Hippocrat Hypocrisy Award - Debut Edition

I'm starting a new tradition on the Hippocrat blog - a weekly Hippocrat Hypocrisy Award. This award recognizes when a wingnut engages in the rankest hypocrisy possible. Now, I know that it's pretty common for wingnuts to engage in hypocrisy, and so some would say it is no challenge to identify it. I say identifying is the easy part - the hard part is determining whose hypocritical actions set a new standard for the rest of the jerks out there. And trust me, when one of them sets a new standard, the rest literally stampede to emulate it.

This week's winner:

Fox News anchor Brit Hume! Regarding President Bush's plan to dismantle Social Security, Hume claimed that FDR actually wanted private pension plans to replace Social Security, and he produced a nice, fat quote from FDR himself to prove it. Here's what Hume said on the "Political Grapevine" segment of his nightly cable news broadcast, back on February 4, courtesy of FoxNews.com.

Senate Democrats gathered at the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial today to invoke the image of FDR in calling on President Bush to remove private accounts from his Social Security proposal. But it turns out that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it.

In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Now, Hume's characterization seems OK until you get to that last sentence. But once you do, then yes sir, that sure sounds like FDR saying that we should replace (notice the word SUPPLANT) Social Security with "voluntary contributory annuities." The problem is, that isn't what FDR actually said. Here's what FDR actually said, courtesy of the Social Security Archives:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans (Emphasis added).

So if you read the FULL quote, like most ethical people would, you'd see that FDR meant that the compulsory annuities mentioned as the second principle would be what SUPPLANTS the non-contributory old-age pensions mentioned under principle one. He was not saying, as Hume states, that the "voluntary annuities" (something very different from "compulsory") should SUPPLANT the government-funded system. It was clear by FDR's FULL statement, and the subsequent congressional testimony by his SS experts, that the voluntary annuities would SUPPLEMENT, not SUPPLANT, the compulsory annuities.

Now did Hume really, purposefully dissemble or is he perhaps to dumb to know the complicated nature of old-age annuities? Well, read his bio and judge for yourself whether this guy could actually be that dumb. No, countrymen, he can't possibly be that dumb. He's been doing this hackery for 35 YEARS, and he knows exactly what he's doing!

And Hume knows that we know it. So when challenged by numerous viewers, as well as Al Franken and Media Matters, Hume doesn't claim ignorance. No, he claims to have been quoted "out-of-context." Such a claim would be hysterical if it weren't so ridiculous (and over-used!). Here's one of his e-mail responses to a viewer posted by that viewer on Eric Alterman's blog:

From: "Hume, Brit" <Brit.Hume@foxnews.com>
To: "Don Collignon"
Subject: RE: The Quote, the whole quote, and nothing like the truth
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 17:16:20 -0500

You are not still not quoting me in full. If you did, you would see that the whole intent of the item was to show that Roosevelt favored the inclusion of personal accounts (voluntary contributor annuities) in his Social Security plan. I never claimed, and do not
think, that he wanted to see the whole thing privatized.

What you are working off (which you label "verbatim") is a partial quote from me -- the very thing you accuse me of doing.

Please apologize.

Ahhh, the sweet stench of hypocrisy! Not only does he deny what he actually said, he also berates the viewer for doing the very thing he, himself did. That probably would have been enough to clinch the HHA for big-boy Brit this week. He really ran away with it, though, when the rest of the wingnut nation fell all overthemselves to repeat his FDR misinformation.

No doubt, this week's Rankest Hypocrisy!