9 thoughts on “What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing ‘family values’ merchant these days?”

  1. I liked:

    we all have family members with issues, although mine tend to leave their kids at home when they go out to commit burglaries to support their drug habits.

  2. Conservatives have always been about “do as I say, not as I do.” They like to make the rules, but they truly believe, on a deep, fundamental level, that they are exempt from them.

    Self-serving hypocrisy: One of the many reasons I’m not a conservative.

  4. Dozens and dozens and dozens. Starting with most of my family members, who are Texas oilmen. Hopefully ending with my husband, whose Do As I Say Not As I Do bullshit almost ended our relationship before it even had a chance to begin.

  5. (I think he’s still actually a conservative, but more fiscal than social these days. He calls me a liberal redneck. I think we’re both sort of meeting in the middle, although I was always much closer to the center than he was.)

  6. That brings up an interesting question, ie.:

    What should President Obama tell his beautiful daughters about smoking?

    a: Nothing.

    b: It’s OK to smoke.

    c: It’s NOT OK to smoke.

    Based on his article I suspect Taibbi’s answer would be a.

    What is your’s?

  7. What a strange question.

    I don’t really have an opinion. It would never occur to me to tell a smart, responsible, insightful, successful adult how he should parent his children.

    I gave my son the facts — that smoking is stinky, expensive, horribly addictive, hard on one’s health, and too often, deadly — that loads of girls wouldn’t want to kiss him if he tasted like an ashtray — that I wished on a daily basis I had never started.

    He’s 27 now and has never smoked. I have no idea whether or not that’s down to anything I said. I’m just glad he’s a non-smoker.

    (And I finally did quit, but I still wish I’d never started.)

  8. Only in Ephraim’s mind could anything that you wrote above “bring up” that question, Elise.

    President Obama’s interactions with his daughters regarding smoking will be their private business. What he says to them will be between them, and I predict that he won’t use the conversations for political capital or to start some hypocritical “Just say no to smoking” campaign. And he won’t lie about it to them or us, or pretend that he never smoked himself, and we won’t eventually find out that he in fact let his daughters smoke and pretended he didn’t know.

    Only a complete idiot would think that because Taibbi suggested we might not want to use our children as pawns in political games, we shouldn’t talk to our children about anything difficult.

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