Quite humorously, Hillary Clinton recently confessed that she’s really a robot, constructed in the garage of a Silicon Valley techie. A reporter had commented to her about why she didn’t seem to sweat in the heat of Iowa on the campaign trail and then asked, “What deodorant do you use?” – such is the high level of journalism these days. Another news outlet attempted an explanation that she doesn’t sweat because she’s a robot. Mrs. Clinton took the silly bait and then confessed, “You guys are the first to realize that I’m really not even a human being. I was constructed in a garage in Palo Alto a very long time ago…you can’t tell anybody this. I don’t want anybody to know this. This has been a secret…I’m just spilling my electronic guts to you.”
That’s cute, but it got me thinking about life’s complexities. I saw another story about “double lives” – people who behave publicly one way, but live another way. The article focused on social media and how easy it is to hide our real selves. Some 80 million photos are posted to Instagram each day. The article recounts that Facebook has 1.49 billion active users per month, Twitter has 316 million active accounts, Tumblr 230 million and Pinterest has 47.66 million unique visitors from the US alone. That’s a lot of space to create a persona or tell a fictional story about who we are.
Our lives are complex and because they’re complex we often behave in ways that seem counterintuitive – many people call it hypocritical behavior. But I’m not so sure. In Utah, there is an awful lot of “I must be seen as” behavior. We have to sound alike and look alike and have the same sorts of interests and spend our free time in all sorts of uplifting pursuits. I’m sure it’s a Mormon thing here in Utah but the “must be seen as” persona is universal.
And this brings me back to Hillary Clinton. We know a lot about the Clintons – more than we care to know. And yet, we don’t know everything we should about them – at least not as much as we need to judge them as we do. We know her husband, our former president, is a serial adulterer and we know that, at least on its face, she acts like none of it happened. And so I wonder about Hillary Clinton – what sort of person endures such public spectacles in seeming denial?
I was reminded about the effect of private misbehavior among public officials when a congressman recently opined that whomever is running for the next Speaker of the House needs to reveal any misdeeds in their lives. This congressman reminded his colleagues of former Speaker-elect Bob Livingston who got caught with a mistress just before taking the oath. And then House Republicans ended up with Denny Hastert, an alleged gay pedophile.
On the one hand, everyone deserves the right to their individuality and to work out their salvation, as it were, as they see fit. Especially here in Utah, we have too much cultural conformity and not enough principle conformity. We have too much “must be seen as” and too little reality. On the other hand, as Brigham Young once said, “I don’t want to know about your little sins.” Spare us the 24/7, People Magazine, blow-by-blow coverage of everyone’s little lives. Yes, I care if a politician is misbehaving – I care a lot. Then again, good grief, can we cut people some slack? Trust me when I say I know many Utahns of stature who are self-righteous pretenders. I can’t stand them. That said, aren’t we all at some point?
I want my political leaders to be people of solid character but, for me anyway, solid character has room for a few swear words, a few cultural inconsistencies and a few honest-to-goodness human moments when we should have been our better selves. That’s a much more appealing political culture than creating these artificially high ideals, expecting no missteps and destroying the lives of others when partisans claim hypocrisy. We can muster a little grace and mercy for one another when the King of Kings offers it endlessly to us all.
