Adrift in a sea of phoniness American political discourse -- especially on the left -- has abandoned logic, reason and honesty for a pack of nasty lies. DAVID GELERNTER http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gelernter14oct14,0,779899.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
INSINCERITY IS the new theme of American politics. Americans used to be famous for openness — they were naive, foreigners said, but absolutely straightforward.
During much of the last century, Ernest Hemingway and his "B.S. meter" were famous. Hemingway claimed an infallible ability to identify phonies, and his imaginary detector seemed as quintessentially American as his close-cropped, hard-hitting sentences. If Hemingway came back to Earth for an American holiday, his B.S. meter would be pegged permanently at maximum.
Here's an example of insincerity at work. It comes from the left, which seems to specialize nowadays in bitter, angry, nasty declarations that are phony right down to the ground.
Recently, Vice President Cheney and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) disagreed. Rangel denounced Cheney, rudely. The VP denounced him back. Rangel's response: Cheney must apologize.
First, why should Cheney apologize and not Rangel? More important, note the ever more popular idea that politicians must apologize on cue like trained seals whenever a noisy enough group orders them to. Yet every 5-year-old knows that a coerced apology has got to be insincere. Otherwise it wouldn't need to be coerced.
Our willingness to traffic in such nonsense shows a dangerous tendency to disregard reasoning, logical context, the meaning of words. How else to understand the latest Bill Bennett story? It reads like science fiction — live from the planet Bozo, a man whose enemies know by magic that he actually means the exact opposite of what he says.
A few weeks ago, Bennett said on his radio program that X is a stupid idea; then he said that if you believe X, you might as well believe Y. But Y is "impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible." One thing we know for sure: Bennett is against Y. He thinks that Y is "impossible," is "ridiculous," is "morally reprehensible." "Y" was the idea that aborting all black babies would cut the crime rate.
So the left jumped all over him. Bizarrely enough, the White House chimed in. (A Republican White House opening fire on Bennett is like the Joint Chiefs bombing their own front lines.) Yet no one who read or heard Bennett's actual statement in context could possibly have believed that Bennett is racist or had talked like a racist.
But our public life is so deeply phony that, although a few stalwarts defended him, no one pointed out the gross hypocrisy of his accusers. (No one I've heard, anyway.) Those accusers knew perfectly well that he was not promoting a racist view of American life, he was denouncing a racist view — loudly and clearly, without a shadow of ambiguity.
What part of "impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible" did they not understand?
UNIVERSITIES ARE the mighty fortresses of the American left. The assertion that American universities encourage a freewheeling clash of ideas might be the mother of all phoniness in the United States today.
Richard Lamm is the former Democratic governor of Colorado (1975-1987), now a free-thinking, self-described "progressive conservative" who teaches public policy at the University of Denver. In the journal of the conservative National Assn. of Scholars, Lamm has written about the time he submitted an article about racism to a university publication called the Source — which is run by the administration, not by students.
Lamm's submission compared the harm wrought by racism to the good that comes out of working to overcome obstacles. His article discussed the success of the Japanese, Jews and Cubans in the U.S.; all three have suffered bigotry and prospered. Mexicans in America have done less well. But Mexicans and Cubans are equally Latino and face similar kinds of prejudice. If Cubans have thrived and Mexicans haven't, racism can't possibly be the whole story.
Exactly the sort of provocative, challenging article any university would be proud to publish, right?
Only kidding. Lamm reports that the Source rejected his piece: "too controversial"; then he appealed to the provost, and then the chancellor. They agreed with the editors. Too controversial.
According to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, "administrators countered that the decision not to run Lamm's article was more an issue of editorial space than academic freedom." Maybe that's what university officials were thinking. But no one in this news article denies that they said what Lamm says they said.
If you believe that our universities promote freewheeling debate, that Bill Bennett is a racist and that the United States will be a better place if Dick Cheney apologizes to Charlie Rangel, I have a bridge for sale; you might want to check it out. Maybe I'll just list it on EBay and wait for the crowd of bidders.
Bill Bennett, former secretary of education and drug czar, now host of the "Morning in America" talk radio show, caused quite a stir and hand-wringing in his response to a caller. The caller hypothesized that had there not been so many abortions in America, Social Security wouldn't be facing its deficit problems. Why? Because there would be more workers per retiree.
Bennett dismissed what he called "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations," giving the following conditional statement: " . . . I do know that 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. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
So what does that comment make Bennett? Permit me to make some statements of the same genre: If a 100 square-mile meteor strikes the Earth, millions of people will be killed. If a person falls off the Empire State Building, he will die. Here's another: If a person goes 30 days without water, he will die. All of these statements, as well as that made by Bennett, are what are known as conditional statements. A conditional statement is an "if-then" statement of the form: "if P, then Q." P is the antecedent, the "if" part of the statement, and "Q" is the consequent, the "then" part of the statement. Going back to my first example, "If a 100 square-mile meteor strikes the Earth," is the antecedent; "billions of people will be killed" is the consequent.
To test the truth of a conditional statement, one need only examine the evidence. That is, will going without water for 30 days or falling off the Empire State Building cause death? Is making a conditional statement advocacy? In other words, do you interpret my conditional statements as calling for a 100 square-mile meteor to strike the Earth, or calling for people to fall off the Empire State Building or go 30 days without water? One would have to be an idiot to make such an interpretation.
Let's examine Bill Bennett's conditional "if black babies were aborted the crime rate would go down." According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports for 2003 (http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_03/pdf/03sec4.pdf), blacks, who are 13 percent of the population, were 49 percent of murder arrests, 33 percent of arrests for rape, and 54 percent of arrests for robberies. That means Bennett's statement was true.
One could make another conditional statement: If male babies were aborted, there would be an even larger reduction in crime. While males are slightly less than 50 percent of the population, according to FBI reports, they constitute 90 percent of the arrests for murder, 99 percent of the arrests for rape and 90 percent of the arrests for robberies. What the crime statistics unambiguously demonstrate is that males, as a group, and blacks, as a group, are disproportionately represented in criminal activity. If making the true statement that males are disproportionately represented in criminal activity doesn't make one a sexist, at least I haven't heard such an accusation, why then would making the true statement that blacks are disproportionately represented in criminal activity make one a racist as Bennett has been charged?
Actually, there's little originality behind Bennett's comment. Economists Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their best-selling book, "Freakonomics," that the legalization of abortion has reduced crime because babies who have been aborted were more likely to have grown up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes. Their hypothesis has encountered criticism within the profession, but so far, no one has charged them with racism, sexism or making inappropriate comments.
Dr. Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.
"I do know that it's true," said former secretary of education and drug czar William Bennett, "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. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."
Bennett, who hosts a radio show, was responding to a caller's suggestion. The caller argued that but for the loss of life through abortion, Social Security would be more solvent, with more workers contributing to the system. Bennett rejected that end-to-the-means argument, and offered the black abortion hypothetical as an equally silly end-justifies-the-means argument.
But, oh, the fit hit the shan. MSNBC struck quickly. The network ran a "tease": Bill Bennett (audio) "I do know that 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." MSNBC correspondent: "Bennett's bombshell comments. The former education secretary is now feeling the heat this morning, from remarks he made on his radio show about African-Americans and abortion." MSNBC also ran a "crawler" at the bottom of the screen, providing a phone number for viewers to call and respond to the question, "Is Bennett's comment reprehensible?"
Before the commercial break, MSNBC left out a vital part of Bennett's statement, which called his abortion hypothetical "morally reprehensible." Nor did MSNBC inform the viewers of Bennett's qualifying statement, even after coming back from their break!
The White House said Bennett's remarks "were not appropriate." Fox's Juan Williams said Bennett's remark " . . . really speaks to a deeply racist mindset." CNN's Jeff Greenfield somberly called Bennett's comments "inartful." Inartful?
How does one artfully say that out of a small percentage of America's population -- 13 percent -- blacks account for 37.2 percent of all those arrested for violent crimes, 54.4 percent of all robbery arrestees, and are the known offenders in 51.3 percent of all murders? The murder rate in the city of New Orleans stands at over 7.5 times the national average, and authorities convict only one in four arrested for homicide.
Speaking of "inartful," back in 1993, a noted civil rights leader made the following comment: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." The speaker? Jesse Jackson.
Despite calls to do so, Bennett, as of this writing, refuses to apologize. Maybe Bennett awaits an apology from Al Gore's former campaign manager, Donna Brazile, who talked about the importance of defeating the Republicans: "White boys," she said, has nothing to do with "gender or race, it's an attitude. A white boy attitude is 'I must exclude, denigrate, and leave behind.' They don't see it or think about it. It's a culture."
Or maybe Bennett awaits an apology from Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who, speaking about the 1994 Republican Congress, said, "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' any more. They say 'let's cut taxes.'"
Or maybe Bennett anticipates an apology from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who told the Congressional Black Caucus: "Do you think the Republican National Committee could get this many people of color in a single room? Only if they had the hotel staff in here."
Or maybe he expects an apology from NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, who said in July 2001, "[Bush] has selected nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics, appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and chosen Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection." Incredibly, Bond repeated this again after September 11, 2001.
Or maybe Bennett waits for apologies from the "black leaders" who attacked President Bush after Hurricane Katrina. Rep. Rangel said, "George Bush is our Bull Connor," referring to the former Birmingham, Ala., police commissioner who, in 1963, turned fire hoses and attack dogs on civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr. REP. Major Owens, D-N.Y., elaborated, "Bull Connor didn't even pretend that he cared about African-Americans. You have to give it to George Bush for being even more diabolical. . . . This is worse than Bull Connor." Rev. Al Sharpton chimed in, "We've gone from fire hoses to levees." New York City Councilman Charles Barron said Rangel's statement was " . . . an insult to Connor. George Bush is worse, because he has more power and he's more destructive to our people. . . . A KKK without power is not as bad as a George Bush with power."
Or maybe . . . and so on, and so on . . .
To so-called "civil rights leaders" offended by Bennett's remarks, consider this: As between urban crime and Bill Bennett's "inartful" comments, which poses a bigger threat to the health, growth and prosperity of the black community?
The morning after the story broke, a friend asked if Bill Bennett's radio comments would trigger a major outburst. No, I assured him, it was a one-day, much-about-nothing-to-do, left-wing-trouble-making story that would be exposed for what it was.
Just look at what Bennett said. Asked on his radio program if, without the massive toll of legalized abortions over the last three decades, we'd have more taxpayers to support Social Security payments, Bennett expressed distaste for those kind of extrapolations, like a current theory in the book "Freakonomics" that the abortion rate in recent decades has led to a lower crime rate.
He theorized: "I do know that 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."
I was dead wrong. The Bennett "controversy" has made headlines everywhere for days. He has resigned as chairman of the board of K-12, an education company he co-founded. Even I misread the degree to which the Left will go to destroy a conservative -- personally.
The smear was unearthed by the liberal-Democrat group Media Matters for America, run by congenital liar David Brock, and Democrats quickly pounced on the opportunity to mangle Bennett's point. Typical of this shameless charade was DNC chairman Howard Dean, a man who can't go a day without making hateful, inflammatory remarks, said Bennett's "hateful, inflammatory remarks regarding African Americans are simply inexcusable."
It didn't seem to matter that Bennett, statistically speaking, was not inaccurate: The Bureau of Justice Statistics found in 2002 that black Americans were seven times more likely to commit homicide (per 100,000 population) than whites, and six times more likely to be murdered. Sadly, from 1976 to 2002, 94 percent of black murder victims were killed by other blacks. Nor does it matter that Bennett unequivocally couched his comments with a denunciation of forced abortions against blacks. And never mind that he's spent a lifetime championing the pro-life and civil rights causes. All that mattered to the Left was opportunity.
But the liberal outrage quickly landed in the Washington Post and the New York Times, the same newspapers that can't find space to note that anti-war hero Cindy Sheehan called President Bush "the biggest terrorist in the world," and didn't cover Air America radio host Randi Rhodes comparing bus evacuations from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans as comparable to the Holocaust.
What of the networks that ignore almost every liberal gaffe and stumble? CBS, which totally ignored Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic minority's second-in-command, when he compared American treatment of detainees at Guantanamo to the death camps of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, led the newscast with Bill Bennett. On NBC's "Today," Katie Couric quickly sliced up Bennett, "under fire" and "feeling the heat for saying this on the radio." Viewers then heard a clip which completely -- and deliberately -- excluded Bennett's next sentence that the argument was ridiculous and reprehensible.
What hypocrisy. These same journalists regularly refuse to scorn outrageous racial remarks by black leaders. In fact, they advance them. Jesse Jackson repeatedly compared the conditions of blacks in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to a slave ship. Now, it's fair to suggest the life of evacuees was hard. But it's an ugly and dishonest defamation to imply that America is a nation so callously racist that our indifference imprisoned black hurricane victims like slaves.
Yet ABC transmitted the slave-ship charge as fair comment on "Nightline" on Sept. 2. Reporter John Donvan quoted Jackson: "It's the worst, the racist dimensions of our culture. We deserve better. This is the hull of a slave ship." Two nights later, Donvan rephrased this as a jarring but reasonable question about race.
Two days after that on "Good Morning America," ABC's Ron Claiborne interviewed Jackson live: "You were quoted, perhaps misquoted, as saying the images coming out of New Orleans resembled the hull of a slave ship. And that is very vivid and charged language. What were you saying?" Jackson did not deny the quote.
On NBC Sept. 3, Jackson told "Today" host Lester Holt the country need to rescue people, and lamented: "It looked like people in the hold of a slave ship." Holt simply agreed: "Right."
The contrast between Bennett's beating and Jackson's pleading illustrated the media's leftist worldview. Red-state America is still hopelessly racist, and conservatives are inherently evil. So Bennett's remarks must be sliced up and exaggerated, and even edited, to make that point. Liberals should be ashamed of themselves, except more and more, liberals have no shame.
Big Bad Bill Bennett is at it again. The virtuemeister demonstrates once more that he walks on feet of clay (unlike the rest of us). We expect a former secretary of education to show his smarts with clarity of language. Alas, for a talk show host, sometimes there's too much information rattling around in his head for his own good.
Talk show hosts are like the pamphleteers of yesteryear, who sometimes overstate their case to make a polemical point. They argue dramatically with anecdote, analogy, comparison and irony. At their best, the comparisons are signs of provocative intelligence, but at worst, they're fodder for distortion and misinterpretation. Enemies are always ready to exploit loopy loopholes.
If Bill Bennett were to read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" aloud on his talk show, his critics could have a jolly time of stringing him up for proposing to kill babies and sell them for delicious, nourishing and wholesome food. To make his argument believable, Swift, an 18th-century satirist and pamphleteer, solemnly wrote that he had learned from "a knowing American" that his countrymen had produced wonderful recipes for turning fattened babies into a fine stews, roasts, fricassees and ragouts. Turning Irish babies into a saleable commodity had the added advantage of preventing "those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent among us. . . . "
When as an English literature professor I taught "A Modest Proposal," there was always a student or two who didn't quite get the satire, and, genuinely troubled, would suggest ever so hesitantly that "Mr. Swift might have gone a little too far." Eating people is bad, after all. Swift, of course, was taking aim at several targets, foremost among them the absentee English landlords who cared not a whit for their poor Irish tenants, Irish politicians who were ignorant and venal, and benevolent "humanitarians" who wrote oh-so-serious but baseless social and economic nostrums to cure poverty. These pompous intellectual theorists had no recognition of their own impotence, and felt no personal responsibility for curing poverty.
The brilliance of "A Modest Proposal" is its consistent and understated tone of parody. Satire, as every satirist knows, has to be close to reality to be effective, which makes writing satire a dangerous business.
Bill Bennett pretends to be no Jonathan Swift, but if he had put his words to paper rather than spreading them with broadcast talk-talk he would have edited his argument into a sharper weapon. His books testify to a cogent and persuasive writer. But talk shows, like most television commentary, illustrate vividly Marshall McLuhan's point that "the medium is the message." The throbbing musical leads to get your attention, the spontaneous reactions without notes, the aggressive callers who demand a pound of gray matter, the producer who demands that guests "get mad, show anger," all conspire to get it mostly wrong. Every writer or thinker who has ever been put before a television camera or radio microphone knows the hazards. The hazards multiply with the passage of the minutes, no matter how experienced the speaker. Few of us can read the transcripts without blushing.
A careful reading of the transcript of Mr. Bennett's "offensive" argument shows clearly that, like Jonathan Swift, he was arguing against the idea that human life can be measured in cost-effective terms. He was, in fact, taking sharp issue with an economic theory. A caller wanted him to add to his list of objections to abortion the idea that the babies who would never grow up to be workers were a loss to the Social Security trust fund. Mr. Bennett disagreed: "I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this . . ." He recalled that the notion sprang from a best-selling book called "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." In it, the author suggests "that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up." That led to his remark, meant to show the absurdity of an economic theory, "that if all black babies were aborted, crime would go down . . . an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do."
"Freakonomics" was written by Steven D. Levitt, an economist, and Stephen J. Dubner. The economist has been profiled in The New York Times, and his theories about the relationship of abortion and crime, though controversial, are respectable enough in debate. James Q. Wilson, writing in Commentary magazine, says that the book has much to recommend it, but questions the research methodology. Readers, he says, should go to the economist's original studies and examine them carefully. That would be far closer to the point than blaming Bill Bennett for something he did not say.
Words are as fragile and sensitive as the human beings who utter them. They need careful nurturing and appropriate context and presentation for their meaning and intent to be realized.
This point was made effectively in a best-selling book on punctuation a few years ago that showed how a sentence pointing out the simple truth that "The panda eats shoots and leaves" takes on a new life and meaning with the addition of a few commas, becoming "The panda eats, shoots, and leaves."
So we have it with the recent almost-too-ridiculous-to-discuss incident with Bill Bennett's alleged racist remarks on his radio show. The remarks, taken out of context by those attacking Bennett, are being used to make the exact opposite point of his and brand him a racist.
A listener called in suggesting that abortion might be an explanation for our Social Security crisis (with more adults around paying Social Security taxes, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in). Bennett replied that such a hypothesis is as absurd and repugnant as the suggestion made in a best-selling book called "Freakonomics" that aborting more black babies would lead to a lower crime rate.
Bennett's point, perhaps to belabor what for some reason to many is not obvious, was that such an allegation is a bizarre, perverse way to view the world.
What is going on in our country today? Is there not enough evil around that we have to look for it and manufacture it where it doesn't exist?
Sure, one could argue that Bennett should have considered that he broadcasts to a large audience and that he might have been insensitive to not appreciate that such a supercharged example might elicit emotional responses. However, even if this captures what happened, an insensitive moment is not racism.
A number of questions and ironies come to mind as I review this strange incident.
Ask yourself, in moments when you have doubts about someone and her motives, if you tend to err on the side of suspicion of bad or attribution of good. I sadly think that, overwhelmingly, our tendency is to be suspicious and accuse. Why does the natural tendency seem to drift toward the bad and not the good?
Ask yourself, when you listen to someone speak, if you are truly listening to him. Are you really paying attention? Did you walk away hearing what he said, or were you really listening to yourself and did you walk away with what you think he said or want to believe he said? How many of us really listen carefully to those speaking to us?
Regarding the army of those attacking Bennett, most of whom are black, my question is this: Why are you outraged about Bennett's supposed remark about black abortions and not outraged, every day, about the 400,000-plus black babies that actually are aborted every year? Or about the 13 million black babies that have been aborted since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973?
If what you truly care about are black babies and black lives, why do you overwhelmingly vote for candidates who support abortion and perpetuate a culture that devalues and cheapens lives - black and white?
Ironically, Elayne Bennett, wife of the alleged racist, founded and has run for a good number of years the Best Friends Foundation. It runs programs for teenagers, largely black, in communities all over the country, helping these kids build satisfying, responsible lives. In the words of the mission statement, Best Friends "promotes self-respect through the practice of self-control and provides participants the skills, guidance, and support to choose abstinence from sex until marriage and reject illegal drug and alcohol abuse."
Perhaps the explanation for the tendency to suspect rather than to give the benefit of the doubt, the tendency lean to the negative, rather than to seek the positive, is because it is easy. Suspicion, accusation and blame take little effort. Careful listening, clear thinking and a pure heart require real work. Maybe that's why, unfortunately, we see so little of these things.
Stark Parker is President of Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education.
few years ago, when Hillary Clinton was attacked as anti-Semitic, I wrote a piece for The Wall Street Journal defending her against the charge. As a Jew, an author of a book on anti-Semitism and a conservative talk show host, I had credibility to do so.
It is time now for people with integrity on the Left -- and liberal opinion pages -- to show their integrity and defend Bill Bennett against the libel of being a racist who advocated the abortion of all black babies.
For make no mistake: This is as pure a character issue as one can imagine. Bill Bennett is not a racist and said nothing that even remotely came close to advocating the abortion of all black babies. This is the dividing line between the decent and the indecent on the Left. The indecent make these charges; the decent will defend him against them. It's as simple as that.
What happened is easy to summarize. In response to a caller who said that America "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years," Bennett made the point that one cannot argue against abortion by pointing out anything theoretically positive that could come from either allowing or outlawing abortion. For example, he went on to say, "You could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." And he immediately added, for the sake of those who might distort his meaning, that aborting all black babies would be "impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible."
But talk show host Ed Schultz, whose syndicated radio show is aired on liberal Air America, heard these remarks. He alerted fellow leftist David Brock, who then put the transcript of the Bennett dialogue on his website.
The Left and the world's news media picked up the dialogue and then announced that Bill Bennett had advocated the abortion of all black babies.
This lie is as intentional as it is complete. Sometimes lies contain a kernel of truth; this one has none. In fact, the irony is that if Bennett's social policies were followed, no black babies would ever have been aborted; they are aborted in great numbers thanks to left-wing social policies.
On his show, Ed Schultz said the following:
"Racism is not a virtue; and this is the guy who wrote the book on virtues!"
"The Christian right in this country considers abortion murder; this is not about abortion -- this is about extermination."
" . . . He's out there advocating the murder of all black babies so that we can bring down crime."
And finally, Schultz compared how Bennett views blacks to the way Nazis viewed Jews.
Leaders of the Democratic Party, such as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, have demanded Bennett apologize, and some demanded that the Salem Radio Network fire him. (In the interest of full disclosure, Salem also syndicates my national radio show.) Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said, "I'm not even going to comment on something that disgusting." And Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, called Bennett's comments "reprehensible and racist," and announced he would introduce a resolution in the Senate condemning the comments.
The president of the NAACP declared: "In 2005, there is no place for the kind of racist statement made by Bennett."
Huffington Post blogger Bob Cesca wrote: "What he seemed to imply was that all black babies will one day grow up to become criminals."
Because of the controversy, Bennett postponed his scheduled speech at the University of Cincinnati. The university's College Democrats president told the Cincinnati Enquirer: "I think it's horrible to say that an entire race of people shouldn't have been born."
Newsday columnist Ellis Henican wrote that Bennett "is quickly getting famous for a bold new approach to cutting crime. Abort the black babies!"
The lead sentences in the Austin American-Statesman editorial on the issue read: "Aborting black children is an effective way to reduce the crime rate. We're not surprised that kind of racist drivel is being peddled over the public airways, but we are stunned by who is doing the peddling: William Bennett."
Taking their cues from the American left, the world's news media now reports the Bennett libel as news.
For example, The Hindu, India's national newspaper, reports that "United States President George W. Bush has distanced himself from comments made by a leading Republican crusader on moral values who declared that one way to reduce the crime rate in the U.S. would be to 'abort black babies.'"
And the headline in the British newspaper The Guardian read: "Abort all black babies and cut crime, says Republican."
Now you know how the combination of incompetence, leftism and sensationalism drives the world's news media.
Here is a chance to find out if your liberal brother-in-law is a leftist without integrity or simply a decent guy with different values. Just ask him, "Will you condemn the libel of Bill Bennett?"
Everyone is weighing in on what Bill Bennett said on his radio program. Everyone is eager to offer their opinion on his words and whether or not he should have said them. Everyone is missing the point.
The travesty is that we’re even talking about this at all. The most abhorrent behavior that occurred regarding this issue came from the Associated Press (AP). Allowing news hit men like John Conyers, Bruce Gordon, Ralph Neas, Howard Dean and many elected Democrats to assault Bill Bennett is detestable and the AP should be held accountable. The only way liberal Democrats can win is by fighting without honor and by perpetrating hideous attacks on innocent citizens.
Dissecting exactly what happened to Bill Bennett helps unveil the insidious vast left-wing conspiracy and exposes the culpability of the AP. A Google search sorted by date creates a timeline that shows that the tail wagged the dog.
The Facts
On Wednesday, September 28, Bill Bennett had a discussion with a caller to his radio show. Like Bennett, the caller was pro-life. The caller offered the idea that they could advance the pro-life position by pointing out the negative economic impact abortion has on our society. Bennett countered by arguing this would not be the best way to debate the abortion issue and that we should continue to use the stronger moral argument instead of the economic issue the caller identified.
To explain what he meant Bennett used an absurd example of how the other side could use an economic argument to show that abortion has a positive economic impact on society. Bennett’s view is that we should debate abortion on morality not economics. The end of the phone call should have also marked the end of any discussion about it.
The only people who have standing to be offended at this point are listeners who heard the call in real time. If they were to spontaneously call and complain, the phone call may have evolved into a discussion that would be worthy of national exposure. News should come from events that actually occur and not from false issues manufactured by partisan ideologues. The flap about Bennett’s phone call did not happen naturally; it was promoted by the members of the vast left-wing conspiracy and artificially propelled onto the National arena.
The Bennett phone call offended few, if anybody, who heard it. The hypocritical liberals actually had to expose tens of millions of people to the remarks they deemed offensive in order to create this issue. Ironically, the vast left-wing conspiracy had to "offend" millions of people in order to try to take down Bennett.
Making Something Out of Nothing
The same day of the phone call Media Matters for America decided to make it a national issue. On their website they posted the Bennett phone call with the incendiary headline:
Media Matters exposes Bennett: “[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down”
The next day, Thursday, September 29, the left-wing groups that monitor Media Matters began issuing press releases.
Democrat Congressman John Conyers in a press release disguised as a letter to Salem Radio Network said:
. . . we simply cannot countenance statements and shows that are replete with racism, stereotyping, and profiling. Mr. Bennett’s statement is insulting to all of us and has no place on the nation’s public air waves.
Keep in mind that Conyers released his letter to a wire service with the hope that the story, now with him in it, would get play on the air waves. Conyers was attempting to gain more exposure of Bennett’s statement. If he were sincere and did not want to “insult” more people, and if he actually believed the statement did not belong on the air waves, he would have sent a private correspondence to Salem Radio Network instead of splashing it on a wire service.
Bruce Gordon, President & CEO of the NAACP issued a press release that said:
. . . Bill Bennett should apologize for racist comments made yesterday . . . I am personally offended and angry that Bennett felt he could make such a public statement with impunity.
Since Gordon is playing for air time and trying to get more exposure to what Bennett said and since we know that not many members of the NAACP actually heard Bennett on the radio, we must conclude that Gordon is attempting to offend and anger his membership.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights issued a press release that said:
. . . Bill Bennett’s blatantly racist remarks are outrageous.
People For the American Way President Ralph Neas’ press release said:
. . . if there’s anyone who doubts that racial insensitivity still plays a role in our society and political culture, they should listen to these appalling remarks by Bill Bennett.
It looks like Neas is hoping there is racial insensitivity so that he can justify his job.
According to the Google timeline, all of the above press releases were issued BEFORE any of the main stream media (MSM) published one story about the Bennett call. At this moment the only people in the general public who knew what Bennett said were those who heard it on the radio.
This unseemly group of barnacles attempted to get ahead of the issue and attach themselves to it for their own self promotion. They were also sending a strong signal to the (AP) that they want this to be a national story.
AP Misuses its Power
The 500-pound guerrilla of the vast left-wing conspiracy, the AP, was not about to disappoint their allies. They promptly secured a quote from the top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid and filed a story.
So on Thursday, less than 36 hours after the Bennett phone call, hundreds of newspapers and television stations that make up the MSM mindlessly published what the AP served up.
On Friday, September 30, the AP got the White House to go on the record with a negative comment about the Bennett phone call. This led to another AP file and for the second day in a row hundreds of MSM went with the story.
On Saturday, October 1, a staff writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote an unfair and blatantly biased article about Bennett. Her hook for the article was that the University of Cincinnati College Democrats announced that they would protest a previously scheduled appearance at the University.
Bennett ended up canceling the UC appearance which prompted the AP to file a story that once again hundreds of MSM printed and put on the air. Many of these stories carried the headline:
. . . Outcry Prompts Bennett to Delay Talk
Also on Saturday, Mensah Dean of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote an unfair and biased article about the Bennett mess. The hook this time was that Philadelphia parents and education activists were demanding that the city’s school district cancel a $3 million contract it had with K12 inc., because the company’s Chairman of the Board was William Bennett.
As soon as K12 announced they had accepted the resignation of Bennett, the Philadelphia Daily News published another unflattering article.
The Intellectually Myopic Left
The October 2nd edition of Fox News Sunday included a discussion about the Bennett issue. Juan Williams provides an excellent example of the fact that in the war of ideas the left is only able to manage fire power equivalent to a pea-shooter. The following day James Taranto, an excellent example that the right has intellectual fire power equivalent to nuclear weapons, responded to Williams’ remarks:
. . . On “Fox News Sunday” yesterday, Juan Williams joined the attack on Bennett. The way in which he did it made our jaw drop, and let us count the ways. This is from the Factiva transcript . . .
What's clearly wrong is if you wanted to say, oh, gosh, you know, [1] maybe we should have abortions for every woman who has a history in her family of mental illness or anybody who has a disabled child, or [2] let's get rid of all the Christians, they certainly have been involved in lots of wars. [3] How about the Jews? You know what? [4] We have trouble with older people in this country. Clearly, they, you know, cause a great burden on our Social Security system. Maybe we should do away with some of these older people.
You know, Brit, it really speaks to a deeply racist mindset to imagine America somehow as better off if we didn’t have those black people around and all those racial issues and all there--you know, so many of these blacks end up in jail, as if they’re criminals because they’re black . . . He certainly said to me. That’s what . . . I heard, Brit . . .
Brit, if I’m sitting here on a national talk show and I say, you know, [5] maybe if we killed off these white people, we wouldn’t have so many mass murders in America, you’d say, Juan, are you out of your mind? . . . Words have meaning, Brit . . . I think what you’re misunderstanding is it’s the idea that he gave voice to this notion. If you were in a Nazi regime and said [6] you know, gee, you know, a lot of these Jewish people have businesses and they dominate the academy, and therefore wouldn’t it be better--that’s not a good idea, Brit. Not a good idea to give voice to.
No fewer than six times in a 10-minute segment, Williams did exactly what Bennett did that so offended him—namely, offer an outrageous hypothetical to illustrate a point. We’re no more offended by Williams’s doing so than we were by Bennett’s, but Williams’s hypocrisy is simply mind-boggling.
There are only two substantial differences between what Bennett said and what Williams said. First, Bennett made his remarks off-the-cuff and Williams had 72 hours to think about what he was going to say. Second, and more importantly, Williams is not going to have his life turned upside down over his remarks.
Williams was not alone. Amazingly dozens of liberal editorialists did the same thing and used similar examples to explain why what Bennett did was wrong. Thursday, October 6, one of these liberal columnists, Rick Badie, had a column published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with the headline:
What if we aborted every white baby?
My wife sent Mr. Badie an email:
Have you listened to the whole radio transcript? Bennett was making a ridiculous analogy, JUST like you are. How come it’s ok for you to do it and not him? Bennett is pro-life, are you?
Mr. Badie’s email response:
Yes, listened to the whole transcript. And it was ridiculous, as my ‘abort white babies’ was meant to be.
Mr. Badie then wrote another column on Sunday, October 9, commenting on the unfair response he got to his column three days earlier. Not only are the liberals not smart enough to avoid making the error of doing the exact same thing they are complaining about, they can’t even understand their error when it is pointed out to them.
News or Propaganda?
One fact about the Bennett issue that cannot be disputed is that the liberal MSM fueled by the AP succeeded in misleading millions of Americans. If news is supposed to inform people, how come nobody seems to be concerned that a large mass now believes something that is incorrect? If a product does the opposite of what it is supposed to do, it should not be able to succeed in the market place. The media is eager to jump on a story about a company with a product that doesn’t perform the way it is marketed. Who holds the media accountable when they spread misinformation?
The news in this case is simple and undisputed. Pro-Life Bill Bennett took a position that abortion should not be debated on economics and the focus of the debate should revolve around morality. Whatever anyone thinks about the Bennett phone call if they don’t at least understand the argument he was making, they have been misinformed, period.
In the October 1st, Philadelphia Daily News article mentioned above, the ‘reporter’ Mensah Dean includes a quote from the mother of a third-grader:
I find it hard to see any explanation for why they’re here in Philadelphia educating many of the black children Mr. Bennett clearly finds it provocative to call expendable.
Anyone with an average IQ who has taken the time to look at all of the facts knows with 100% certainty that Bill Bennett did not call black children expendable. He did just the opposite; he implied that ALL black fetuses should be carried to term so that there would be MORE black children. Mensah Dean is either incompetent or he is intentionally libeling Bill Bennett in his zeal to make sure the article has a liberal spin. Millions of people like this third-grader’s mom got the wrong idea from the AP and then thousands more people got the wrong idea because of Mensah Dean’s irresponsible reporting.
On Saturday, October 8, Bennett had an appearance at the Bakersfield Business Conference that provided the fuel for another AP salvo against him. Local television stations across the nation picked up the AP story with the headline “Bennett Appearance in Bakersfield Draws Protest”. The following day newspapers ran the story in their Sunday papers with the headline “Bennett Defends Remarks on Black Abortions.
So, people who did not hear Bennett’s radio show on September 28th were misinformed because of the AP. Motivated by the fact that the press will cover them, they show up to protest Bennett on October 8. This results in the AP filing another story that will misinform millions more. And the pathetic spectacle continues.
Liberals cannot win on the merit of their ideas. The only reason they are kept in the game at all is because of the power of the vast left-wing conspiracy. When they create a “Bennett controversy” they do their best to use it to tarnish all conservatives and all Republicans. They do everything they can to hold this as an example why the entire Right is bad. They are not happy attacking just one individual; they go after millions at once.
Time to Make a Stand
What happened to Bennett was a travesty, but it is relatively small potatoes. The vast left-wing conspiracy is constantly peddling misinformation in an effort to stop the conservative agenda. Sometimes the issues are small and sometimes they are big (the War in Iraq). The cumulative effect is devastating.
It’s time for conservatives to take a stand against the vast left-wing conspiracy. It’s time for us to fight back. Let’s start with the Bennett story.
Bill Bennett should file suite against the Associated Press to recover what he lost by having to resign from K12. This would be an excellent PR platform that would educate millions of Americans what the AP and barnacles like John Conyers, the NAACP and PFAW are really up to and make it harder for them to perpetuate an assault like this on somebody else in the future.
The people with big money in the conservative movement need to fund a news gathering organization that can compete with the Associated Press. The monopoly must end. We must avoid becoming complacent with the fact that we finally have a voice that can be heard in the media. Conservatives need to understand that the gains made over the last ten years merely give us a fighting chance to play defense. It is the equivalent of playing football and having to punt on first down.
We should express our dissatisfaction to the White House for them issuing a comment on Bennett’s remarks. A Republican White House has no business providing the vast left-wing conspiracy logs to throw on their fire.
Conservatives across the country must tell their local television stations and newspapers that we do not appreciate them blindly feeding us AP stories that have been manufactured for the sole purpose of advancing the liberal agenda. This is the foundation that will make it possible to create a news gathering organization that can compete with the Associated Press.
The war between liberal ideology and conservative ideology will be won or lost based on which side makes the strongest impressions with the people who refuse to participate. Most Americans just live their lives and do not want to engage in the battle. They don’t pay attention or dig deep into issues. They form their opinions from sound bites and shallow thought. Like advertisers marketing their product the passionate ideologues on both sides fight for a share of awareness from the uninformed. Their success is measured by the opinions expressed from those who haven’t bothered to put forth the work necessary to understand the issue. We must control the message and set the agenda to succeed.
In the War on Terror we are happy that Bush has adopted the preemptive strategy of hunting down our enemy and stop them before they can harm us. We recognize this is much wiser than simply reacting to attacks after they occur. The war of ideas is no different. We must all do what we can to preempt future attacks. It is time for each and every one of us to decide, right now, if we are passively going to accept the problem, or if we are going to actively combat the problem.
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