Posted on 07/30/2003 11:43:13 PM PDT by kattracks
Conservative ethicist Bill Bennett emerged from a self imposed two month silence on Tuesday to announce that he wasn't going to let inaccurate stories about his gambling habits planted by "people who were trying to take me out" drive him from public life.
"I'm back and I will be more outspoken than ever," Bennett told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity, after accepting full responsibility for the betting brouhaha.
"What I did that was wrong was that in the last few years I started to play big money, really big money. Maybe not too much in terms of what I was making, but too much in terms of who I am. And I was not being a good example."
The leading conservative spokesman revealed that his habit had become an issue at home, telling Hannity, "It got excessive. Mrs. Bennett got on me. She was right. And this story hit and it was all out there for everyone to see."
Bennett said he was faced with the choice of either changing his behavior or changing his standards. "So, in this case, the excessive gambling is over," he pledged.
He noted, however, that there was an agenda driving the gambling story that went beyond legitimate journalism, observing, "Some of these people were trying to take me out, saying, 'You're gone, man, you're out of public life.' And I don't not accept that."
He complained also that whoever leaked his gambling records to the Newsweek and the Washington Monthly had violated his privacy.
"[My gambling] wasn't a secret. But you do not expect your financial records, whether it's at a bank, a casino or anyplace, to be displayed all over the place."
The former Bush administration drug czar added, "Las Vegas has an ad out on TV and the radio, saying, 'What happens here, stays here.' Well, not in my case. That was really a rotten thing to do."
A spokesman for Caesar's Boardwalk in Atlantic City - one of the casinos named by Newsweek and the Washington Monthly - told NewsMax in May that they take every precaution to preserve the privacy of high rollers, and that the release of Bennett's records was the subject of an internal investigation.
The two publications that hyped the gambling scandal said they were relying on "40 pages of internal casino documents." But the target of the twin hit pieces said they got more than a few factual details wrong.
"A lot of what they put out was inaccurate - about losing $8 million and all that. There's no way that happened."
Bennett said the sources of the illicitly obtained records "released information to reporters that was wrong about totals, about wins and losses. It was really an attempt to do me in."
He stressed that he wasn't swearing off all wagering, telling Hannity, "Since there will be people doing the micrometer on me, I just want to be clear. I do want to be able to bet the [Buffalo] Bills in the Super Bowl."
When Hannity closed the interview by praising Bennett for taking responsibility for the imbroglio, the ethicist quipped, "You can bet on it."
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I think that's all true except for the last part. It's not gambling, it's high rolling. I'm not trying to play a semantic game, I'm trying to describe two different concepts. The first concept called gambling is the wagering of money in any amount. The second concept, high rolling, is the wagering of extremely large amounts of money, plus the attention paid to the person doing the wagering by the casinos who are gaining that money. Large amounts of that attention can lead trigger Vanity in the person being attended to.
In Bennett's case, I don't see any recognition on his part of this possibility. Like many on this thread, he hasn't acknowledged the difference between gambling and high rolling which makes me suspicious of his virtue since one attribute of Vanity is the inability to recognize it.
A guy on television named Will Wennett starts angrily pointing his finger and screaming out "Peanuts are vile! Walnuts are sinful! Cashews are the chewy nuts of Satan! Brazil nuts are demonic! Only weak people eat pine nuts! Nuts are the stuff of the DEVIL!"
And then one day he's caught with a bag of roasted macadamias. He says, "ah, but I never specifically condemned macadamias. Therefore, I am not a hypocrite for eating them. I am not sure whether or not I will stop eating them. Just give me a few months until this all blows over, and then I will go back to telling all of you not to eat nuts."
I wrote a logical equivalent #2, but I'll just post the condensed version, for propriety's sake: A preacher condemns all sorts of specific sex acts. Then he's caught engaging in [insert the name of a dirty sex act here], a very similar and equally perverted act. He says "ah, but I never condemned this act by name! Therefore I am not a hypocrite. As soon as this blows over, I will go right back to telling everyone else how much of sinner they are."
Bennett tells us to live a moral life, we have avoid stuff like gambling, even if he avoided mentioning it by name. He certainly never explained how gambling is any different than any of the other "sins" he comes out against, except to say that he never condemned it!
Bennett was a real loser. He gambled alone, at slot machines. He wasn't hanging out with hookers at the craps table.
Imagine that! Putting millions of dollars into slot machines! Amazing!
The difference in high rolling is the amount of money and level of service. The fact that $100,000 or more can be gained by the casino leads to a high level of attention being paid to the gambler. This attention is generally (and I am generalizing) what high rollers crave. Perhaps Bennett did not need or crave that attention since he got plenty in the rest of his life's work.
But when you are being given that kind of attention you do not have control over the interpersonal dynamics, only your half of them. That can lead to problems. For example a CEO who surrounds himself with syncophants will ultimately fail because nobody is going to tell him when he makes bad decisions so he won't learn from his mistakes.
Similarly people who surround themselves with servants are going to have a harder time gaining feedback to increase their virtue. Everything they do is acceptable regardless of whether it is virtuous. And that's a situation that can strain the virtue of the even the most virtuous.
Bennett should simply not have put himself in that position.
And Bennett is not quite eighty yet right?
Upon consideration, I would have to say, I really doubt he is a slot kinda guy...
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