Word: craige
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Hypocrisy is among the most universal and well-studied of psychological phenomena, and the research suggests that Craig, Haggard and the others may be guilty not so much of moral hypocrisy as moral weakness. The distinction may sound trivial at first, but as a society, we tend to forgive the weak and shun the hypocritical. As psychologists Jamie Barden of Howard University, Derek Rucker of Northwestern and Richard Petty of Ohio State have shown, we often use a simple temporal cue to distinguish between the weak and the hypocritical: if you say one thing and then do another...
Assume for a moment that Craig and Haggard actually believed what they said--that homosexuality is sin. They spent most of their lives fighting for the conservative cause. But in Craig's case, the Idaho Statesman has published allegations that there were at least three other slipups involving men, beginning in 1967. What if, like the radio host who gets fat but commits to losing weight, the moralizers were trying through their "pro-family" endeavors to expiate their lustful sins? You may think they are wrong about homosexuality (I do), but that doesn't make them hypocrites...
...real hypocrites? Because their decision making is usually more diffuse, institutions aren't as susceptible to cognitive dissonance. Corporations and political parties routinely say one thing (the GOP is the party of strict values) and do another (the party let Louisiana Senator David Vitter, who unlike Craig holds a swing-state seat, get off with a simple apology after he was linked to a female prostitution ring). The GOP's moralizers deserve some pity. The party itself, not so much...
Among recent political events, the one likely to have the most lasting impact on the American electorate has little to do with Fred Thompson or Larry Craig. It is the decision of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to strip all convention delegates from renegade states that schedule their presidential primaries before Feb. 5, 2008. The party's swift reaction has Democratic insiders predicting that, come 2012, the presidential-primary system that has been in place for the past four decades (since 1968 in current form) could be scrapped. What might replace it, no one can say for sure. DNC rules...
Forget donating one's body to science--biologist J. Craig Venter mapped his entire genetic code, marking the first time a single person's genome has been plotted. The sequence, more complete and complex than the 2001 human-genome model, is a glimpse at a future in which individuals can mine their DNA for medical information...