Cynical

Imagine that your neighbourhood or your country or the world faces some problem. Odds are, people will fall into different camps. At the very least you will have those who want to take action to solve the problem, and those who don't think it is a problem at all. But within those two groups you will have subgroups. For me the most annoying group of people in any crowd is those who not only advocate doing nothing, but who then sit back from their comfortable doing-nothing perch and question the sincerity or goodwill of anyone who advocates action being taken but does not have perfect saintlike behavior.

For example, imagine that the local neighbourhood playground was blown down in a windstorm and local kids miss having monkey bars to play on. Some people in the neighbourhood want to raise money to build a new one, some think a playground is unnecessary or too expensive and don't want to spend the money. But chances are, there is some jerk who will say to one of the supporters of a new playground, 'if you want one, why don't you pay the whole cost yourself.' ignoring the fact that the whole neighbourhood will benefit from the playground, so by wanting to get the benefits without contributing, they just want to be a free-loader.

Or another example. The neighbourhood's water supply is running low so some of the neighbours suggest that everyone cut back their water usage. Some people are in favour and some opposed. But then your jerk will say to one of the supporters of cutbacks, "I saw you watering your rosebushes the other day. How can you say we should cut back our usage unless you stop using water altogether. Until you promise not to use another drop of water then you;re just a hypocrite.'

The point is, people who refuse to contribute to solving serious public problems are bad enough, the ones who do that and also snipe at those are trying to help because those people aren't perfect are really the bottom of the barrel.

Which brings me to Lorne Gunter's column in the national post. Now, the column is so ridiculous that if you didn't know that Gunter was writing it, you might think it was a satire of the type of childlike behavior I've been describing in this post (says Gunter of climate change concerts, "Do they all plan to play acoustical instruments on candle-lit stages?" Yes, in Gunter's world, only those who renounce environmentalism should be allowed to play electrical instruments. Later on he criticizes "the increasingly shrill and dogmatic geneticist-cum-environmental-inquisitor" David Suzuki for using a bus as part of his cross-country tour to talk about global warming.)

But while it's all too easy to mock the increasingly shrill and dogmatic editor-cum-columnist-inquisitor Lorne Gunter, this tactic of trying to discredit voices for change by holding up those advocating change to some impossible standard and calling them hypocrites when they don't meet that standard is all too common. How many right-wingers have spent time criticizing Bono for trying to do too much or for being wealthy vs. those who criticize, say, Prince*, for doing too little or for being wealthy? How often when someone wealthy suggests that we do more to help the poor (see Edwards, John) do we hear people say that unless that person is willing to become a pauper and beg on the streets, they shouldn't be listened to (and how often are the people saying that comfortably employed at some think tank set up by some old wealthy man, for the express purpose of protecting that wealth?)

Accidental Deliberations compares Gunter's column to a piece by Tom Barrett in the Tyee and asks, "Can it be anything but a sign of a messed-up marketplace of ideas that Gunter gets the more prominent writing space of the two?"

To which the easy answer is, no - regardless of Barrett, that Gunter has a regular column is sign enough. And part of the 'mess' in the marketplace of ideas, is the fact that this idea - the idea that advocates of taking the easy way out can be as slack as they want while simultaneously criticizing those who advocate taking the hard way for not being perfect - is given any currency at all.



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*Nothing against Prince, just trying to find someone as high profile as U2 who has done relatively little political activism.