Looking Foolish

Yesterday I mentioned that liberals like Mr. Biden display an astonishing lack of self-awareness, dishonesty and/or hypocrisy when they express outrage at attempts to remove salacious materials from spaces like public school libraries where young people and children might be exposed to them, yet folks on the left have themselves been the chief censors and book-banners in our culture.

Another example of this inability or refusal to see the fault in oneself that one criticizes in others is in a recent speech by Barack Obama in which he stated that "It’s very hard to sustain a democracy when you have such massive concentrations of wealth" in the hands of a relative few people.

Mr. Obama warns us that great wealth possessed by some while others have little is destabilizing to a democratic system, but as Jim Geraghty at National Review observes, "The obvious criticism of Obama here is that he and his wife are walking, talking, 'massive concentrations of wealth.'"

Geraghty explains:

Obama and his wife signed the largest book deal in history, $65 million, for their memoirs. The Obamas signed a separate production deal with Netflix worth an estimated $50 million. The Obamas’ production company, Higher Ground, signed a $25 million deal with Spotify that lasted three years.

Barack Obama reportedly makes as much as $400,000 per speech, but reportedly made almost $600,000 for speaking at a conference in Colombia. Michelle Obama makes $200,000 per appearance.

The Obamas rent a mansion in Kalorama (a neighborhood in Washington, D.C.); bought a mansion and estate in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.; bought another house in Rancho Mirage, Calif.; and still have their old home in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

In April 2010, then-president Obama declared, “At a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” Apparently, Obama hasn’t reached that point yet.

Yet another instance, once again, is Mr. Biden who repeatedly lectures us about the need for the wealthy to pay their "fair share" of taxes yet his own son Hunter, who has been gifted millions of dollars by China, Romania and Ukraine, is being essentially excused by our justice system for not having paid his taxes over a period of several years.

Did it occur to Mr. Biden how ridiculous it sounds to tell Americans that they need to pay their fair share while a very compliant and complacent IRS essentially gives his son a pass for ducking the taxes he owed on his ill-gotten fortune?

It'd be a good practice for a politician - or anyone, for that matter - to always ask themselves whether what they're about to say applies also to themselves. Doing so might seriously limit the number of times they make themselves look foolish.