The latest column from The Stranger’s editor, Rich Smith, evokes the words of the great fictional character Inigo Montoya from the classic film, The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” 

In this case, the word is “hypocrisy.” Smith asserts Washington Policy Center’s Elizabeth Hovde is a hypocrite because Hovde once suffered a traumatic brain injury due to a skiing accident and was hospitalized for more than a month yet does not support WACares, the newly created social program and accompanying payroll tax in our state that promises a long-term care benefit. 

WACares didn’t exist at the time, Hovde wasn’t calling for the creation of something like it at the time, and even if it had existed, she would not have qualified for it, and if there is a scenario in which she could have qualified for it, it’s unlikely she’d have paid into it since she already had private insurance.  Yet, Smith sticks with his hypocrisy charge because he imagines a what-if scenario in which she could have qualified and opted in to the WACares plan anyway.

According to The Stranger, a further strike against Hovde is that in the accident’s aftermath, her friends and colleagues tried to raise money for medical bills with a charity race and started a crowd-fund to help pay medical bills.  The two efforts collected more than $11,000 dollars. Since other people don’t have that strong a network of friends or have influential colleagues in the media or in some cases do not even have friends that speak English, according to Smith, Hovde cannot oppose WACares without exposing her own hypocrisy.  

Smith mansplains to Hovde that “her failure to recognize her own privilege, her understanding of the charity afforded to her as simply a nice thing that happened rather than a product of her place in society as a columnist and a white, married person with a place to live” is a further indictment of her hypocrisy. Maybe it was Marxsplaining rather than mansplaining, but either way, it has little to do with WACares. Personally, I’d have thought Hovde’s experience living on her own at the age of 15 would have given her a few “get out of privilege free” cards, but the rules keep changing and it is hard to keep up. 

How does this alleged Hovde “privilege” become hypocrisy? Because Smith asserts Hovde “lean[ed] on her personal connections to help pay her long-term health care bills” and yet has used her career to try “to stop the government from doing the same thing for less-fortunate Washingtonians.”  

Let’s set aside the absurdity of the insinuation that the lady recovering from a traumatic brain injury and hospitalized “leaned” on friends like Tony Soprano leaned on his earners.  Smith asserts what friends did voluntarily, for a limited time, for a specific person in need, at no cost to Hovde or the people who did not participate, is the “same thing” as a payroll tax that is involuntary, costs everyone (except those lucky enough to have used the limited opt-out), is not limited in duration, is executed through state action instead of friends and colleagues, and provides a benefit for the rich as well as the poor. 

How does that make Hovde a hypocrite? Excellent question! It doesn’t, unless you want to play a game of false equivalency and stretch the definition of the word like a Washington State Supreme Court Justice looking at the definition of “excise tax.” Not since Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito became “Twins” have I seen such a resemblance.

According to Smith’s logic in The Stranger, Hovde must support WACares and the payroll tax because she once needed catastrophic care and it was largely paid for by her private insurance, but now she must support the state plan because some people don’t have private insurance. 

No matter how financially suspect, no matter how many inflationary pressures our paychecks are already experiencing, no matter what flaws the program has, no matter what alternative approaches might be argued for, refusing to support THIS program structured THIS way is, according to The Stranger, hypocritical.

Basically, the word “hypocrisy” is abused here because it’s a better headline to slam a “right wing pundit” for it than running a column headlined, “Right wing pundit wrong on policy, here’s why.” Like moths to a flame, human beings are drawn to look at car wrecks and moral failings.  Disagreement doesn’t quite cut it. 

Smith asserts Hovde’s concerns about tax burdens on the poor are disingenuous.  He doesn’t feel obliged to explain this insight because too often pundits on the Left seem comfortable assuming that the policy disagreement they have is a fight between good and evil. The truth is, sometimes, it’s just an argument over better policy. But arguments over better policy don’t create heroes. Keeping the worldview that the policy disagreement is one where the virtuous stand against evil, selfish, uncaring monsters enables one to remain a hero in their own mind. Hovde's advocacy (along with the rest of WPC) for a broad-based sales tax cut doesn't count as "caring" because it's not on The Stranger's agenda. See how convenient that is for their argument? 

In the midst of inflation, skyrocketing prices at the grocery store, gas price hikes including a 35 to 45 cent per gallon hike attributable to a new state tax, newly risen interest rates and skyrocketing rents, the Washington State Legislature passed a new social program with a payroll tax shrinking the size of every worker’s paycheck even more, and the response of The Stranger is to attack the person who disagrees with that policy.  But they stand for the workers and Hovde doesn’t. That’s an interesting perspective, but one with which I think a lot of workers would disagree.  

My friend Todd Myers shared this story that reminds me of this unusually personal attack on Hovde by a print publication. In the 1970s there was a player for the Oakland A’s who was really struggling and whenever he went to the plate, the fans would boo him. He made a joke of it and had the team give him a jersey that replaced his name with “Boo,” for which Major League Baseball fined him for having an illegal jersey. One day at the team lunch, Reggie Jackson sat down next to him and after a minute said, “Fans don’t boo nobodies.” 

Elizabeth can wear this lazy and unnecessarily personal attack as a badge of honor.