Criteria Shaping.  There is probably a multisyllabic word for it that ends with -ism, but I don’t know what it is.  I do know it when I see it, and the left uses it routinely.  We saw a great example of it recently when Rush Limbaugh referred to a leftist operative’s claimed behavior as that of a “slut.”  Well, the left went bonkers over that, getting offended as they often do when it’s not one of their own doing it.

As is invariably the case, the left’s own people have been calling conservative women far worse names and doing it far more often than Rush ever did.  This was an outlier event for Rush and, while I didn’t think anything about it when I heard it that day, he apologized.  it wasn’t a leftist apology like “I apologize if I offended you” either.  It was the real deal.

Bill Maher in particular has been insulting Sarah Palin quite a bit, and it’s so obvious the left couldn’t ignore their own hypocrisy this time around.  So they had to engage in criteria shaping, which is finding the difference in two similar situations and making that the deciding criteria for why whatever they’ve been doing is acceptable and why what the right did is the greatest offense of the century.

Bill Maher is a comedian.  That’s what made it acceptable.  The left has been calling Rush an “entertainer” for years, which implies it’s not acceptable for an entertainer to call somebody a slut unless he falls into the narrower category of comedian.  And the left says these things as if it’s established criteria that is known to everybody and known going back to the beginning of time.  Whatever criteria shows up to fit a given situation is instantaneously eternal.  It’s like moving a goal post and saying it’s been there all along.

Criteria shaping is also used every four years to fit their presidential candidate, but that’s for another post.