Just saw Bennet interviewed. He said that he has nothing to apologize for and that, in fact, he is OWED an apology by those who insist he has something to apologize for. The Repubes no longer feel any need to parse anything. They just go with the brazen lie and the press repeats it.

What gambling addict said was a variation on Ebenezer Scrooge’s “It would reduce the surplus population” line from “A Christmas Carol”. He said Blacks should be aborted because they are innate criminals. He can try to take it back all he wants, but that’s what he said.

What gambling addict Bill Bennett said was a variation on Ebenezer Scrooge’s “It would reduce the surplus population” line from “A Christmas Carol”. He said Blacks should be aborted because they are innate criminals. He can try to take it back all he wants, but that’s what he said.

What he is really saying is:

“If a professor at Yale is writing a book on it, the idea of racial genocide must have some validity to it - perhaps we shouldn’t discount the notion so wholeheartedly just yet. Hypothetically, it may even solve our current tax problems through an elimination of all those darkies that are draining the average white citizen’s hard-earned money. Hey, if sending them all back to Africa was too expensive in the late 18th century (as Jefferson failed to realize), state-comandeered abortions may be our only hope of curing the nation’s problems!”

What Gambler Bill is trying to say is that Eugenics must make a comeback if conservatives want to achieve their goals for BushWorld.

I think what he’s saying is that he’s under the impression that blacks proportionately commit more crime than white people. Maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know. But I am pretty sure his intention was that increasing the GNP was not a valid argument to oppose abortion, just as some miguided attempt to lower crime rates shouldn’t be an argument to support abortion (based on the fact that blacks commit more crime). If the facts support his assumption, his statements, if taken in context, are quite rational. If anything, he was defusing a crackpot argument from pro-lifers. If blacks aren’t more likely to commit crimes, then let’s refute that. Because that was the only “racist” statement he made. It’s clear his point was that abortion is bad, and his example was used to illustrate an outrageous example of rationalizing it. Bennett’s “facts” may be racist, but his statements didn’t seem to indicate he was. This whole episode is no different than Bush trying to marginalize environmentalists by saying that they care more about owls than people.

I’m no fan of Bennett, Bush, or the modern GOP in general, but when the left flips its lid Pelosi-style (that is to say, nutty name calling based on sound bites taken out of context), it’s not doing itself any favors.

While I agree with your points, TatCoat, and I find the people on the Corner absolutely loathesome - especially in regards to the issue of abortion (and especially that …. ugh… Kathryn Lopez, but I digress), your argument is off in one area. Goldberg was saying that Bennett’s point is/could be rational as far as STATISTICS go– Goldberg says if abortion numbers go up in high crime areas, which in some cities are black, over-crowding drops, educational resources aren’t stretched as thin, crime goes down etc etc. Maybe.
You are taking his mild placation of Bennett’s statement to say that the ACT of mass-abortions, and especially those encouraged or mandated by the state, is rational. In Jonah’s defense, that’s not what he means. A small difference but there is is.
Because OF COURSE that crowd would never, ever say the government can tell a woman she must have an abortion. That would be wrong. The government can’t meddle in a woman’s … oh, wait a sec…

Apparently, Silver Dollar Bill fancies himself a latter day Jonathan Swift with his modest proposal. But then, intellectual pretension has always been the hallmark of his career: he’s the Hindenburg of “public intellectuals,” hovering over public discourse with a shrug and a nasty sneer, but like all gasbags ready to flame out when a match is lit under him. Boy did he litter the New Jersey countryside when this one exploded.

No one with an IQ soaring to triple digits suggests that he favors aborting all Black babies, or any other such genocidal nonsense, as his “defense” suggests. (Would he favor aborting all babies of straw men and women? Not a chance! He needs them — a new generation of straw men every 20 years or so.)

The point, of course, is that of all the “Socratic” counter-examples he could’ve plucked from the thin air of his imagination, he chose one linking blacks and crime, although neither had been mentioned previously in the conversation. Billy’s got blacks and crime on his mind, and it just popped out when he wasn’t thinking too hard. No doubt his thoughts had been swimming in such images since the bogus tales of rape and murder were screamed in panic from the Super Dome and Convention Center during Katrina.

Blacks and crime have been on the one-armed bandit’s mind a lot over the years — most notably when Bennett was the Drug Czar during the late 80s. He’s the one who set the tone for how the War on Drugs was waged: with lots of guns, more prisons, and very little treatment. (Dr. Herbert Kleber of Yale, a renowned expert on drug addiction and treatment, resigned from Bennett’s drug army in frustration.) Thanks in part to him, countless inner cities have been further devastated, making hundreds of thousands of drug addicts and small-time dealers into felons without doing a damned thing about the drug problem. And guess what, folks? Blacks aren’t disproportionately drug users, but they are: (1) more likely than whites to be arrested for similar drug crimes; (2) once arrested, more likely than whites to be convicted on similar charges; and (3) once convicted more likely to be incarcerated. The Sentencing Project and other research organizations have lots of data on this.

The reasons for this are complex, and not all of them have to do with racism per se. But then, that’s true of all crime — as well as a host of other social pathologies. One legacy of our racist past, which was only exacerbated when Johnson’s War on Poverty programs were perverted in their implementation, is that blacks disproportionately live in neighborhoods in which poverty is both highly concentrated and multi-generational. Those two factors are more highly correlated by far with crime, out-of-wedlock births, single-parent households, low educational attainment, etc. than other factors, such as race.

But pondering those complexities is beyond our Man of Virtue. This shouldn’t be surprising. Here’s a man who drops millions on slot machines, when he would have much better odds playing Blackjack. Why? Maybe counting to 21 and counting cards is too taxing for our Distinguished Fellow of the Heritage Foundation. Much easier to drop a token in a slot and pull the handle; at least he’s not losing the “milk money.”

I think Bob’s got it. Fast Billy was making a rational argument that inadverntly revealed something about how he thinks on other subjects. It is not racist to note that African Americans suffer disproportionately from all social ills, all of them a result from African-Americans suffering disproportionately from poverty. If Bennett had been thinking purely as a sociologist he might have suggested what he did as a way of reducing poverty. But out popped the word “crime.”

Submitted too soon.

Out pops the word “crime” and he’s caught by his own unconscious word association game.

So to parse what he was saying. Shorter Fast Billy: Look, I’m a smart guy, I was doing the kind of thing smart guys like I do on talk shows, normally we smart guys get away with this kind of thing, so I want you to judge me based on what I was trying to appear to be not on what a slip of the tongue reveals me to be.

Nice work on the parse this image, Tat. It has been noted in some corners what the subtext is of Bennett’s statement and how that might matter more than what he actually said. Oy.

JONATHAN NOT SO SWIFT

BILL BENNETT HAS WON this year’s Jonathan Not So Swift Award. [story] Each year a prize is awarded to the public figure who with a dubious public utterance most ill approaches the style of satirist Jonathan Swift. Those who

The fact that only one of the nine most recent responders could identify and comprehend the use of an absurd argument during a rhetorical exchange is laughable. What’s pitiful is the eagerness these armchair critics display to assign the vilest motives to Bennett’s comment. But consider: these eight are in agreement with the White House. Can you live THAT down?

Um, what?

Fast Billy is trying to say that he was offering a “sample argument” to the caller. It’s the caller’s fault for daring to call and engage him, right? Let’s get the caller!

I’m with Agi - he was saying that abortion is cool as long as it’s done with eugenics in mind.

You guys might want to check out PBS’ “Washington Week” website to see Gwen Ifill roll her eyes over this one.

Only through willful imbecility, or, more likely, unrestrained malice, can anyone claim that Bill Bennett advocated aborting black babies. Bennett’s words flatly contradict such a claim. I could defend Bill Bennett by listing his decades-long efforts to restore our culture and help those harmed by our societies failing institutions, but to what purpose? Those here and elsewhere who twist the plain and obvious meaning of Bill Bennett’s comments into a hideous lie have shown such utter contempt for honest discourse that further comment is unnecessary.

Bill was thinking “I would like to kill black babies”. It is obvious to anyone with a brain that he is a racist, and if given the chance, would live as “King of the Whites” in a whitewashed perfect world with nothing but white WASP subjects and some casinos. He an intollerant, narrow-minded, right-wing bigot with lemonade for brains. He’s a classless loser who is ugly too! He should have been aborted, but that’s hind site. He’s just like all the other GOP pigs. His mother wears army boots. He ain’t dope, ’cause he likes the pope. We should abort all white babies so we can get rid of the corporations.

Peace

The connection between Bennett’s Drug Czar role and black genocide didn’t escape me.