Hypocrisy is a tricky trait. We’re more likely to spot it in others than in ourselves.

Recently, pop stars have been falling all over themselves to apologize, give back the money or confess they had no idea that they were paid millions to perform for the family of bloody Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Now that Gadhafi is the Monster of the Month, Nelly Furtado, Beyoncé, Usher, 50 Cent, Mariah Carey and, er, the London School of Economics all admit that they took money from Libya, and a number of them, including Nelly and Usher, are giving it to charity or something. Beyoncé claims she sent hers to Haiti ages ago, but there was no mention of Libya at the time.

It’s a million-dollar hit for the stars, but blood money is bad for your image, so donate those dollars.

It’s easy to make fun of people who construct a moral code one tweet at a time, but let’s be honest. It wasn’t so long ago that Gadhafi seemed kinda cute. Remember when the United Nations wouldn’t let him pitch his tent on the lawn? Remember the documents, released by WikiLeaks, that featured the flying squad of buxom Ukrainian nurses and that followed him everywhere?

You just forget that he has long been one of the Middle East’s foremost terrorists and that, at one point, Libya took formal responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, an act that killed 270 people. Aug. 16, 2003. Look it up.

So all these people knew they were singing and dancing for a murderer, but he was a murderer with money, all of it extracted from the Libyan people, many of whom are now dying under his boot.

But let’s not get too high and mighty. We’ve all been on the Libyan gravy train for years. There’s a helpful page on the Government of Canada website called Doing Business with Libya, which tells you how to follow the lead of Canadian companies such as SNC Lavelin and Suncor.

The site says the value of Canadian exports to Libya was almost $250 million in 2009, the year in which the Lockerbie bomber was released from a U.K. prison and welcomed home by Gadhafi as a national hero.

What’s the difference between getting paid a million bucks for a song-and-dance routine and SNC Lavelin being paid $500 million to build the Benghazi Airport? Or Suncor drawing 50,000 barrels of oil a day out of Libya’s now-scorched earth, as the Globe and Mail reports?

So, if you feel like tossing stones at Nelly, remember that biblical suggestion: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Or at least hearken to The Who and don’t get fooled again.