Monday, May 3, 2010

Double Standards and Hypocricy

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Recently I received a joke through the email from an acquaintance and it was also send to several others. The butt of the joke are several people, even though the names are not full names but you can imply who they are and the other thing that you would observe is that these people have a certain political affiliation and the joke is about Marketing Techniques
I paste some examples below:

Samy Vellu sees a gorgeous girl at a party.
He goes up to her and says: "I am very rich. Marry me!"
That's Direct Marketing.

Mukhriz sees a gorgeous girl at a party.
One of his loyal UMNO friends goes up to her and pointing
at Mukhriz and says: "He's very rich.. Marry him!"
That's Advertising.

Khir Toyol sees a gorgeous girl at a party.
He goes up to her and gets her telephone number.
The next day, he calls and says: "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me!"
That's Telemarketing.

Of course there's a little bit more to that. Nobody in the mailing list made any noise about the joke or about who became the butt of the joke. Not that I care. However a thought struck me, 'what if the butt of the joke is on an name impliedly associated with a different political affiliation.' So I penned the joke below:

Anwar is at a party and sees a gorgeous guy.
He gets up and straightens his tie, walks up to him and pours him a drink, and invited the guy for a ride with Nalla driving to Tivoli and to enter the compound the codeword is “Mokhtar.”
In the room in Tivoli he said "By the way, I'm rich. CIFUT?"
and don’t let Wan Azizah and everyone else know about this.
That's Guerilla Marketing.

And send it out to the same people in the list. One thing, several of what are contained in the joke above were published in the news about a pending court case.
 
True to my assumption that double standards and hypocrisy existed, I received responses from 2 people fromt the mailing list, quoting from the Quran, the Prophet and the Sahabat somewhat telling me the perils of hearsay and fitnah. While I can understand and appreciate the reminders, my question is why only after I send the joke out about Anwar that these reminders spew forth. Why not when the butt of the joke were first about Samy Vellu, Mukhriz etc.?
 
Why? Is it ok to make fun of people you are not affiliated with, and it is not ok when it is about the others?
 
Hypocrisy is the act of persistently professing beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that are inconsistent with one's actions. Hypocrisy is thus a kind of lie.

The hypocrite thinks that what he usually professes do not somehow apply to him. It is not simply an inconsistency between what is praised or admired and what is done. Samuel Johnson made this point when he wrote about the misuse of the charge of "hypocrisy" in Rambler No. 14:

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself. Wikipedia.


  I stand by my opinion, and I stand corrected.

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