Subject:
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Re: Bennett IS unworthy of being used as toilet paper
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 8 Oct 2005 06:36:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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1412 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Because he is neither the idiot nor the racist he’s painted to be.
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It’s a self-portrait, so he has no one to blame but himself.
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You, on the other hand, seem to be biased in his favor and
it is definitely clouding your judgment. Say what you want to about the
Guardian, but defending Bennett to get at the Guardian seems pretty biased
to me.
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Well, yes,
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We are getting somewhere at last. :-)
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because I know of him and know his politics, and so I know that the charges
against him are baseless.
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Followed by immediate regression. Since you admit that you are biased, how do
the claims you are making have any validity? Not to mention that you are
ignoring any of the current evidence that contradicts your claims.
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As far as “defending Bennett to get at the Guardian”; well, that’s backwards.
I am attacking the Guardian because of its irresponsibility in this
non-story story about Bennett.
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Public figures don’t have a lot of room to complain if their activities attract
attention. :-)
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Okay, I just came across a piece by Richard Cohen, with whom I agree on this
matter. Since the Post requires subscribing, I’ll c&p the salient
paragraphs, because I think he defends Bennett better than I:
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Which isn’t necessarily saying that he is successful in that defense....
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Responding to a caller who argued that if abortion were outlawed the Social
Security trust fund would benefit -- more people, more contributions, was the
apparent (idiotic) reasoning -- Bennett said, sure, he understood what the
fellow was saying. It was similar to the theory that the low crime rate of
recent years was the consequence of high abortion rates: the fewer African
American males born, the fewer crimes committed. (Young black males commit a
disproportionate share of crime.) This theory has been around for some time.
Bennett was not referring to anything new.
But he did add something very important: If implemented, the idea would be
“an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.”
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But he doesn’t in any way contest that actually doing it wouldn’t yield the
claimed results. Just casually insinuate that blacks = crime, but say mass
forced abortions would be bad, so the first part is okay to say. A convenient
and misleading defense.
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He should have saved his breath. Prominent Democrats -- Harry Reid in the
Senate, John Conyers and Rahm Emanuel in the House and, of course, Pelosi --
jumped all over him. Conyers wanted Bennett suspended from his radio show.
Emanuel said Bennett’s comments “reflect a spirit of hate and division.”
Pelosi said Bennett was out of the mainstream, and Reid simply asked for an
apology.
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The problem is that Bennett DID save his breath (see above).
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Actually, it is Reid and the others who should apologize to Bennett. They
were condemning and attempting to silence a public intellectual for a
reference to a theory. It was not a proposal and not a recommendation --
nothing more than a possible explanation. But the Democrats preferred to
pander to an audience that either had heard Bennett’s remarks out of context,
or merely thought that any time conservatives talk about race, they are being
racist.
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The article placed the remarks in context, so who is pandering here?
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The Democrats’ obligation as politicians, as public officials, to see
that we all hear the widest and richest diversity of views was suspended in
favor of partisan cheap shots.
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Kinda like Cohen is doing, eh?
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(The spineless White House also refused to
defend Bennett.)
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Bush isn’t completely clueless! My God, this was all a plot to get me to admit
that, wasn’t it?
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Because I came of age in the McCarthy era, I have always
thought of the Democratic Party as more protective of free speech and
unpopular thought than the Republican Party. The GOP was the party of Joe
McCarthy, William Jenner and other witch-hunters. Now, though, it is the
Democrats who use the pieties of race, ethnicity and gender to stifle debate
and smother thought,
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And the Republicans seem to always be sympathetic to free speech as long as it
is by racists. Besides, Bennett can say what he wants, and the Democrats are
free to say he is an idiot. I can always boycott the sponsers, which is my
right, and the sponsers can pull the plug on Bennett, and he can keep going on
about whatever he wants to regardless, so this is an obfuscatory issue since
freedom of speech doesn’t enter into it.
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pretty much what anti-intellectual intellectuals did to
Larry Summers, the president of Harvard University, when he had the
effrontery to ask some unorthodox questions about gender and mathematical
aptitude. He was quickly instructed on how to think.
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Since Cohen and Bennett can’t seem to add two plus two, I’d say they shot down
Summers by themselves. :-)
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He defends Bennett in the context of taking the Democrats out to the
woodshed, but whatever. <shrug>
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The best defense is being offensive..wait, a good offense...no, it was a BAD
offense...well, somebody just got spanked and Cohen is the one standing there
with his pants down....
-->Bruce<--
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