Huckabee: Evangelicals support Israel more than Jews

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:19 PM - 4 Comments

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, says that American Jews just don’t support the Jewish state the way Christians do. Speaking to the Christian Broadcasting Network about his Evangelical Christian beliefs and his recent trip to Israel, Huckabee said: “One of the things I find most interesting is that generally Evangelicals are so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community.” He explained that American Jews are split over issues like the division of Jerusalem and the building of settlements, while conservative Christians offer unified, total support for the premise that “there ought to be one city. It ought to be a Jewish state. And it ought to be secure.” He then went on to wonder why Jews don’t realize that conservative Evangelicals are “the best friends they’ve got.” Because there’s no better token of friendship than telling Jews that they’re not supportive enough of Israel.

Politico

'Cross me, and I will quite literally crush you while you sleep'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:17 PM - 8 Comments

Mark Donald gets inside Stephen Harper’s head.

Of all the political rivals I’ve mercilessly slaughtered over the years, I admit that I miss Stephane Dion the most. I always admired the man’s openness to new ideas and initiatives. I remember on the eve of the 2008 federal election when it became clear that Mr. Dion would be humbled by the onslaught of the Conservative juggernaut, I asked him if it would be appropriate for me to use his physical person as an ottoman in my office. He gave the idea his usual deep contemplation. It didn’t work out of course, but his willingness to consider new ideas really impressed me.

Ad Missions: Simple Pleasures

By Andrew Potter - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:07 PM - 6 Comments

Another two weeks, another Ad Missions panel. This week we looked at a new campaign for Dare’s Simple Pleasures cookies. They are pitching it as a “health cookie” at women 35 and up. The print campaign is not bad — Andris is right about that. But I found the television spot to be unbelievably offensive, and totally out of step with the brand positioning. What do you think? You can see the tv ad here. The print is here.

What do kids know, anyway?

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

Every late summer since 1998, as young high school graduates prepare to become university freshman, Beloit College (located about two hours northwest of Chicago, in Wisconsin) has released the Beloit College Mindset List, a sort of map, if you will, of these new students’ cultural touchstones. It’s list of 75 very frightening realities. “Most students entering college for the first time this fall were born in 1991,” notes the list’s introduction. “For these students, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways, Michael Landon, Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, The Dallas Times Herald, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have always been dead … Salsa has always outsold ketchup … The European Union has always existed … Women have always outnumbered men in college … Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on … Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations … Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them … There has always been blue Jell-O.”

Beloit College

To smack. Or not to smack.

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:05 PM - 0 Comments

The preliminary results of a new referendum are in. New Zealanders have voted to preserve a parents’ right to smack their children. The question put to voters – “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offense in New Zealand?” – came back with a resounding “No” from nearly 90 per cent of responders, says the election commission. The quarrel began two years ago, when reports of New Zealand’s sky-high child abuse rates led to a new law banning “parental discipline” by force. But the results of the vote are non-binding. Prime Minister John Key says he has no plans to change the existing law. New Zealand is the 24th country to officially ban smacking.

BBC News

Tech coalition stares down Google

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:02 PM - 0 Comments

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are teaming up to fight Google as it tries to build the world’s largest virtual library. All three will sign up to the Open Book Alliance, a project from the non-profit Internet Archive. “Google is trying to monopolise the library system,” the Internet Archive’s founder, Brewster Kahle, told BBC News. “If this deal goes ahead, they’re making a real shot at being ‘the’ library and the only library.” The three tech heavyweights oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many works: back in 2008, the company reached an agreement with publishers and writers to settle two lawsuits that accused the company of copyright infringement for unauthorized book scanning. Google agreed to pay $125 million to create a Book Rights Registry, where writers and publishers get compensation for their works (they get 70 per cent from a book sale; Google gets the remaining 30, as well as rights to digitize orphan works, where the rights-holders aren’t known.) Critics say it will hurt public access to books by granting a “monopoly” over them. The Internet Archive, which has long opposed the deal, has scanned over 1.5 million books to date, all of which are available for free. “The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it’s understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition,” Google responded in a statement.

BBC News

77 year-old former hockey coach found in the B.C. wilderness

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments

After four days of wandering a remote mountainous region near Turnagain Lake in B.C., Ernie “Punch” Mclean has been found by rescuers. Mclean, a former amateur hockey coach who won two memorial cups in the seventies, is a gold prospector. Police say he’s in good health, but was taken to hospital as a precaution.

CBC News

Obama’s popularity is down 11 points

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:01 PM - 3 Comments

The hysterical debate over health care reform in the United States seems to be taking a toll on Barack Obama’s popularity. According to a new Washington Post/ABC poll 49 per cent now express confidence “that Obama will make the right decisions for the country,” down 11 points from a couple of months ago. And the scary ads about “government run” health care seem to finding a soft-target in the elderly—in June seniors were evenly split on the plan, now a strong majority oppose it.

The Washington Post

It’s now up to Obama and the Democrats

By John Parisella - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 33 Comments

If there is a golden rule when you’re faced with adversity in politics, it is this: ‘When in doubt, follow your beliefs and principles.’ Barack Obama was elected with a majority vote (53%) and the most votes ever cast for a president. His party, the Democrats, controls the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats and a 78-seat edge in the House of Representatives.

The promise to reform healthcare was not made on a whim or with the intent to garner a few votes in selected electoral districts. It was the product of an extensive debate that has taken various forms since the beginning of the last century when Theodore Roosevelt put universal healthcare in his electoral platform back in the 1912. Some progressive legislation, including Medicare and Medicaid, were eventually enacted. But the all-out effort at comprehensive reform failed spectacularly under the Clinton Administration in 1993. Obama was elected to that deliver comprehensive reform and expectations are high. Failure to do so would have disastrous consequences for the President and his party.

Continue…

Toronto gets top spot in alternative Big Mac Index

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM - 2 Comments

The purchasing power of Toronto workers is one of the highest in the world according to an alternative Big Mac Index, published by UBS this week. Unlike the traditional index, which compares the cost of McDonald’s notorious double-decker burger, the new one measures how long it takes workers to earn enough to buy one. According to the guide, which ranks 73 cities worldwide, it takes just 12 minutes to make enough to purchase a Big Mac in Toronto, Chicago and Tokyo—compared to more than two hours of labour in Nairobi, Jakarta and Mexico City.

The Economist

Phone spammer star chamber?

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:13 AM - 1 Comment

The Toronto Star lifts the curtain on a clandestine conference call to be convened by the CRTC next week to determine whether three unnamed telemarketing firms have “knowingly violated” Canada’s do-not-call list. According to the Star, the agency “has gone to extraordinary lengths” to shield the identities of the firms involved, as well as the specific allegations leveled against them. An unnamed agency official claims that the idea is to “incite people to pay fines” rather than fight the charges, but Queen’s University law professor and privacy maven Alan Cockfield wants to see the companies named and shamed. “Disclosing the identity of the telemarketing company would act as a significant deterrent,” he told the Star. “The so-called shaming factor.”

Toronto Star

Karzai and Abdullah both claim victory

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:12 AM - 1 Comment

Afghanistan’s two leading candidates for president have both claimed victory a day after elections were held. Spokesmen for both incumbent President Hamid Karzai, and his main challenger and one-time foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, say early results suggest they won more than 50 per cent of the vote, making a runoff unnecessary. Formal results will not be announced until September, and Afghanistan’s election commission has asked candidates to refrain from making claims about results until then.

The Times

Plastics in the ocean are deadlier than previously thought

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:08 AM - 0 Comments

Plastics in the ocean are not stable and degrade when exposed to environmental forces, causing toxic substances to be released at a faster rate than previously thought. Plastics were traditionally understood to be virtually indestructible. However, a new study found that polystyrene, a ubiquitous plastic, begins to decompose within a year, releasing toxic substances bisphenoal A (BPA) and PS oligomer into the ocean. Both toxins disrupt hormones in animals and can have detrimental effects on reproductive systems. “We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future,” says lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido.

Science Daily

'I can't believe the Prime Minister didn't know about this'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 53 Comments

Joe Volpe says he told Lawrence Cannon and Deepak Obhrai of Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s situation on June 12—more than two weeks before the Toronto Star’s first story on her plight—and followed up with a letter on June 18. And he suggests a later switch in responsibility for the file would have meant notification of the PMO.

The file’s transfer to Canada Border services around July 17 would have alerted the Prime Minister’s Office, Volpe said. ”It means the chief of staff in the communications branch of the PMO knows the file has gone from one minister to another. Put yourself in the shoes of the Prime Minister: People immediately below you have carriage of this file… they don’t tell you this is happening?”

A spokesperson for both Cannon and Obhrai refused comment yesterday on whether either minister might have informed the Prime Minister’s Office of the case.

See previously: I read the news today. Oh boy.

UPDATED: CommitteeWatch: … and then there are the witnesses who aren't on the list

By kadyomalley - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 10:26 AM - 31 Comments

So it sounds like this emergency meeting on isotopes may be about to– yes, I have to say it — go nuclear. From the tone of her latest twitter update, it sounds like Liberal health critic Carolyn Bennett is already headed for a meltdown:

>More CON GAMES- formerly known as Parltry committees …they have blkd all the nuc docs from the NR hearings-this shd be about PATIENTS…

A quick check of the meeting notice confirms that the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine is conspicuously absent from the list of those slated to appear this afternoon, as are MDS Nordion and the provincial health ministers, all of whom were mentioned as likely invitees earlier in the week.

Suddenly, this isn’t shaping up to be such a sleepy Friday afternoon on the Hill after all. ITQ will keep you posted on the drama – and remember to check back at 2pm for the full livebloggening.

UPDATE: And we have a health minister — Ontario’s health minister, to be specific, who will be appearing by video at the end of the meeting.

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By The Editors - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Face of the week
Suaad Hagi Mohamud is reunited with her son in Toronto after spending three months in Kenya due to an identity dispute

A week in the life of Y.E. Yang
The 37-year-old South Korean arrived at the PGA Championship in Chaska, Minn., ranked 110th in the world. On Friday, he scored a two under par 70, leaving him six strokes behind the leader and odds-on favourite, Tiger Woods. But a 67 on Saturday drew Yang within striking distance of Woods, and on Sunday, he clinched victory on the 18th with a brilliant shot over a tree. After the win, Yang received a congratulatory phone call from South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. Continue…

Econowatch

By Steve Maich - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

It would be nice if the markets and trade and employment worked like mathematical equations. After all, economic reports are full of numbers and percentages. You’d think it’s primarily about math. But it isn’t really. Predicting an economy’s direction is not unlike forecasting the weather—it is subject to certain scientific fundamentals (i.e., the weather gets warmer when our hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, and the closer you get to the equator) and a whole lot of scientifically based guesswork (i.e., that low-pressure system should be gone by tomorrow afternoon).

Economics is even more inexact because it tries to foretell the behaviour of human beings—billions of them. And while our tendencies are roughly predictable over the long run, the short term can be incredibly messy, especially when fear gets involved. That’s why you can get synchronized global stock market plunges, like the one we saw early this week, and be at a loss for a credible explanation. Continue…

A real underdog Baseball story, Elizabeth May searches for a riding, and Brad Pitt: joint artist

By Lianne George - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

League of their own
The Hastings All-Stars swept five games and outscored their opponents 82-15 to win the Canadian Little League Championships in Val-d’Or, Que., on Saturday. The score, however, belies the backstory of this gritty team from blue-collar East Vancouver. The 11 boys and a girl (Katie Reyes, who homered in the final game) share one overbooked ball diamond with 22 teams. Money is so tight, some players’ fees were covered by KidSport, which helps low-income athletes. Now they’re off to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Their first game will be broadcast on ESPN on Aug. 22.

Elizabeth May-be
Green party Leader Elizabeth May is testing the waters, and patience, of party members as she searches the country for a winnable riding. She previously ran unsuccessfully in 2006 in the London North Centre by-election. Then, it was a suicide mission against Tory Peter MacKay in Central Nova. And now, determined to get into the Commons, she has chosen the riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound. At least that’s what she implied last week, when she told local media it was “definitely tempting” to run there. The more likely spot is the left-coast riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. Local media report she is house hunting in Sidney, B.C. “My heart is here,” she said of the seaside community, “but I just want to make sure.” Continue…

Barack's Vineyard: More photos as the Presidential visit nears

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 6:55 AM - 16 Comments

Only two days until Barack Obama and his family arrive on Martha’s Vineyard for a week’s vacation, and some of the locals are getting ticked. Frankly, it’s hard to blame them. They’re ticked that the President’s arrival via helicopter will be closed to the public (unlike during Bill Clinton’s many, many visits). They’re ticked at what many perceive as overly strict security measures banning certain air traffic. They’re ticked that the White House is signaling that the President won’t be wandering the streets and shops like Clinton used to do. Plus – and this is just cruel – it’s been revealed that Geraldo Rivera arrives tomorrow. There’s only so much a citizenry can take.

Meanwhile, I’ve snapped some more photos of Obama-related merchandise and displays on the island. Think of it as a vacation slideshow, but without that slide of me in my open bathrobe “accidentally” getting mixed in there – you know, just to see if you’re interested.

When T-shirt slogan designers sit down to brainstorm the visit of a major celebrity, I believe they do so with a checklist. And right at the top of the checklist? The question: Can we, in any way, use the name of the visiting individual in verb form? Continue…

Everybody's Obsessed With "thirtysomething"

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, August 21, 2009 at 12:13 AM - 1 Comment

I was a bit young for thirtysomething back when it was on the air, but it clearly made a huge impression on people who were in the right demographic (yuppies, people on the verge of becoming yuppies, and people who secretly longed to be yuppies) at the time. With the show coming out on DVD for the first time on Tuesday, there are a whole bunch of articles on its significance, including:

- This New York Times piece by Ginia Bellafante, who thinks it wasn’t progressive enough and sniffs that television didn’t really get good until the late ’90s and HBO and stuff. Also, she blames it for bringing in “goofy fantasy sequences” and “pointless flashbacks.” The article unintentionally makes me like the show better.

- An article in USA Today (or “The USA Today” as Colbert calls it) springboards the DVD release to talk about “relatable” TV characters through the ages, since the whole point of thirtysomething was to make relatability the entire basis for a one-hour drama. (There was no action, no mystery, not much plot, so the basis for audience involvement was that they saw themselves in the characters.)

- And the best of these pieces, a Newsday piece by Diane Werts. She discusses the influence of the show on the next 20+ years of television drama: how it was structured, how it was written and produced, and how small the stories could be in a one-hour show.

In a lot of ways I think thirtysomething was a show that demonstrated how dramas could be more like sitcoms. There are certain similarities between thirtysomething and Family Ties, like the Family Ties episode — done the season before thirtysomething premiered — where Michael Gross keeps asking himself whether he sold out his hippie ideals (again) and keeps flashing back to his ’60s past (complete with “Mr. Tambourine Man” on the soundtrack). Small stories about characters wondering whether they’d made the wrong life choices were normal on sitcoms; they all did one mid-life crisis episode a year.  Herskovitz and Zwick demonstrated that you could do similar stories, except in an hour, on film, and without broad jokes or laughter on the soundtrack.

On a network-history note, ABC was a really interesting network in the late ’80s, about equal parts experimental and old-fashioned. There were many hour-long shows from 1985-90 that pushed the boundaries of what TV could do, and most of them were on ABC: Moonlighting, thirtysomething, China Beach, Twin Peaks. Plus a few unusual half-hours like The Wonder Years. But ABC was at the exact same time the network that was most devoted to old-school, corny family comedies (some on Friday night, some now). Interesting split-personality approach, and it made for lots of memorable shows.

Jim Flaherty's permanent tax on everything (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 7:21 PM - 25 Comments

Jim Flaherty, April 10, 2008. We’ve done our stimulus at the federal level but we really needed the province to do its part, and of course we’re also calling on the remaining provinces that have not harmonized their PST with the GST to work with us to accomplish that goal of harmonization. That would be a great tax burden relief for businesses in Ontario that’s certainly needed.

Jim Flaherty, Oct. 23, 2008. Being from Ontario, as you may have heard, I have a bit of a challenge with my provincial government and I’m gently nudging Premier McGuinty and the Government of Ontario and encouraging them in the direction of reducing the burden of business taxes in that province and, importantly, since that province and a few others are not harmonized, to harmonize the PST and the GST in those provinces, which would be the single most important step that could be done to help relieve the tax burden on business … we need harmonization of sales taxes in some provinces.

Dimitri Soudas, tonight. “If any Ontarian is concerned about this provincial decision (on tax harmonization), they should contact his or her MPP … We said that we would accept the decision of any provincial government to proceed with the harmonization of the sales tax, but ultimately the decision is a decision that needs to be made by the provinces.”

Colombia under threat from Chávez

By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 6 Comments

When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez turned up at a news conference in Caracas last week with anti-tank rocket launchers in tow, it was clear he meant to send a message to Colombia. Now, after weeks of escalation, Chávez says he’s bracing for all-out combat with his South American neighbour.

Relations between the two countries hit rock bottom in late July, when Colombian officials announced that weapons found in the hands of FARC—Colombia’s largest guerrilla army—came from Venezuela. The discovery could not have come at a worse time; tensions had already been mounting due to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s recently announced plans to house American troops at its military bases. Continue…

Do Afghans want NATO out? Maybe.

By Julien Russell Brunet - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:20 PM - 3 Comments

Many surveys have asked whether Westerners think NATO should leave Afghanistan—but a new poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org adds a twist: it asks what we think the Afghan people want. The results are revealing.

Overall, 53 per cent of those polled said they believe the Afghan people want NATO forces to leave. But in each of the 20 countries polled by the University of Maryland project, the respondents seemed to project their own views onto the Afghan population. “There is a marked tendency for respondents to assume that Afghans share their view of the conflict,” says Michael Byers, a professor of political science at UBC. “In other words, if you support the NATO mission, you’re much more likely to assume that Afghans want NATO troops in their country.” Continue…

Comedy Writer Jokes

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, August 20, 2009 at 5:13 PM - 20 Comments

I promised to write a post about why I think certain jokes on The Simpsons and Futurama and some other shows are “comedy writer jokes,” that appeal more to comedy writers than to people who aren’t comedy writers. I’m a little reluctant to give examples, though, because any example I will give is absolutely certain to be funny to some (or maybe even most) people who aren’t comedy writers. So when I say these jokes don’t appeal to “people who aren’t comedy writers,” what I really mean is that they don’t appeal to me.

What got me back on this subject was the release on DVD this week of season 12 of The Simpsons, the last of four seasons run by Mike Scully. Scully gave almost unmatched power to one of The Simpsons‘ longtime writers, George Meyer, who by season 10 or 11 was so influential in the rewrite room that its whole comedy style was his more than any other person’s, including Scully. (On the commentaries you can sometimes hear the writers saying either that a joke came from Meyer ,or that it was inspired by his style, or that they’re just proud that the joke made Meyer laugh.) To me this is a partial explanation of why most of the Scully episodes are hard for me to watch, because Meyer specialized in a type of joke that is often more appropriate for his underground comedy magazine Army Man than a TV situation comedy. It’s sort of a joke about a joke, where the humour is supposed to come not from the characters and their reactions to their situations, but from the writer’s attempt to put his own ironic twist on the thing you might expect to hear in that situation.

The example I always use from season 12 of The Simpsons – I don’t know if Meyer came up with it, but it certainly is a Meyeresque joke — is when Grandpa Simpson says that he was such a great grifter in his youth that “They used to call me Grifty McGrift.” The line is supposed to be funny because it’s not funny, because in a spot that normally calls for a funny turn of phrase, the writer could not come up with any turn of phrase at all, and just repeated the word “Grift” twice. Another favourite George Meyer joke technique is to have a character describe a plan as “Operation ______” and then fill in something that’s just a straight, prosaic description of whatever he’s going to do: “Time for Operation Mail-Take.” “Now for Operation Strike Make-O Longer.” “Now for Operation Christmas-Remind-Her-Of-How-Good-Is.” (A George Meyer line that was cut from an early episode, according to a commentary, was “You couldn’t find Mr. Burns’ inner goodness with a Mr. Burns’ inner-goodness-finding-machine.”) It is not really a joke, it’s, as someone else put it, a parody of bad writing. And that’s why I think of it as comedy-writer comedy, because it references their own struggles in coming up with jokes and their own intimate knowledge of old joke structures. It never once sounds like anything an actual human being might say. This also applies to jokes that are based on the assumption that it’s funny to hear a deliberately awkward turn of phrase, like “Don’t worry, I’m not a stabbing hobo, I’m a singing hobo,” or “She changed her name to Appleseed and her family changed theirs to Buffalkill.” The main joke there is just that it sounds a little weird.

These jokes are fine in small doses, surrounded by bread-n’-butter character, situational and un-ironic jokes. (And in the good years of the show, Meyer came up with lots of lines that are just funny because of the character saying them, like Homer watching the Three Stooges and saying “Moe is their leader!”) But by the Mike Scully era, every episode was wall-to-wall jokes like that. It’s not just a George Meyer thing, because he’s not involved with Futurama, and that show has pretty much always consisted of nothing but jokes-that-aren’t-really-jokes (I’ve come to the conclusion that Futurama really is a pretty weakly-written show much of the time).

30 Rock has a lot of jokes like that too (most of them coming from Tracy, like “foxy boxing combines my two favorite things, boxing and referees!” — see, it’s funny because it makes no sense!), but manages to make up for it by including lots of simple, effective and even corny jokes. Writer-type jokes are fine, in moderation. When they take over, there’s not a moment when you’re not being reminded that someone is writing this thing.

I actually find The Simpsons more tolerable to watch now, when Meyer is no longer on the full-time staff, than I did in the Scully era; the actual quality of the jokes isn’t better — mostly consisting of really lame-o puns — but I find a pun to be a more acceptable than constant lines like “put down that science pole!” and “hey, what’s with the attitude? I just wanted some dealies.”

Update: The next-to-last paragraph originally ended in mid-sentence, as pointed out in comments. I’d like to say this was conscious performance art, but it was not. Fixed.

Update 2: Lots of interesting comments. I should add that back in the ancient 1990s, I would usually cite my favourite Simpsons line of all time as Bart’s “My God, he is like some kind of… non-giving-up… school guy!,” which is perhaps the ultimate, textbook example of the self-reflexive, joke-about-not-making-a-joke construction I’m talking about here. And when I see that episode, that line still makes me laugh a lot. Which means: a) It all depends on context b) These jokes are fine in moderation c) I’m a hypocrite d) All of the above, but with special emphasis on the hypocrite thing.