Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is legion

Hypocrisy: The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess

Part I

Education secretary urged his employees to attend Sharpton's rally

President Obama's top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall.

"ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the 'Reclaim the Dream' rally and march," began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.

The memo was sent by Dept. of Ed. head Arne Duncan, who was chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools for seven years before obama nominated him as Secretary of Education in December 2008.

[The memo] "sends a signal that activity on behalf of one side of a political debate is expected within a department. It's highly inappropriate ... even in the absence of a direct threat" ... "If we think of a Bush cabinet official sending an e-mail to civil servants asking them to attend a Glenn Beck rally, there would be a lot of outrage over that."

That last line is a strong contender for Understatement of the Year.

Of course, the Obama kids go to private school, both in D.C. and before that, in Chicago. Yes, obama shunned those very same Chicago public schools that his hand-picked Secretary of Education headed. During that time, "most of [the schools recorded] test scores in the bottom 20 to 40 percent compared to the national average."

Do as we say, not as we do...

Part II

Just about every major mainstream media outlet - newspapers, magazines, and television networks - described Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally as "overwhelmingly white."

The kicker is that those media outlets are the journalistic equivalent of white bread.

The media are notoriously "overwhelmingly white." The American Society of Newspaper Editors reported in April 2010 that minorities total only 13.26 percent of newsroom staff, a decline from the previous year. The report found 465 newspapers have no minorities on their full-time staffs, a number that "has been growing since 2006."  

Newspapers aren't alone. The third annual Television Newsroom Management Diversity Census found that "persons of color" only make up 12.6 percent of staff in TV newsrooms. A 2007 survey by the Radio Television Digital News Association found that minorities make up 21.5 percent of the television news workforce - higher than print but still short of the 34.5 percent of the population. Only 10.2 percent of broadcast news directors are minorities.

The pot calling the kettle black...