Paul Ryan, phony altruist (What would Ayn say?)
by digby
Michael Shaw at BagNewNotes catches the media enabling yet another Paul Ryan lie --- they allowed him to stage a photo-op of him and his wife "cleaning" dishes that were already clean at a soup kitchen. A couple of them noted the phoniness, but for the most part, they just published the staged photos:
Looking at the pictures published by CBS, AP, NBC and the NYT, it appears as if Paul Ryan rolled up his sleeves and helped clean up after a meal served at an Ohio soup kitchen. That’s in contrast, though, to the WAPO post which indicates Ryan not only arrived after all the homeless diners had left, but also after the kitchen was cleaned up. Although cautiously worded, the WAPO story indicates that Ryan, with his family present and donning aprons, took already clean dishes, then soaped them up and washed them for the cameras as if he was really contributing.
Because there have been so many allegations made about the Romney/Ryan campaign and truth telling, my question is: did Ryan in fact stage his involvement in the clean up of the meal, and to what extent did the press collude with the campaign to make it appear so?
Whereas several outlets published photos of Ryan getting “hands on,” not all indicated the potential misrepresentation. Take the shot above by NBC reporter Alex Moe, for example, who published this photo to Instagram. The caption of her post is technically accurate: “Paul Ryan washes dished at soup kitchen outside Youngstown, OH.” For those who know no better, however, it gives no sense Ryan was washing clean dishes.
Here's Ryan pretending to care about poor people:
Shaw's criticism of the press here is right on. They all should have noted that Ryan staged this little scene. But in my mind, it's even more pertinent because Ryan's Randian philosophy which holds that altruism is immoral.
Recall that Ryan said as recently as 2009:
"Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism. And this to me is what matters the most: it is not enough to say that President Obama’s taxes are too big or that the health care plan does not work, or this or that policy reason. It is the morality of what is occurring right now; and how it offends the morality of individuals working for their own free will, to produce, to achieve, to succeed that is under attack."
In case you are wondering what Rand actually said about morality in this respect:
Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society. Today, the conflict has reached its ultimate climax; the choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.
Or how about that strapping fictional hero John Galt?
A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness—non-existence—as its standard of value; it rewards an absence, a defect: weakness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the fault, the flaw—the zero.
Parasites, 47%, "takers", they're all --- nothing.
Ryan must have had a epiphany sometime in 2012, because these days he's telling anyone who asks that Rand is ridiculous:
I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are and what my beliefs are.
Her philosophy is kind of a ridiculous -- one of opinion of objectivism, I'm a devout Catholic. How can you be -- you know, believe in that stuff?
Go back and read John Galt's tedious speech (if you can bear it) and you will see how much Ryan's "takers vs makers" echoes the points within it.
This is why it sickens me to see him have the utter gall to stage pictures of him and his wife pretending to clean dishes for poor people. It's exactly the opposite of what this con-artist who celebrates selfishness stated he believed in just a couple of years ago. In fact, Ryan is far worse than your average Republican who believes in "faith-based" charity and other means to help poor people, even if they demand fealty to their belief system in order to get it. Paul Ryan believes that helping poor people at all is immoral. These pictures are the ultimate pretense.
If you'd like to see him out of politics completely, you can give a little something to his congressional opponent Rob Zerban here. If you'd like to enter a drawing to win a B-52's platinum award at the same time, you can do it here.
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