Stupid Politician Tricks: The Moral Untouchability Card

Seems things are a bit slow this week, which is good.  When things get hot and heavy in Washington, you know something bad is about to happen.  So I’ll take my slow while I can get it.

So instead of some slow current events in politics, how about a short series on Stupid Politician Tricks?  Is it about stupid politicians playing tricks, or politicians playing stupid tricks?  Take your pick, because you’d be right either way.

In fact, I’ll even start yesterday with The Short and Sweet of Demagoguery.  But today, let’s discuss something I like to call the “Moral Untouchability Card”.

Moral Untouchability Cards are played like this:

You can’t criticize a politician/activist/useful idiot du jour  because they did/suffered/are…fill in the blank with something most people wouldn’t consider attacking.

At least, wouldn’t consider attacking unless they were doing something monumentally stupid, inflammatory, or bad.  For example, Jack Murtha plays his Moral Untouchability Card in the video below.  Basically, it’s “You can’t call me on the fact I slandered the Haditha Marines because I served as one.”

There’s no reason to care, because there’s no substance to the Moral Untouchability Card.  It’s just another way to deflect or silence criticism against actions or positions that deserve criticism.  And in Washington, there are plenty of deserving people.

However, you still might be a bit squeamish about it, so here’s how to have your cake and eat it too.

1. The military, which has the undeserved misfortune of being used for most of the Moral Untouchability Cards I’ve ever seen or heard played, deserves all of the respect it gets.
2. However, once an individual becomes a politician, all bets are off.  So many of them have sold out to the power lust that it’s perfectly sensible to hold them in doubt, regardless of their past, until they prove that they’re worth following.
3. If an individual proves by their votes or actions that they are nothing more than a politician now, that’s it.  What they were before should not be heeded, and ignored if played as a Moral Untouchability Card.
4. The entities behind which they are hiding, like the military, are not faulted because they deserve none.  The individual who is at fault simply doesn’t get to steal their credibility to use as a Moral Untouchability Card.

You may have understood the concept in the past, but lacked a name to call it.  If this is you, feel free to use the Moral Untouchability Card as your description of choice.  The more Stupid Politician Tricks we can take from the politicians, the less damage they can do.

Filed under: Commentary and Opinion on September 2nd, 2009 2 Comments

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