The Hypocrisy Hall of Shame

[HummerHippy]

http://specials.msn.com/AreTheyHypoc...4298&GT1=34124

Rush Limbaugh
?If people are violating the law by doing drugs," Rush Limbaugh pontificated in 1995, ?they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up.? Eight years later, the radio giant was himself under investigation for violating drug laws, and after three years of legal wrangling, Limbaugh was charged in Florida with fraudulently concealing information to procure prescription drugs. Translation: He allegedly ?doctor shopped? to feed an addiction to painkillers. Prosecutors agreed to drop the charge if Limbaugh, now 57, remained in rehab and reimbursed the state $30,000 in legal fees. So much for throwing away the key.


Eliot Spitzer
Jaws dropped in March when the New York Times identified holier-than-thou New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer as Client 9 of a big-bucks prostitution ring. Wasn?t Spitzer, 49, the white knight who vowed to restore ethics to Albany? The guy who, as state attorney general, routed out Wall Street corruption? The same crusading prosecutor who only years earlier had busted up prostitution rings? Indeed it was. Spitzer resigned, the investigation continues, and behavioral psychologists gain a textbook case of hypocrisy.


Marion Jones
Among America?s greatest athletes, Jones, 32, won five medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and for years slammed suspicions that she had used performance-enhancing drugs. But in 2007, Jones came clean, telling federal investigators that her 2003 denials under oath were lies. ?The fastest woman on earth? was sentenced to six months in prison and 400 hours of community service for her fibs (and role in a bad-check scam). So what makes Jones a hypocrite instead of just a cheater? Her moral posturing: ?I am against performance enhancing drugs,? she wrote in large red letters in her 2004 autobiography. ?I have never taken them and I never will take them.?


Bill Bennett
Education secretary for President Reagan and the first President Bush?s drug czar, Bill Bennett, 65, calls himself in his official bio ?a man of strong, reasoned convictions.? He writes books with titles like "The Moral Compass" and "The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories." Basically, not the kind of guy expected to lose an estimated $8 million over a decade at video poker and slot machines. But in 2003, the Washington Monthly revealed Bennett had done just that. Perhaps recalling his own harsh words toward irresponsible addicts, America?s morality maven said he would quit gambling.


Ted Haggard
He was pastor to thousands, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and consultant to presidential strategist Karl Rove. Ted Haggard, 52, was also a regular customer of male prostitute Mike Jones, who in 2006 claimed monthly, drug-fueled romps with the preacher. Haggard confessed to ?sexual immorality? and resigned from his Colorado Springs? New Life Church. As Jones later told the New York Times, ?Here is Ted preaching about being shameful ? You won?t see the kingdom of God if you?re gay, and blah, blah, blah ? and then he sneaks around with me.?


Laura Schlessinger
Radio?s Dr. Laura berates callers for premarital sex and cohabitation, and working while raising children. Recently on ?Today,? she said wives who don?t focus on their husband?s needs are partly to blame if he cheats. One would assume that Schlessinger, 61, has lived a moral life. Well, except for the time a boyfriend snapped nude photos of her, while she was married to another man. When the pics surfaced in 1998, Schlessinger, who actually isn?t a shrink (she has a doctorate in physiology), denied their veracity before coming clean: ?I was my own moral authority,? she said in Newsweek. ?The inadequacy of that way of life is painfully obvious today.?


Strom Thurmond
This controversial son of the South led the splinter party Dixiecrats in the 1948 presidential campaign on a pro-segregation platform. After losing his White House bid, Thurmond served a record 47 years in the U.S. Senate, punctuated by his 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster (another record) against the 1957 civil rights bill. Yet throughout this era, he knew he had fathered a child of an African-American housekeeper. The child, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, was 78-years-old when Thurmond died at age 100 and it became public that she was his daughter. As the New York Times indelicately put it, Washington-Williams is "the unacknowledged mixed-race daughter of the Senate's most notorious white supremacist."