is the definition of ad hominem attacks- his own failings as a person don't make his beliefs less wrong. However, it raises the question of how much he truly believes what he says- since he doesn't live by those beliefs- and whether he simply says what he says because it's a way to make money. This is an indictment that also applies to much of the most visible members of the press corp, I suppose...
posted by hincandenza at 4:14 PM on September 6, 2001



If I am a practicing potato(e), and much of my livelihood and stature derives from my strident pulpiting of an anti-potato(e) theology, I should expect some measure of resentment when the coincidence of these two facts is discovered.
posted by Opus Dark at 5:08 PM on September 6, 2001


Funny thing is, when I hear someone "stridently pulpiting anti-potato(e) theology", I'm oft inclined to suspect they are either a practicing potato(e) (in a less well lit room than the kitchen, of course) or wishing they were.
posted by spandex at 6:12 PM on September 6, 2001


spandex:

Really. Self-flagellating schizoid apologists. Sybil B. Good and Sybil B. Bad.

It is a requirement of successful religions that no one can be, by their standards, righteous. May I suggest that this tenet has been adequately proven, and that further exotic demonstrations by the clergy are not really necessary?
posted by Opus Dark at 7:20 PM on September 6, 2001


hincandenza: point taken. I think my take on it actually allows me to defend myself from a somewhat detached perspective -- which is no good in a street-fight, but I was never much of a fighter anyway.

My point being that "morality tsars", as you neatly describe them, tend to trip over their own marmoreal statements on a pretty regular basis, and that actually strengthens the arguments of those who remember Imlac's thoughts on the subject. The resentment comes from knowing that such strident absolutism is usually built on shaky foundations, particularly when it comes from professions -- journalism and poltics -- in which success derives from maintaining a careful hypocrisy. We wouldn't want it any other way.

I take it as a cautionary tale for anyone who wants to take Fund's place. I think, also, that Bill Fleckenstein's comments on the economy apply here: "For those who 'get it,' no explanation is necessary. For those who don't . . . no explanation will suffice."
posted by holgate at 4:20 AM on September 7, 2001


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