Subject:
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Re: The Guardian unworthy of toilet paper?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 4 Oct 2005 02:47:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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1032 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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Case closed
Nevermind that Bennett is pro-life. What a smear. And even the Bush
administration runs for cover from political hack fallout. Brutal.
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Well, let’s be fair. Bennett’s comments were so hideously ill-considered
that only the most far-right of media outlets have come out in support of
him. There’s a lot of “what he really meant was” going on post hoc, but the
bottom line is what he said, rather than what he may have meant (if, indeed,
they are two different things).
Is Bennett a racist? I don’t know. His comment displays, at the very least,
a shocking lack of sensitivity to racial issues. It’s hard to avoid the
suspicion that such commentary stems from a more deeply held belief. Rush
Limbaugh made similarly thoughtless observations re: race as it pertained to
Terrell Owens, and he promptly lost his seat at the ESPN table. But Bennett
still gets to host his on-air hackfest, if that’s any consolation.
Consider, for example, what would have happened if Howard Dean had opined
that we’d be involved in fewer illegal wars if all Republican babies were
aborted: he’d have been rightly crucified in the media. Dean could even have
said “it would be reprehensible, but we’d still be involved in fewer illegal
wars,” but the media wouldn’t care. They would blast him for his
ideology-based eugenics agenda for as long as the story would run. Bennett
is being held to the same standard.
I’d caution against dismissing this as the work of some far-left media
demagogue. Bennett’s meaning came through loud and clear, even if it’s not
what he meant to say.
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Here’s the
audio
And the transcript:
CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss
of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I
was curious, and I’ve read articles in recent months here, that the abortions
that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have
been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we
know it today. And the media just doesn’t -- never touches this at all.
BENNETT: Assuming they’re all productive citizens?
CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be
an enormous amount of revenue.
BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don’t know what the costs would be, too. I think
as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.
CALLER: I don’t know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.
BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don’t know. I would not argue for the
pro-life position based on this, because you don’t know. I mean, it cuts both --
you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that
the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of
the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --
CALLER: Well, I don’t think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don’t think it is either, I don’t think it is either, because
first of all, there is just too much that you don’t know. 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. 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 the caller is arguing against abortion based on economics. Bennett refutes
him by citing the book Freakonomics, in which the authors observe a drop in
crime along with the advent of legalized abortion, speculating that unwanted
children who were aborted would have been tomorrow’s criminals. Bennett states
how basing an argument on such grounds is unwise, and he continues to argue
reductio ad absurdum that arguing against abortion on any other grounds
besides moral ones isn’t wise. He never advocates aborting black children;
as I mentioned above-- he is staunchly pro-life!
So, for this, the headline reads, “Abort all black babies and cut crime, says
Republican”. That is a complete distortion designed to smear and mislead.
It’s simply outrageous, if not outright libel.
JOHN
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: The Guardian unworthy of toilet paper?
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| (...) Am I correct in seeing another fallacy here, not necessarily one on Bennett's behalf, but more of one in general? That being that it is instead economics that drives or motivates crime, not race as Freakonomics seems to put forth and that then (...) (19 years ago, 4-Oct-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
| | | Re: The Guardian unworthy of toilet paper?
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| (...) It's going to be difficult to get a libel charge to stick, even were he imprudent emough to try, since those were in fact the words he said, albeit out of context. In this day and age, with the media dog pack as bite happy as it is, (...) (19 years ago, 4-Oct-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: The Guardian unworthy of toilet paper?
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| (...) Well, let's be fair. Bennett's comments were so hideously ill-considered that only the most far-right of media outlets have come out in support of him. There's a lot of "what he really meant was" going on post hoc, but the bottom line is what (...) (19 years ago, 3-Oct-05, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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