I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

Hypocrisy: –noun, plural -sies.
1. a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
2. a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.
3. an act or instance of hypocrisy.

So the proverbial stuff has hit the proverbial fan, and not for the last time, I'm sure. Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant and getting married. Frankly, I'm not all that surprised. It's dark and cold in Alaska most of the year.

It's kind of a relief. In this day and age, you knew there was a skeleton or two in her closet. (By the way, have I mentioned that I envy her closet? Not as much as Anne Hathaway's, I grant you - GOD, that girl can dress - but nonetheless...) If this and the "Troopergate" scandal are the worst the press can come up with then, hell, she's doing fairly well. I fully expect to hear of some Billy-Carter-like toothless relative who shoots polar bears for fun or something.

It's got to be tough, though. Marriage is hard enough at 37, much less 17. I won't even get into parenthood. I only have a dog, so far.

But the thing that puzzles me is that the word "hypocrite" is being thrown around with respect to Sarah Palin and her daughter. Now, to me, a hypocrite is one who says one thing and does another. Let's say, for example, that Sarah Palin claimed to be an evangelical Christian, but on the weekends she flew with Paco the pool boy to Aruba, where she cavorted naked on the sand drinking mai tais and being fed peeled grapes. That, my friends, would be hypocrisy. Fun, but hypocritical. Or, on a more practical level, if she were saying she teaches her kids to wait until marriage but in fact tells them that it's okay to have sex or knows about them fooling around but deliberately looks the other way.

But having a 17-year-old pregnant daughter? I just don't think that's hypocritical. The argument, as I understand it, goes like this: Palin claims to be an evangelical Christian and to stand for family values, but her daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, so she can't possibly practice what she preaches. Say what? I mean, have you ever met a preacher's kid? Or a teenager, for that matter? People do what they're going to do. Kids disobey their parents. Even the best kids, the ones raised in the most loving and supportive homes, the ones taught the best values, the ones who succeed and are absolute joys to their parents, do completely asinine things. Do you remember high school? Like, at all? And don't even go there with college. That doesn't make their parents hypocrites. It makes the kids human.

Side note: if anything about Palin has a chance of proving hypocrisy, it's the Troopergate allegations. If true, they will prove damaging - she crusades as a reformer, all the while using her office to try to get her brother-in-law fired and firing the public safety director when she couldn't. I doubt whether they will prove true - the timing is all wrong, for one thing, and if the public safety director in fact refused to fire the trooper after he threatened his father-in-law's life and committed some of the other acts alleged, then there's no scandal there, as far as I can tell. But I digress.

I think "hypocrisy" is used by people these days to describe a sort of savage joy in someone else's problems, rather than the actual meaning of the word. It's a feeling of, "Ha! Caught you! You claim to be so high and mighty, but you, too, are human!" Which is fine - if that's how you feel, then say it. But don't throw around the word "hypocrite" unless you actually mean it.