Booking Bennett

You see, Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues contained various moral lessons from Aesop's Fables. So, if Bill Bennett has made a mistake in his personal life, he must have been wrong about the educational utility of everything in his book. And, come to think of it, every other virtue and moral and fable and story he ever promoted, advanced, or advocated must be wrong now as well. It's okay for kids to do drugs now, too, I suppose. And I guess it's okay for the president of the United States to enforce sexual-harassment laws while he plays the Sultan and the Slave Girl with an intern and then lies about it under oath. Hell, it must be okay for terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center now.

This sea change is all because Bill Bennett plays high-stakes video poker from midnight to 6:00 AM.

That seems to be the upshot of Joshua Green's and Jonathan Alter's newsitorials about Bill Bennett's gambling.

I find it hard to recall a more asinine and intellectually shameless "gotcha" story in my adult lifetime.

Before I sound like I'm protesting too much, let me get all of the full-disclosure and "yes, but" stuff out of the way. I'm a big believer in the looking-for-trouble school of life. Bennett bet millions in an environment where he had to know getting caught would likely get him in a lot of trouble. I think Bennett gambles too much and I completely understand why opponents of gambling and decent people generally are disappointed in Bennett. Also, I should note that I don't know Bennett that well. I've had one lunch with him and a total of maybe 20 minutes of conversation with him beyond that. I am close friends with some of his close friends. I've known about his gambling for years (though certainly not the dollar amounts) and I've been astounded by both the media's failure to catch him and the recklessness of Bennett's behavior — not the moral recklessness, necessarily, but the political recklessness. Many liberals despise Bill Bennett and — until now — their potshots rested on such inanities as his weight and his success. Now, fair or not, many liberal pundits will make snide comments about Bennett's gambling in a quasi-McCarthyite way — "Billy the Greek" or some such — as if they are alluding to some scandal we all know about that need not be explained.

But there is no scandal. Yes, Bennett made mistakes. And yes, I can surely see why some religious conservatives who take a dim view of gambling might be disappointed in the man. But I can assure you that any man — or woman — held in high esteem will disappoint the public in one way or another when scrutinized. "Disappointment," however, is not a standard taught at the Columbia School of Journalism. Usually, to have caused a "scandal," a public figure is supposed to have broken the law, lied, cheated, stolen, been hypocritical, or victimized someone in some significant way. But no one has charged any of these things. The only conceivable victims here are the Bennett family, and a little bird tells me that they'll do just fine. The same bird tells me that Alter and Green couldn't give a fig about Bennett's family. As for hypocrisy, neither author mentions the word.

Indeed, the stunner of the story — that Bennett wagered $8 million over the last decade — isn't even as stunning as Green and Alter desperately want it to be. There isn't any evidence that he lost $8 million dollars, only that he's bought $8 million in chips over a decade. If, as is more likely, his losses are half that, he'd have spent less than what numerous movie stars and CEOs spend on their country estates, private jets, and divorces.

Even the authors of the articles admit that the only thing Bennett has done is spend a lot of money on something you wouldn't expect Bill Bennett to be spending his money on. In other words, the "news" here is not that a "moralizer" or "virtuecrat" has betrayed his convictions, broken the law, or anything of the sort. The news here is that he likes to have a good time in a perfectly legal and unhypocritical way. But, the manner in which he has a good time shocks liberals who think "moralizers" can't enjoy life. We don't drink, except maybe in that bitter-white-guy way. We don't tell dirty jokes except perhaps as racists or sexists. We're either prudes or hypocrites or both. And so, when a prominent conservative "moralist" ends up behaving in a way that seems inappropriate in the light of liberal assumptions about conservatives, it must be newsworthy. If that behavior embarrasses him in front of religious conservatives all the better.

In fact, you can always tell there's a hit job in the works when the victim is criticized for not being hypocritical. "The popular author, lecturer and Republican Party activist speaks out, often indignantly, about almost every moral issue except one — gambling," writes Alter in Newsweek. "It's not hard to see why." Green is windier on this point, but writes, "If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler." In other words, if Bennett had spoken out against gambling he'd have been denounced for hypocrisy. And if Bennett had spoken in favor of gambling, he'd have been denounced for defending his preferred vice. If he's in the crosshairs for A, he'd surely be in the crosshairs for not-A as well.

But the real sign that this is payback of a kind can be found in Green's comparisons to impeachment. Green slyly notes that Bennett "gambled throughout impeachment" as if this somehow compounds Bennett's iniquity. Excuse me, but what does one have to do with the other? Casino gambling, as Green notes, is state-sanctioned in 28 states. Throw in lotteries and you can count on one hand the number of states that don't endorse gambling. Meanwhile, lying under oath, "sleeping" with interns, minting bogus legal privileges to protect one's private conduct, etc., are not — to the best of my knowledge — sanctioned in any state. Local governments do not put up billboards reading "Live Your Dreams: Boink the Interns." Bennett is not in charge of enforcing the laws on gambling, the way Clinton was in charge of enforcing sexual-harassment laws. Bennett never promised the country in a 60 Minutes interview during a presidential campaign that he would never gamble again. I could go on, but ultimately the only similarity between the two cases is the one imposed on it by those who dislike "moralizing" conservatives.

This brings me to why these articles bother me so much. First of all, the real hypocrites here are the authors. Jonathan Alter and The Washington Monthly expended a lot of energy over the Clinton years making the case that private sins are off-limits, even when they affect public acts. Apparently, this is only the case for public figures they like. If you believe that personal privacy is the sanctum sanctorum of liberal democracy, you have to believe that's the case for people you dislike too. If you don't, then you simply believe privacy is something for the good guys.

Now, I don't agree with that. If Bennett were running for office, for example, his gambling would certainly be fair game. As it would be if Bennett had been either a pro-gambling crusader or an anti-gambling crusader. But he's not. This raises the first of many ironies. Bennett's gambling, as a private citizen, justifies public exposure according to his critics. But, they say, Clinton's adultery — never mind the steamer trunk of lies and other sins he lugged into the Oval Office — should have been off-limits. At first glance, this equation would seem to imply that quietly participating in a perfectly legal and state-promoted activity out of public view is a graver sin than rogering the 'terns in the Oval Office and committing perjury to conceal the act (see Jonathan Last for more on this point).

Say whatever you want about how much Bennett was asking for this, it doesn't excuse the hypocrisy of those who say that private vices should be off-limits. If you believe the private acts of homosexuals, recreational drug users, Wiccans, etc., are off limits, you should believe the private lives of upright Catholics aren't fair game either. Some anti-impeachment liberals get this. Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, said Sunday on CNN:

I don't like William Bennett, but I actually agree mostly with Jonah. . . . This is something he did in his private life, and I'm the kind of liberal who believes that basically what people do in their private lives, unless there's some blatant, serious hypocrisy, is really not anyone's business.

But the biggest reason I find these Bennett articles so troublesome is what they reveal about the kind of society we're building. Hypocrisy is bad, but it's not the worst vice in the world. If I declared "murder is wrong" and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy. Liberal elites — particularly in Hollywood — believe that hypocrisy is the gravest sin in the world, which is why they advocate their own lifestyles for the entire world: Sleep with whomever you want, listen to your own instincts, be true to yourself, blah, blah, blah. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.

In fact, let's take gluttony as an example. Let's say that Bennett is guilty of the sin of gluttony. Having had lunch with him, this is not a wild-eyed hypothesis. Does that mean Bennett would be a more admirable person if he advocated that we all become overeaters? Bennett reasonably compares gambling to drinking alcohol (another form of gluttony). Should Bennett go on Larry King Live and celebrate the joys of crapulence? That's the logical upshot of Green's Washington Monthly piece (and Josh Marshall's defense of it). If we speak out against any vice we must not only speak out against all of them, we must not be guilty of any of them — even the ones we ourselves do not see as a vice. And if we are guilty, we should defend our sin, own it, celebrate it, even to the point of claiming it was never a sin at all. Because if we don't, we will be guilty of hypocrisy.

Take Madonna. Not to put too fine a point on it: She was a slut and she preached the joys of sluttiness to everyone, rich and poor, young and old. That made her rich and something of a feminist hero because she was an "authentic" slut, feeling no guilt or shame about it. Today, with millions upon millions in the bank she says she's not only given up her trampy ways, she realizes she was wrong all along. And, again, she's being saluted for it in profiles and interviews throughout the media (this is something I started complaining about years ago — see here and here).

So does this mean that being a slut was a good thing when Madonna said it was a good thing? Were the 16-year-old girls who followed her example in 1985 right for following it then? Were the consequences of following Madonna's example — pregnancy, AIDS, even (shudder) low self-esteem — somehow nonexistent back then because only the "moralizers" were warning about them? Or could it just possibly mean that the "moralizers" —who were sneered at by the mainstream press — were right all along and that Madonna is only now coming to her senses? Madonna can afford her sins. She says she can "handle" motherhood while at the same time bragging that she's never changed a diaper.

Well, Bennett can afford his sins, too. But just as a glutton would be a moral fool to champion gluttony to someone with a heart condition, Bennett understands that a gambler would be a moral fool to champion gambling to people who cannot afford it. Not so, though, according to Green:

Bennett is a wealthy man and may be able to handle losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Of course, as the nation's leading spokesman on virtue and personal responsibility, Bennett's gambling complicates his public role. Moreover, it has already exacted a cost. Like him or hate him, William Bennett is one of the few public figures with a proven ability to influence public policy by speaking out. By furtively indulging in a costly vice that destroys millions of lives and families across the nation, Bennett has profoundly undermined the credibility of his word on this moral issue.

You might have missed the word "furtively" there. Furtive means "secretly" or "in stealth." The clear implication being that Bennett would have been less guilty of whatever it is he's guilty of if he hadn't been "furtive" about it. This is 100 percent wrong. His furtiveness is morally redeeming, not damning. The hypocrisy fetishists seem to believe that our role models and spokesmen should be perfect — perfect in their sinfulness or perfect in their saintliness. And, at all times they should be proselytizers of both. What a morally unserious and dangerous way to organize a society.

Bennett is a big, sloppy Irish Catholic guy from Brooklyn who believes in old-fashioned morality and decency. He's not perfect, but he's been focusing our attention on the right things. When charged with hypocrisy, Max Scheler — the moral philosopher who dallied with the ladies — responded that the sign pointing to Boston doesn't have to go there. America is a better place because Bennett pointed in the right direction. Tearing him down is a sorry, pitiful, and deeply hypocritical way for supposed champions of privacy to tear down the man instead of his arguments. If you disagree, fine. Tell me where he was wrong. Don't tell me that the messenger is a sinner — we all knew that. Tell me what's wrong with the message. What passage in The Book of Virtues was invalidated when Bennett put the first $500 chip into the machine?

Oh, and one last thing. You might have noticed that I keep putting quotation marks around the word "moralizer." I do this for the simple reason that Green, Alter, Marshall, and the legions of other liberals who don't like "moralizers" are shocking hypocrites if not outright liars. Everyone moralizes. The suggestion that liberals aren't moralizers is so preposterous it makes it hard for me to take any of them seriously when they wax indignant about "moralizers." Almost everyday, they tell us what is moral or immoral to think and to say about race, taxes, abortion — you name it. They explain it would be immoral for me to spend more of my own money on my own children when that money could be spent by government on other peoples' children. In short, they think moralizing is fine. They just want to have a monopoly on the franchise.

I hope Las Vegas loses money - big time. I've yet to hear anybody from that gambling mecca strike out about the LEGALITY of gambling, and how they were going to pull out the stops to find out how the information was stolen (as that is what happened) and prosecute to the fullest extent.

You have to understand that this information is also coupled with credit card numbers, bank information, driver's license, home address, etc. This was not merely a "he gambled alot" breach.

If he hadn't signed up for the Slot Card, nobody would have been the wiser.

It's the final word on the subject, IMO.

I sure hope so.....................

This gambling BS has been ridiculous.

4 posted on 05/05/2003 11:08:52 AM PDT by Cold Heat (Negotiate!! .............(((Blam!.)))........... "Now who else wants to negotiate?")

Who are you folks kidding?

Bennett has been revealed as a fraud and rightfully so. He hires ghostwriters to write his speeches and books and then claims them to be original works. He smokes three packs a day, but moralizes about 'drugs.' He was Drug Czar during the crack explosion; test scores headed down every year he was the Education Czar.

He's been a fraud since he came into the Reagan Administration, when he attempted to cover up the fact that he was a Democrat. He is a phony and while this is a strange story to bust him on, I am perplexed at the number of his defenders.

No one's trying to "kid" anyone.

You anti-WOD people will hate Bennett to the end of time and this non-story is tailor made for you to excercise some of that rage.

I think Bennett's positions on the WOD are overblown and I don't agree with all of what he says.

But as the article says, he's a big sloppy Irish Catholic conservative that has pointed folks in the right direction in other areas.

And I think "hypocrisy" is waaaaay down the list of "sins". In fact, the elevation of hypocrisy into the pantheon of unforgivable offenses is one of vice's greatest tactics in the defeat of virtue. Take that to the bank. It's made it acceptable to reject the good in pursuit of the unattainable perfect.

He is a phony and while this is a strange story to bust him on, I am perplexed at the number of his defenders.

Don't be perplexed. This crowd would defend Hilary Clinton, Saddam Hussein and Ho Chi Minh if they called themselves Republicans. You are asking for introspection from automatons.

And you are right on about Bill "Just Call me God" Bennett.

The story is not that he is a hypocrite-- that is for the left's moral anarchists consumption.

The story is just one to go along with dozens that as a man, he is a phony.

Yup. And why are liberals so mad at what Bill Bennett does? Its not like they believe in right and wrong in the first place and secondly they could care less about virtue.

That's a load of bravo sierra. For two reasons:

1. Bill B. never said, "don't gamble". So the charge of hyprocrisy isn't even well laid here.

2. Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Turn that into a sin of it's own, and the result, since the 60's is for people to avoid the damning charge of "hypocrisy" by turning their vices into virtues.

I see the same screen names taking after Bill B: the WOD fundamentalists, for whom all is invested in the pursuit of making weed legal (I don't oppose that, just the fanatic zeal); and the Church Ladies.

Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed.

13 posted on 05/05/2003 11:27:45 AM PDT by AbsoluteJustice (Pounding the world like a battering ram. Forging the furnace for the final grand slam!!)

It's the final word on the subject, IMO

No, there's plenty more Liberal mud slinging on the way.

Bill has no credibility with many of us who are old enough to remember when Bill was the doper Liberal boyfriend of Janis Joplin.

How he ever reached the position he has is a complete mystery to many of us.

Maybe now some of us will realize that many of our own are just as full of BS as the Liberals.

The story is just one to go along with dozens that as a man, he is a phony.

That's a strong charge. Why is he a "phony" for dropping some of his dough into a slot machine?

Please try and make your point without strained analogies to the WOD.

So hypocrisy is a good thing? Wonder what Bill Bennett says about hypocrisy in his tomes...

I see the same screen names taking after Bill B: the WOD fundamentalists, for whom all is invested in the pursuit of making weed legal (I don't oppose that, just the fanatic zeal); and the Church Ladies.

Since I am not a Bennett fan, I assume you lump me into one of these groups. First, which one? And second, based on my past postings (review them if you wish), how do I qualify as either a Church Lady or as one who wants to legalize pot?

The liberals are "outing" Bennett to justify and excuse Billy Jeff's crimes by cheapening them through a dose of good old-fashioned moral equivalence and just plain lying. That's the reason they see Bennett's private life as fair game. I tell you all, what's really sickening is the same people who insist we keep our nose out of the presidential felon's private affairs are the same people who insist we ought to censure a decent man for not being a complete saint in his private life. How's that for hypocrisy? Liberals, thy name is legion.

What about David Horowitz, just to name one other former leftist/liberal that saw the light and now is one of the right's street fighters?

David and Bill Bennett get into the arena and throw haymakers at the left, while the GOP is chock-full of Marquis de Queensbury "warriors" who routinely get their noses bloodied by democrats without such ethical restraints.

We need fighters like Bill B. and Horowitz and I gets me dander up when the purists of any ilk get to wanting to throw valued allies under the bus at the first sign of trouble.

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