I recall riding in cars in the 1970's with my step-dad behind the wheel. In traffic, he would holler and gesture and 'talk a blue streak' (mom-speak) about other drivers and pedestrians. At home, he would occasionally shout at TV newscasters. In person, however, he was always polite...to a fault.
Who was my step-dad?
A reactionary, idiotic, rude, old man; intelligent enough to know when to filter himself? Or was he a courteous, open-minded, thoughtful person who—when safely ensconced on the other-side of a protective barrier—ranted at the occasional egregiously-behaved fool or jester? I don't know if the answer is important. I suspect it's not. But the question is.
Immediate family were the only witnesses to his bursts of vitriol. I seriously doubt he would ever have defined himself using negative verbiage of any stripe (even the concept of
defining himself would have been foreign to him). I think of all the co-workers, fellow congregants, neighbors and extended family members who thought they knew him but who never witnessed him shout, "Pick a fuckin lane you miserable cunt!" or "They otta throw all those longhair-draft-dodgein-fags in the slammer!"
If you subscribe to the belief that people '
reveal their true nature' in times when their guard is down...my step-dad was Archie Bunker wearing a Jimmy Carter mask. When I consider his behavior in the context of how it affected who I grew up to be, I focus on the hypocrisy. His lifelong struggle to keep internal-Archie mute and fabricate the external-Jimmy persona must have been immensely difficult; as difficult as a homosexual who (in 1966 America) decided at the age of thirty-nine to forevermore deny his innate attraction and marry an aging divorcée with two grade-school children before moving his ready-made family half-way across the country (this unrelated suspicion I have about my step-dad is based on very few facts; I merely include it here to suggest there were possible other hidden layers to "who he really was").
Back to hypocrisy. I suspect it's a much more valuable discriminator than many people realize. How often do you attempt to measure someone's normally hidden hypocrisy? It's one of, if not THE primary tool I use to decide if someone is a trusted friend or merely an acquaintance.
Here is a quote from one of the most un-hypocritical people I've ever known; I hope he remains my good friend for a long time to come: "If I'd been friends with OJ Simpson, and, back in 1994, I went to talk to him and he said to me, '
Dude, I just snapped when I saw 'em together.' Then I'd have just said, '
That's cool, let's go play golf.' But if he was all, '
Hey, I hope they catch who really did it.' Then I wouldn't have been able to stay friends with him."
Chris's blog post
Don't call me a "liberal" begins with this excerpt (above-right) of commenters on a Weather.com article about the current drought in Texas. As is often the case, give a hypocrite a protective barrier (the epitome of web-commenting) and they let their inner Archie Bunker out.
I learned from my step-dad what I didn't want to be. Who you read here is who you talk to on the phone is who you meet in person. Liberal?..ok. Hypocrite?..never.
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