Greenwald on war-mongering chickenhawks and adulterous “family values” icons

Ed Brayton recently picked up a copy of Glenn Greenwald’s book Great American Hypocrites and highlighted a particularly juicy bit in the first chapter where Greenwald exposes the right-wing archetype that is John Wayne for the fraud he was:

But the sinister character represented by John Wayne is worse than merely hypocritical or deceitful. Those who wallow in feelings of inadequate masculinity become quite destructive, incomparably danger. Those who lack in their private lives any evidence of warrior courage -- from Bill Kristol and Rush Limbaugh to Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney -- are far more likely to cheer on unnecessary wars and other acts of pointless brutality in order to feel the vicarious sensations of courage and masculine strength that they actually lack in their real lives. And those whose private lives are filled with moral disgraces and wrecked marriages, yet who want to impose "Traditional Morality" on others -- the likes of Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, and John Wayne, and a seemingly endless slew of "Values Voters" leaders -- become the most invasive, the most authoritarian or moralizers. Public moralizing against others becomes the only tool available to obscure the profound, grotesque moral failures in their own lives.

Heads and nails, as always. Really, the only people blind to these hucksters’ glaring hypocrisy is anyone gullible or foolish enough to take their spiel for granted.