Bad Company

[Jonathan Randall]

Senator Demands Bennett Apology for Remark (Bennett: "abort black babies")
WASHINGTON - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats on Thursday demanded that former Education Secretary William Bennett apologize for remarks on his radio program linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.

Bennett responded that the comments, made Wednesday on his "Morning in America" show, had been mischaracterized and that his point was that the idea of supporting abortion to reduce crime was "morally reprehensible."

The author of "The Book of Virtues," answering a caller's question, took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up.

"But 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," Bennett said.

snip

On his show Thursday, the anti-abortion Bennett said he was "pointing out that abortion should not be opposed for economic reasons any more than racism ... should be supported or opposed for economic reasons. Immoral policies are wrong because they are wrong, not because of an economic calculation."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050929/ap...




- My take? Anyone who doesn't believe in latent racism is in denial - it only takes one Freudian slip to come to the surface.

 

[okinawagojuryu]

It's a sad world . When is this madness gonna stop? When are people gonna start judging people by their character , then , by their race . It's what's inside that truly counts . This type of stuff makes me sick!

David

 

[arnisador]

There was a time when I found his ideas worth listening too, even if I didn't necessarily agree with them. It seems though that he now thinks he's president of Values Inc. and we must all listen to him.

 

[MA-Caver]

It's idiot statements like these that makes relations that much harder to improve between races. Hopefully this moron will not get voted into office next term.

 

[arnisador]

Is William Bennett running for office?

 

[Ray]

Although I'm not able to get to the link listed in the first posting, I did get to see and hear the full statement originally made. He didn't espouse it, he said that there are stupid ideas being floated around and here's an example. The "morally reprehensible" idea was in someone else's book.

If you don't get to hear or read the full verbiage, then you might think he was espousing it.

 

[arnisador]

I'm not surprised to hear the story is more complicated than it appears. But the White House is now chastising him:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050930/ap_on_re_us/bennett_race

 

[Jonathan Randall]

Although I'm not able to get to the link listed in the first posting, I did get to see and hear the full statement originally made. He didn't espouse it, he said that there are stupid ideas being floated around and here's an example. The "morally reprehensible" idea was in someone else's book.

If you don't get to hear or read the full verbiage, then you might think he was espousing it.

I did hear the full statement. While you are correct that he wasn't ADVOCATING IT, his monstrous and racist statement, about aborting black babies reducing crime was HIS VIEW. Sure, he went on to say that we couldn't do that, but he did understand that it would reduce crime. Sorry, I used to like the guy a bit myself some years ago (even bought his "Book of Virtues"), but he lost me a long time ago.

 

[heretic888]

Personally, I tend to avoid guys that are associated with organizations or agendas that have key words like "values" or "virtues" in them. In my experience, such entities are platforms by which to impose a type of virtue upon others (namely, mythic-agrarian), rather unconcerned with using logic or science to further their or others' understanding.

As such, the comments made by this individual strike me as no surprise whatsoever. A 'us/them' sociocentric mentality is quite commonplace among a mythic-agrarian worldview.

Laterz.

 

[Ray]

I did hear the full statement. While you are correct that he wasn't ADVOCATING IT, his monstrous and racist statement, about aborting black babies reducing crime was HIS VIEW. Sure, he went on to say that we couldn't do that, but he did understand that it would reduce crime.

You may be right that it was "his view" although I didn't read it as that way.

 

[MA-Caver]

It's idiot statements like these that makes relations that much harder to improve between races. Hopefully this moron will not get voted into office next term.

Neg rep for this and I'll go with that... I should read the WHOLE thing but like an idiot I didn't. Still...

...or idiots not bothering to look at the context of the whole paragraph of statements before crying the racist cry

Identifying yourself would've been nice too ya know? :wink1:
Either way... what was said is a racist statment and stereotyping a race. In high profile one needs to be careful in what they say no?
It still makes for stupid P.R. and doesn't help things.
I'll stick with my assessment that it was an IDIOT (public) statement regardless.