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.

Noone, to my knowledge, on this thread has made a factual example or given a factual basis of Bennett's so-called hypocrisy. The article at the top of this thread is actually bringing to light the hypocrisy of the writers of this "expose" on Bennett. He has committed no crime in the eyes of the law. But these writers defended Clinton and his criminal acts, including perjury. It seems to me the hypocrisy at issue here is more about the left's perception of hypocrisy, and the ability for them to shine that light on their own party. They fail on both counts: defining it and recognizing it.

Bill Bennett hasn't just talked the talk, but he has influenced and framed policy that has put alot of people in jail because of "morals".

Ask any casual pot smoker who got busted and has spent time in prison due to laws encouraged by Bill Bennett how sorry they feel for him now.

I am amazed at the disconnect we have in this country. When Bill Bennett helps imprison people for one vice, and it is found out he has another vice, it is a story. At one time, gambling was illegal, and marijuana smoking was legal for example.

They are both vices. Just at different stages of legality. Bill Bennett doesn't feel that there is anything wrong with spending his own money, by persuing the adrenaline addiction of gambling for high stakes. That is fine. He has helped imprison alot of people for another vice though, and that is the rub.

Bill Bennett will get over this. He will still earn speaker fees, he will still have alot of money. Can the road kill on his crusades who are going to prison say the same? Why exactly does Bill Bennett, Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, or even George W. Bush matter so much that it is an outrage when they are attacked, but not so much of an outrage when throngs of people are attacked and damaged by any of their policies?

We have a governor here in California, Gray Davis, that some of you might be aware of because of his defective personalities and skills. He has let innocent people rot in prison, because he doesn't want a Willie Horton scenario if he runs for president. The immorality of such a position staggers me.

We have no kings. We are a democratic republic. Bill Bennett can take his lumps like the rest of us.

A Conservative who believes and espouses VIRTUE as a way of life, GAMBLES LEGALLY and within his means and NOT with OBSESSION is castigated and condemned to high heaven.

A LIBERAL is accused of rape, lies under OATH, obstructs the justice sought by a woman he attacked, is disbarred from practicing law, dodged the draft, smoked pot when it was illegal, sold nuke secrets to the CHINESE for campaign contributions and received oral sex by an EMPLOYEE of his, on government property, in the OVAL OFFICE, and HE and the provider of ORAL SEX are media darlings, with BOOK deals and the STARS of their own TV Series!

What is wrong with this picture?

”If Bennett and his defenders are willing to cut the same slack to a successful businessman who likes to light up a doobie over the weekend, or to a millionare playboy who likes to sleep with a different babe each week, then that's a valid argument.

They aren't, so it isn't.”

The difference between the examples you cite and what Bennett has done is that your examples are (1) illegal and (2) unethical by traditional morality.

However, what I perceive in the attacks on Bennett by the Libertarians is the hatred that many on that side have for the strictures of traditional morality.

JohnGalt’s rants are typically Randian rants against traditional morality disguised as dusgust at Bennett’s perceived hypocracy. Ayn Rand devoted whole chapters to screeds against Christianity. For her acolytes, morals and ethics are made up from scratch. They have no real defense against those who parse the definition of “is” or who decide that oral gratification is not “sex.” I have no time for people who wish to re-define morality from a standing start in their own lifetimes.

If you read the rants of those who are taking delight in Bill Bennett’s predicament what becomes clear is that a gaggle of the noisy Right are fever-swamp libertarians. Deciples of Any Rand. And those for whom drug use is a sacrament.

Just as the Left is saddled with the NOW gang which regards any constraints on abortion as the end of democracy in America, the Right has to bear the cross of hosting Randians and kook libertarians for whom the freedom to smoke pot defines democracy.

Fortunately for the Right, the kooks on our side of the fence are inconsequential electorially. The Liberals have to genuflect to the abortion lobby as well as the Sharptons of this world in order to get nominated. It’s helping to marginalize them.

The turning point for the Right was when Bill Buckley read the John Birch society out of the conservative movement. A smattering of the remnants still inhabits the interstices of forums like this one. The Bennett controversy brings them out.

the attacks are based on something other than the issue. They are based on their despisal of him, pure and simple.

I don't think that's true for everyone here. We have a fairly large contingent of social conservatives on FR, and they range across a spectrum themselves. Some of them are so holy that they can condemn other people for having an impure thought, let alone gambling, and they can be absolutely sincere and serious about it. That's a minority, but they do exist.

I suspect the rest of Bennett's critics are more like the example you cite. They just don't like the guy, and they perceive gloating over the random misfortunes of one's enemies as a lesser evil than gambling. I'm not sure it is, but I'm not that kind of expert on sin. My expertise is in applied sin.

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.

I could care less that he was caught gambling, and I am not a libertarian. And yet, I certainly despise Bill Bennett. The man is an utter fraud. He passes himself off as an author and a philosopher, but is neither. He would get huge book contracts, and then hire a guy to do the actual writing, for a relative pittance. He's no more an author than Hillary Clinton is. Why was Bennett's name on the cover, rather than the real author?

Bennett actually has a Ph.D. in philosophy (from the Univ. of Texas), but it was for a quickie dissertation. Intellectually, he's always been a nullity. If you ever see an article with his byline on it, someone else wrote it. He's always been a politician, in the worst sense of the word, and although academia is dominated by lefty political hacks, it has some has some neocon hacks, too, and they take care that the Bill Bennetts of the world are properly "credentialed."

In case you're wondering, I've never met the guy, and have no personal axe to grind. I actually like the guy once upon a time, until I started reading up on him. He's a poseur; no more, no less.

What you don't state though, regardless of the actual vig for the house, is that the slots are a losing expectancy for the player on every pull.It has a negative return, so no rational gambler should play it, and if one wants the thrill of watching the fruits spin, you have to bet small.Not $500 each pull of the lever.It's sheer insanity for a supposedly intelligent man like Bennett to be gambling in this manner.He's a putz ;-)

"If you ever see an article with his byline on it, someone else wrote it."

Do you have substantive documentation to back this assertion up?

How do you prove a negative?

Are you telling me, that you think Bennett is a writer? All that proves, is that you know nothing of the man.

Since it's been known for years that the man sells as his own works that others wrote for him, IT IS UP YOU to provide "substantive documentation" that anything with his byline on it, was physically written by him.

You have no idea how hard it is to write a good book, do you?

Now, be careful, cgk...we don't want to confound the left w/facts..it only makes them to halt their bed-wetting stance, charges them to write more drivel and forces them to pass the bong. A few of the afore-mentioned are either good or bad. Mostly stupid, brain dead or suffering from sever cognitive dissonance.

It's the part and parcel of the NYT's and WP's destined cookie-cutter paradigm...and about 33% of nitwit misinformed "voters" will tilt toward whomever the democRAT's put in the forefront of losers.

Mustang sends from "Malpaso" News.

With respect, that seems like a rather defensive response to a straightforward question. "You have no idea how hard it is to write a good book?" What kind of response is that, and what does that have to do with my question? (Matter of fact, I'm a proofreader and have also done a bit of editing, so I have some fairly "close-up" knowledge of the process, although I certainly can't claim to have written a book myself.)

I know quite a lot about the man but would like to know more. You made a very sweeping statement that he does none of his own writing. If this is generally known as fact, I would expect there to be sources to back this up, considering the number of years Mr. Bennett has been in the public eye. After all, we all know who has written Hillary's books. There aren't a whole lot of secrets in the publishing industry.

If you don't know, all you have to say is you don't know.

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