by Kim Pederson…

It’s hard not to think about the word “hypocrisy” when you watch The Daily Show. On Thursday’s program (March 12), host Jon Stewart had New Jersey governor Chris Christy in the cross-hairs. Governor Christy apparently saw fit to bypass the courts in a $9 billion environmental suit against ExxonMobil for polluting waters around its NJ refineries and settle for $225 million. He then spent that paltry money on filling holes in the NJ budget rather than restoration efforts. He tried to sell this to his constituents by saying that Exxon would pay an untold amount to do the cleanup itself but neglected to say the oil company was already obligated to do this from a prior law suit. The money in the current suit would have been reparations for damage already done to creeks, wetlands, and aquatic life. For Christy’s efforts, seemingly, Exxon made a large contribution to the Republican Governor’s Association, which Christy just happens to chair.

The Greek base for the word “hypocrisy” means “jealous,” “play acting,” “acting out,” “coward,” and/or “dissembling.” Hypocrites often get away with being hypocrisitic (word parturition alert!) because, according to Machiavelli (who should know), “the mass of mankind accepts what seems as what is; nay, are often touched more nearly by appearances than by realities.” Hypocrites even hypocritize (second word parturition!) themselves because “so convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do” (Ben Franklin, of course).

Sadly that last bit is the crux of the problem. Hypocrisy is almost impossible to “cure” because those with the problem are not aware of it or, perhaps more on point, are well aware of the advantages of dissembling to an audience of dissemblage deglutitionators (third and fourth parturition alert! — this might be a record!) and so do it with gusto and glee (inner glee naturally).

Fortunately, we now have technology to save us from the likes of Governor Christy. With a little creative softwarology (fifth!), Apple’s new watch, which apparently can already do everything from tasing a mugger to cleaning up your cat’s hairballs, could include an app that has amazing Internet-based fact-checking chops. In short, it can detect hypocrisy instantly and upon detecting said hypocrisy instantly shout “YOU LIE!” at the top of its digital lungs while simultaneously texting and tweeting the same announcement to all devices everywhere. It would be called something like CRAPZAP (you fill in the appropriate excrejective [sixth!!] to define the poop-type). For a moment I thought the app should also inject sodium pentathol into the offending party (truth serum levels, of course, not lethal injection), but that would be too cruel.

OMG! I’m one of them!

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