Crow:
Oh, I hate it when they talk during the movie... oh.
So, you want to criticize something, and you could be viewed as
hypocritical for doing so, since some of the criticism would apply to you, as well. How do you avoid being called a hypocrite? Quite simply, by saying, or implicitly noting, the hypocrisy of what you're saying.
This works on the same principle as a
Lampshade Hanging; it dismisses a problem by bringing it to the fore briefly. Whether it works or not depends on exactly how hypocritical you're being.
See also
Self Deprecation,
Biting The Hand Humor,
Hypocritical Humor.
Examples:
Live Action TV
- This may have happened on Tim And Eric Awesome Show Great Job. Tim and Eric recruited David Liebe Hart, a down-on-his-luck California public access TV icon, and they make fun of the acts he takes seriously by putting them in the context of a show on Adult Swim. Later on, during the fake Distant Finale, another actor impersonates David Liebe Hart and makes fun of this very practice.
- On Good Eats, Alton will note when the advice he's giving contradicts something that he's said in a previous episode, and explain the reasons for the change. The most notable example is his "STUFFING IS EVIL" stance; he originally decried stuffing as being a horrible cooking method, and since has multiply clarified his views to mean specifically that stuffing turkeys is a bad idea, while it works quite well with some other foods.
- And then he did an entire episode devoted to stuffing turkeys.
Real Life
- Occasionally seen in online debates.
- This is the whole idea behind the the phrase, "Do as I say, not as I do."
- "We hold the truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." The overall consensus among historians is that the Founding Fathers were well aware of just how hypocritical that statement actually was when they used it.
Video Games
- Played for drama (and technically after the fact) in Fate Stay Night. After berating Shirou the entire route and the two before it for being too soft to kill, Tohsaka realizes she is too as she can't bring herself to stab Sakura and is nearly killed instead. 'I guess I can't get mad at Shirou anymore.'
Web Original
Webcomics
Western Animation
- The Simpsons: Sideshow Bob: "Yes, I'm aware of the irony of appearing on television in order to decry it, so don't bother pointing that out."
- On a related note, the movie version of Fahrenheit 451 played this up by having an announcer read the opening credits instead of putting them onscreen. In a very stylish moment, at the end when Montag is among the Book People, words appear on the screen for the first time to say The End.
- An episode of Brandy And Mr Whiskers has Whiskers obsessed with a portable video game. At the end, he states that he's learned his lesson, that there's better things to do then spend hours after hours staring at a flickering screen. Brandy pauses, looks at the screen, and nervously asks if the moral applies to television. Whiskers, realizing the Broken Aesop, immediately says one can never watch too much television. A cartoon remote then turns them off.
