Hypocrisy
NBC, who has advocated gun control in the past to the point of misleading its viewers, hired armed guards to protect their reporters:
NBC News has sent private security personnel to the increasingly dicey Gulf Coast region to help keep its employees safe while covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The private security officers, usually former soldiers or police, are licensed to carry firearms and are trained to keep the situation under control so that journalists can do their jobs safely. That’s becoming increasingly difficult in New Orleans and in Gulfport, Miss., where there aren’t enough police or National Guardsmen to keep the streets safe.
Lame. I wonder if those dudes are carrying assault weapons?
September 8th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
I don’t see how that’s hypocrisy unless NBC has opposed your right to hire a private, licensed and trained armed guard. Unless you’re trying to stake out a “if you don’t support guns for everyone, you support guns for no one” false dichotomy, that is.
September 8th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Well, since they went on and on about guns then hired guys with guns, well, you figure it out.
September 8th, 2005 at 9:35 pm
NBC is against the right for you to become your own private, trained, and armed 24 hour bodyguard.
September 8th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Tom: come on, dude. You’re saying “It’s OK for NBC to advocate gun control for ordinary peope that prevents them from protecting themselves and their families, but it’s also OK for NBC to hire expensive personal bodyguards to use guns to protect those oh-so-important NBC employees.” That’s just not defensible. It’s like saying the first amendment protection for free speech doesn’t apply to bloggers, but does apply to the big three news networks – “freedom of the press belongs to he who owns the press.”
September 9th, 2005 at 9:20 am
[…] So, the rich, famous, and probably NBC are exempted merely because they are the elite. […]
September 9th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Sorry, but you’re just not seeing it clearly. If NBC were arming its reporters rather than providing armed guards for its reporters, you’d have a point; but that’s not what’s happening. Nobody but the looniest of loony gun control advocates claims that we should outlaw arming law enforcement and licensed professional security guards, and unless you can prove to me otherwise, NBC hasn’t advocated for this, either.
It’s nothing at all like your free speech example, because again, they’re not reserving for themselves any privilege that they’d prohibit to someone else. They’re hiring professional armed guards, and to my knowledge, they have never disparaged your right to also hire professional armed guards.
Now I’m not saying that I agree with their position on gun control; I don’t know what it is, but I’m almost certain I won’t like it. But that’s not even close to the same thing as hypocrisy, which means doing something you claim nobody should be allowed to do.
September 9th, 2005 at 12:11 pm
They advocate protection for those who can afford it. That’s hypocritical.
September 9th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
Assholish, maybe; hypocritical, no. A hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another. Even if NBC actually explicitly advocated for “protection for those who can afford it,” that wouldn’t be hypocritical as long as they acted in accordance with their advocacy.
And unless you’re suggesting a government initiative to provide free guns and ammo to anyone who wants them, you’re advocating protection for those who can afford it, too. It’s just that your “afford it” bar is lower than theirs.
September 9th, 2005 at 3:35 pm
I think you’re defining hypocrisy too narrowly. Clever hypocrites can always craft some B.S. theory to explain why their actions technically don’t violate the rules they seek to impose on the rest of us. There simply is no principled reason why it should generally be OK to farm out armed self-defense if it’s not OK to do it yourself.
September 9th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
I guess there goes the rationale for a police force or standing army, eh? 🙂 (And before you jump on it, I know, I know, there’s a difference between defending the city/country and personal defense. It’s a joke. Cope.)
That said, I think you’re mistaken here: the argument could be made that professionals can be regulated, and minimum training requirements imposed, and registrations required, that simply cannot be done (at least in the current political environment) at the personal level. If NBC’s stance is that guns should only be in the hands of well-trained professionals, there’s nothing about them hiring well-trained professionals that contradicts this stance.
So based on this, I think you’re defining hypocrisy too broadly, and I contend that it still doesn’t apply. NBC’s stance may stink to high hell, but as far as I can see, it’s not hypocrisy by any contemporary definition.
And I must admit that I’m shocked that you would say this. You’re generally such a stickler for semantics that I would have bet you’d agree that “hypocrisy” isn’t the appropriate word in this circumstance, even as you would agree that NBC’s stance sucks.
September 9th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
Here’s the thing, Tom: NBC doesn’t generally support the right of well-trained individuals to carry guns for their own protection, and in fact tends to pooh-pooh the notion that any individuals would need such protection. Turning around and hiring others to do for its staff what it claims us commoners have no “need” to do is hypocrisy, just as it would be hypocritical of me to articulate a principle – which, of course, I would never violate – that only guys named Xrlq should be allowed to carry guns.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
I think to a certain extent we’re talking past each other here. You don’t see a difference between “well-trained, licensed and regulated professional” and “well-trained individuals.” But the difference does exist. Surely you don’t think there’s no difference between someone whose well-trained in pharmacy but unlicensed and unregulated, and someone who’s actually licensed and operating within the law. Now you might not have a problem with freelance pharmacists mixing their own drugs for their own personal use/benefit, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a difference between the freelancer and the professional, or that it’s “hypocritical” to support one while opposing the other.