T.H. - Bennett's no Dr. Mengele, just a first-class jackass

Lewiston Morning Tribune ^ | 10/4/05 | Tom Henderson

[RadicalSon2]

William Bennett's famous "The Book of Virtues" apparently doesn't include the virtue of shutting your yap when something stupid wants to come out.

Bennett went from Cabinet posts under Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder to becoming Keeper of the Public Morals.

He pontificates endlessly in print and on radio about the importance of character, virtue and morality -- in other people. His own character failed him last Wednesday on his radio show when he said America's crime rate would go down if every black baby was aborted.

Whoa! Paging Dr. Mengele ...

Just a minute. Bennett says his words were taken out of context.

Even though he said the crime rate would go down, he added that aborting every black baby in the country would be "impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible."

So he's no racist. He opposes the forced, wholesale abortion of black fetuses. A regular Martin Luther King Jr., this guy.

Of course, he still equates being black with being a criminal.

There are a lot of black criminals. No question about it. About 10.4 percent of the African-American male population ages 25 to 29 is behind bars. Only 1.2 percent of white men in that age group are in prison.

There are more African-American men in jail than in college. In 2000, there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college.

A racist looks at these statistics and sees black people as outlaws. However, there are other statistics to consider.

According to the 2002 census, 8.0 percent of white people lived in poverty, compared with 21.4 percent of black people. When you look at crime through the prism of poverty instead of race, poor whites fare no better in the prison statistics than poor blacks.

Bennett was responding to a book that argued crime goes down as abortions to up.

But Bennett didn't refute that argument. He merely made a fool of himself by adding race to the equation.

He might have said a better way to fight crime is to focus on reducing poverty, educational disadvantages and disease.

The problem isn't race. It's class.

Bennett fails to understand that, and that's why he deserves the wrath he's receiving. -- T.H.

thenderson@lmtribune.com

[azhenfud]

I would appreciate if you quote me, to quote fully or not at all.

Your inability to correlate the two statistics has no diminishing effect upon that of others.

Good day.

[zimdog]

I did quote you fully. I redacted the block quotes you cited from the article. That redaction was fully evident from the "[...]" I used and anyone wishing to see your words in the original context can track back to your original post. Furthermore, I can correlate statistics fine. There's a huge difference between the incarceration rate for blak males age 25-29 being 9 times higher than for white males age 25-29 and your claim that "blacks [as a whole] are responsible [not just incarcerated] for NINE TIMES MORE CRIME" than whites. That may or may not be true, but this thread has yet to see any statistics showing it.

[spinestein]

[Bennett is operating under the assumption that either black people are inherently criminal or that the conditions that black Americans face as a whole will not change at all in the next generation.]



This doesn't follow from what Bennett said.

Bennett's comment is only an acknowledgment of the fact that there is a statistical correlation between blacks in America and crime, and his strong condemnation of the idea of acting against all blacks to alleviate the problem of a high crime rate is evidence that he is purposefully stating his opposition to attributing criminal behavior as inherently black. In fact, that was the central point of his comments.

[zimdog]

Bennett's comment is only an acknowledgment of the fact that there is a statistical correlation between blacks in America and crime, and his strong condemnation of the idea of acting against all blacks to alleviate the problem of a high crime rate is evidence that he is purposefully stating his opposition to attributing criminal behavior as inherently black. In fact, that was the central point of his comments.

Bennett is working from current statistics and projecting them into the future. Either he is actually clairvoyant or he believes (for reasons only he knows) that black people born today will (for some reason only he knows) necerssarily commit crimes at a higher rate than the national average. Newborn babies do not commit crimes.

[Proud Pagan Heart]

Believe it or not, I actually went to high school with this geek. He was 5-foot-nothing, about 80 pounds, and spent most of the time inside his locker where the football team folded him up and stored him every morning.

He's about 29 years now. He was fired from our hometown paper in Oregon for running a story about a gay wedding on the front page. I heard he landed in Lewiston. How fitting. Every been through that town? It's practically a dumping ground for losers.

[Fledermaus]

Geez, yet another left wing "genius" that can't read, can't hear and can't comprehend a simple conversation that goes beyond their usual cliches and talking points.

No wonder we don't have real debate in this country anymore. And yet these morons on the left still whine about having a "dialouge" on the issues but get their panties in a wad when one actually occurs and their politically correct sensibilities are damaged by the truth.

[Proud Pagan Heart]

I've said this on another thread about L'il Tommy the Terrorist, but maybe we all ought to reserve our wrath for people who really matter. I mean, we're talking about a two-bit hack out in Bumf***k, Idaho. Who really cares what he thinks or feels about anything? We might be giving him too much attention. As I said earlier, I knew this pipsqueak back in the day. He loves to get his betters riled up. I know he's probably a thorn in RadicalSon2's side, but really, he's probably lapping this stuff up. Never wrestle with a pig. You just get muddy and the pig likes it.