real journalism

Bennett Diction

Everyone in the know knows Bill Bennett.

He's the self-appointed moral arbiter of the nation. His cutely books like "A Book of Values", "A Children's Book of Values" and "A Children's Book of Heroes" were best sellers because his readership would rather take their easy, unself-sacrificing platitudes from a man who's own vices like gambling and now racism would give pause to people who take the New Testament more seriously than Bennett apparently does.

This former Reagan "drug czar" has long been a darling of the "Rightly wrong" and like the most vocal of his ilk, has his own syndicated radio program to add to the din of conservative chatter already on the air.

On Friday, he spoke one of those unfortunate subconscious "but this is what I really think" beliefs over the air when he said, "It's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

College-educated Mr. Bennett apparently didn't take many history classes, because it only takes a superficial knowledge of America to know that with every wave of immigrants, came an associated rise in the criminal activity of America do to the new immigrants. This happened with the Germans, Irish, Italian, Vietnamese and most of the others that found America to be less than the refuge for the tired, the poor and the huddled masses than advertised.

Poverty, the scourge of those at the bottom of the capitalistic ladder, brings with it psychosocial problems that shouldn't take Mr. Bennett that long to recognize. But in his white, upper-class world, thoughts of poor people are such a "bummer". George Bush found this out last month with hurricane Katrina and look what happened to him. A major bummer for the Chimp.

Now, Mr. Bennett is getting his just desserts. The White House is distancing itself from his racist spewings. Editorials across the nation are excoriating him for such utterances and the only person (besides the largely brain-dead crowd at FreeRepublic.com) is his brother, influential Washington attorney, William Bennett.

Poor Bill! It was only two years ago that his moral compass was found to point quite often toward gambling establishments where he admitted to losing at least $8 million over ten years. Now most people these days are pretty laissez faire over gambling, but the irony of the Morality Man with a gambling addiction still amuses many.

And the hypocrites of the Republican Right continue to come out of the woodwork. Just this week, besides Bennett's faux pas, we saw the downfall of Tom Delay and the burgeoning insider trading scandal of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. He was contemplating a run for President in 2008. I guess that dream's gone caput.

As some have quite rightly said, "Time wounds all heels".

posted by mauiloa @ 1:28 PM