Hypocrisy and Prejudice --
against Fitzpatrick
Let’s
take a look at prejudice and hypocrisy today. The term prejudice refers to
preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward a person because of
personal characteristics, such as gender, social class, or ethnicity. It’s also
defined as a “feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person . . . not
based on, actual experience.”
Prejudice
is used to prove some value or defect without reference to facts. Today, the
label “racist” is replacing “prejudiced” since it’s easier to apply to anyone
who disagrees with or criticizes a person who might be considered a
minority. People have been publicly called racists for noting the ethnicity of
a criminal in the crime report. Prejudiced might be a more accurate term, but
it’s not as easy to scream and it doesn’t carry the inflammatory stimulus of “racist.”
(Just
to keep the record straight, in this blog we’ll use ethnicity to refer to a
group identified through a common trait, such as a common culture, language, or
dialect. And we’ll use race as a grouping used in Anthropology, which is based
upon physical characteristics. For example, the Caucasian race has the
characteristics of “light skin and eyes, narrow noses, and thin lips.”)
Hypocrisy
Now
for hypocrisy: promoting virtues,
moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one is personally violating.
It can be considered a form a lying since it misleads people. An example we've seen in the public square in Prague was a man preaching about the evils of stealing
while his confederates picked pockets in the crowd.
Both hypocrisy and prejudice are eventually self-defeating
tactics. And where can we see them demonstrated?
Example
For an example of both in Costa Mesa, simply look
at the comments in a recent Daily Pilot article about Jim
Fitzpatrick (here). In case his name doesn't ring a bell, he is an elected member of
the Sanitation Board that the rest of the Board is trying to oust.
The ostensible reason is that he held an
incompatible office (Planning Board), but he asserts, and the chairman at
Sanitation agrees, that the reason is largely his behavior. He had the audacity
to criticize the Sanitation Board’s decision to forgo competitive bidding repeatedly
so they could award the garbage collection contracts to the same company over
and over. In other words, Fitzpatrick opposes the “no bid” contract awards.
Haven’t we heard a lot about the evil of “no bid
contracts” recently? Of course we have, it was the mantra of a small but
vociferous group, chanted incessantly against the proposed City Charter. And,
it was published in many big labor-supported mailers as a major threat of the Charter
to Costa Mesa.
No bid not so bad after all
You’d think that the people who were so vehement
against what they perceived as “no bid” clauses in Costa Mesa’s proposed
Charter in the last election would support Fitzpatrick. After all, several of
them accumulated a lot of space in the Pilot commenting about the
danger that the Charter would allow “no bid contracts.” In fact, several of
them threw that threat into most of the threads they responded to, one way or
another.
You’d be wrong. Instead of supporting his position
they are yapping at his heels about such irrelevancies as his job status, or
his support of the majority of the City Council. “If you opposed us on
Mensinger, we’ll try to destroy you.” They want him gone, better yet, gone and embarrassed
and out of cash. No bid contracting, for real in this case, is OK with them.
So, if you consider “no bid” as an epithet of
evil, as this small group apparently did, you’d have to conclude that supporting
Mensinger was a worse evil than “no bid.” Or, maybe their point is that being
Jim Fitzpatrick is more evil than a “no bid” clause in the Charter.
Either way, the terms prejudice and hypocrisy are
thus illustrated in those Daily Pilot comments. Their
remarks certainly don’t speak well of them, either.
Threat to clean up corruption scares them
As commenter Scott
Peotter said, “Just admit it that you
hate Fitz and want to use any means necessary to shut him up, before he gets a
majority like Righeimer and starts to clean up the San Board like Righeimer is
cleaning up Costa Mesa.”
Perhaps that’s the
fear that is driving the prejudice and hypocrisy.
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