The Ziegler Story and the Trouble with Hypocrisy

Yes, we've heard the story. How could we not? It has been everywhere in the education space and the Florida news space and the people who are sick of culture warrior right wingers space. And I understand the impulse behind the social media memes, dark jokes, the general dance of schadenfreude.

But here's what we need to remember.

At the center of this story is a rape (alleged). In the aftermath, a woman so afraid that she wouldn't leave her home for two days. And while the police and media have dutifully withheld her name, there are enough details circulating that I expect every person in Sarasota County knows exactly who this woman is. 

They certainly know Christian Ziegler (Florida GOP chieftain) and his wife Bridget (Moms for Liberty co-founder, Leadership Institute director of school board program). They're supposed to be a rising power couple, with ties to lots of powerful Florida folks. Before Moms for Liberty, Bridget co-founded a conservative school board group with Erika Donalds, half of another big Florida power couple. 

For a simply layout of the facts, the police interviews, the pertinent documents, head over to the indispensable Mercedes Schneider, who has it all. It's all disturbing, right down to the detail that Christian Ziegler walked into the building at 2:29 and walked out at 3:07.

Nobody really appears to have denied anything--not the three-way a year ago, not the events surrounding the alleged rape. The only point of dispute is whether the sex in October of this year was consensual or not. 

Many have noted that we're only paying attention because the Zieglers have appointed themselves the morality police for so many others, and that's partly true, but I really want to hope that no matter what the surrounding circumstances, "GOP party chief allegedly rapes longtime friend" would be considered newsworthy all by itself. 

But the thruple sex. The fact that the victim was "mostly in for her" meaning Bridget. The extramarital aspect. This is the stuff that would get filed in the "consenting adults will do their thing" file if not for Bridget Ziegler's entire political career of castigating consenting adults, her heavy-handed help in creating and supporting "Don't Say Gay." 

And as a board president--remember when member Tom Edwards finally walked out of a meeting after the gazzillionth time of being publicly attacked for being gay. The actual moment was when a woman was attacking Edwards, the crowd was booing her, and Ziegler shushed the crowd and told them to let her finish speaking. This was in March of 2023, so roughly five months after she had gotten naked with another woman and her husband. 

Moms For Liberty at first tweeted out an indignant "How dare people pick on another powerful conservative woman" but seem now to have shifted to "You know she wasn't a M4L officer when she was doing all this, right?" Some days I imagine that Moms for Liberty leaders have permanent facial creases from slapping their foreheads as they cry, "She did what??!!" This Ziegler news comes right alongside a breaking story of M4L boosting a racist Christmas event from a racist group. 

Adam Laats called this long ago--a group like M4L inevitably has trouble controlling its message, falling prey to everything from attracting really out there members to local leaders who forget not to say the quiet parts out loud. And the Zieglers join an uncountably long list of people who are eager to impose their morality on others who turn out to have trouble following it themselves.

But people who holler "Hypocrites" and point loudly will be disappointed as well. Hypocrisy never, ever carries the kind of punch some folks expect it to.

That's mostly because hypocrisy as we understand it-- believing something but violating that belief yourself--is really, really rare. Yeti riding a unicorn while pooping rainbows rare.

We diagnose hypocrisy by observing, "That person is condemning A and doing B, and A and B are the same thing! Hypocrite!" But what's really happening is that for the alleged hypocrite, A and B are not the same at all. They see a critical difference between the two, and if you want to understand them better, try to see what difference they think they see, even if you don't believe it's there. This phenomenon is not reserved for villains; it's a basic human mechanism, a way that we make peace with the times we don't quite live up to our own standards. 

At any rate, the Zieglers may pay a price for all this mess. Christian is facing down noise from his own party  (thought not all), and Bridget is getting some bad press. But dealing with this kind of storm is what Christian Ziegler does damage control for a living, and it's not hard to see a pathway out of this for the couple. Christian is already declaring the sex consensual, so no rape, no crime. And the three-way sex? Consenting adults and nobody else's business, which is true, and I'm going to make my prediction now that there will be an argument somewhere along the lines of Bridget Ziegler didn't do gay stuff because A) her husband was there and B) it just a one-time adventure, and so she is completely not like all those terrible LGBTQ people who still should not be mentioned anywhere around impressionable young people. 

Furthermore, Bridget isn't accused of raping anyone. And Moms for Liberty has already invoked "She wasn't with us at the time." 

In other words, if you think this whole mess is going to knock the Zieglers out of power, I suspect you are in for some disappointment. If you think some key folks are going to realize that there is something rotten at the heart of the values by which they operate--well, I'm betting not. 

There will be some jousting in the days ahead. Damage control comes in two types-- the type that's for limiting and minimizing damage from a crisis, and the type that's about maximizing and targeting damage form a crisis, and most of our modern political crises are battles between those two forces. And it would be a positive thing for Bridget Ziegler to lose power (and in so doing cut power of the Florida branch of MAGA-dom), but she has the easiest path out of this by simply disassociating herself from her husband. 

It would all be interesting in a sad, horse-racey, political gamesmanship kind of way, if it weren't that the central (alleged) crime is a rape, a violation of a long-time friendship so traumatizing that a woman was afraid to leave her home for two days.