By Carter Bundy
When Homer Simpson sells his soul for a donut, he gets a lawyer to fight for him in front of a “jury of the damned.” The devil, presiding over the trial, turns out to be religious zealot Ned Flanders.
Ned, seeing Homer’s shock, responds coolly: “It’s always the one you least suspect.” And it’s funny.
As happens so often, the Simpsons gets human nature exactly right.
A friend e-mailed me that “the most righteous guys are the ones you have to worry about.” Well, there hasn’t been a stronger crusader against prostitution and money laundering in
Sensible Schadenfreude
Some people enjoy the downfall of any celebrity or politician. The German word “schadenfreude” describes the all-too-common trait of people reveling in others’ suffering. Most people, in my experience, don’t enjoy the suffering of others for suffering’s sake, and in the wrong setting, schadenfreude is an ugly trait.
This would be the right setting: a politician who was aggressively critical and judgmental of others who engaged in the same activity he did.
Think about it – while watching Britney or
• Mark Foley led the fight against pedophilia in the U.S. House, but it turns out he was texting underage boys sexually suggestive messages and maybe doing more.
• Jimmy Swaggart spent a lifetime railing on sexual sinners and deviants, making himself nice and wealthy in the process. Turns out he was himself quite the ladies’ man, or at least if he paid enough.
• Plenty of celebrities have drug problems. But it takes the troubles of a hypocrite like Rush Limbaugh to make it worthy of the best kind of schadenfreude.
Rush has bashed drug users for decades, and has been as merciless and unsympathetic as anyone in the public eye. “No excuses” and “mandatory jail time” were undoubtedly two of his favorite phrases when it came to drug addicts. Yet he’s so addicted that he loses his hearing? Beautiful.
• If you’re Al Gore, arguably the world’s leading advocate for energy conservation and reversing CO2 output, you might want to think twice before moving into a gigantic house. To his credit, it’s very energy efficient for its size, but it’s still worse than the homes of average Americans. People enjoy pointing out his energy use and the P.R. hassle it’s created for him.
• Larry Craig wouldn’t be nearly the subject of the same sort of disdainful derision for his alleged attempted tryst with a hunky Minneapolis cop in the stall next door were it not for a lifetime of gay-bashing on the stump.
• John McCain, following a near career-ending scandal about his going to bat for lobbyist Charles Keating, made lobbying reform his signature issue.
Whoops. McCain’s national finance chair Tom Loeffler is still being paid to peddle influence by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., whose controversial new Air Force contract McCain supports. If McCain were just some run-of-the-mill politician, we wouldn’t be surprised by the revelation of his conflict of interest. But since the guy lectures others on campaign and lobbying ethics all the time, there’s a sense of schadenfreude, and it’s appropriate.
• Me. I was speaking to a class at La Cueva a few years ago, preaching the importance of environment. A kid asked me what I drove. At the time it was a very inefficient Jeep Grand Cherokee, and I said so.
He had called me out, and the whole class enjoyed it. And should have. The next week I traded it in for a Jeep Liberty, which for me gets about 50 percent better gas mileage (I’d have gone to a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, but it’s not union-made and was out of my price range anyhow). Still not good enough, but not the obviously hypocritical Grand Cherokee, either.
• Ted Haggard, former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, might be the king of legitimate schadenfreude: a religious zealot who was a vocal critic of infidelity, homosexuality, prostitution, and drugs.
Of course, Haggard was caught cheating on his wife with a male hooker. Oh yeah – his illicit lover also was his meth dealer. What’s the term for trifecta when you hit four things? Quadrafecta? Quadfecta? Gotta love it either way.
Avoid the ‘freude
If you want to have people show mercy for your flaws, it’s not a bad idea to show a little mercy for others’ flaws. At the very least, you shouldn’t make a career out of criticizing, judging and damning others if you’re out there doing the exact same thing you purport to loathe.
Eliot Spitzer, for all the good (in my humble opinion) he did do as attorney general and in his first year as governor of
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in