It is axiomatic among psychologists and psychiatrists that often the behaviour people hate most is the one they hate most in themselves. I believe they call it “projection.”
This is not, because I am not an authority, a lesson in undergraduate pop psychology,
Just a reflection on a couple of the most recent interesting revelations. Sarah Palin hates the idea of “socialized” medicine, health care with “Death Panels” and rationing of care. Now it revealed, she revealed it herself that when they lived in Skagway, Alaska they would take the ferry to Whitehorse for health care. How she arranged to get it without a health care card I can’t imagine. If she did it fraudulently, then the deed is even darker.
Today I read that a California State senator, conservative Republican Roy Ashburn, an ardent foe of Gay Rights has “come out.” He was tracked down in a gay bar and confessed. And wasn’t there another conservative lawmaker who was caught last year doing unspeakable things in a men’s public lavatory?
My favourite of these self-haters has to be J. Edgar Hoover. Back in the 70s I interviewed a Washington journalist who wrote an exhaustive study of the F.B.I. I remember being startled by what I read. I asked him “Is Hoover a homosexual?” His reply: “Of course!” That was many years before all the post mortem disclosures about Hoover. Clive Tolson, his number two man was probably also his lover. Stories surfaced about Hoover’s obsession with cross-dressing. Yet here was the man who targeted the gay community with utter ferocity. He raided gay bathhouses; he allied with Roy Cohn, the McCarthy lawyer and homosexual subject of the play “Angels in America.” Hoover never married and it was said that his favourite person was Shirley Temple.
“Projection” may not always have negative results. Perhaps someone who is secretly a bigot and hates himself for it, will present himself as a fighter for human rights, and will actually work hard at it. It becomes a kind of self-cleansing. But I’m now in way over my head. I apologize to the professionals for my dabbling.
The Sarah Palin story and the California state senator “coming out” were just too good to ignore. Roy Ashburn, a conservative Republican,
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