Back In Service!

I spent a few days in the hospital - everything's just ducky - and thought I missed all the fun with the Bill Bennett controversy. But I was watching O'Reilly last night and he has on some young (articulate, as the sportswriters say) black guy arguing that blacks actually commit crimes less frequently than whites, while O'Reilly insists that it's poverty that causes crime, not race. So there's still some life in this story. And this is the best part - the fun part - about these controversies - you get to see all kinds of different people get to demonstrate that they are either stupid or liars.
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Now admittedly Bill Bennett is a bit of a buffoon. I say this based entirely on his recent outing as a gambling addict. I wouldn't begrudge anyone his addiction - but do it in style. That's what was wrong with Clinton's sex addiction - he seemed to indulge it without any standards. When JFK bedded (we desperately want to believe) Marilyn Monroe, that was a sin befitting the man's stature. But taking a guick bj off the oval office with a chubby 20 year old intern - that was an offence that just deserved no quarter. So how did Bennett indulge his gaming impulses? Betting the hard way at a craps table? Growling "hit me" showing 16 in blackjack? Inside betting at roulette? Sadly, Big Bill preferred to blow his millions playing slots in private rooms in the casino, like some old farts on a bus trip to Atlantic City. But that's neither here nor there, because the hoardes of buffoons attacking Bennett are the story here.
For the record, here's Bennett's remarks:

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.

At first the outrage centered on Bennett's alleged call for genocide, which of course he didn't do and so the focus shifted to the implication that blacks have higher crime rates than the country as a whole. Ok, so that might not quite be like implying that the sky is blue, but I would have thought that if there was any statement you could make about race and not be pilloried, it would be that blacks have higher rates of crime than whites. But truth has little to do with race rhetoric. So you get the young black man on O'Reilly and various white liberals insisting that blacks don't really commit more crime than whites: Who ya gonna believe, my pious, pusillanimous platitudes or Your Lying Eyes?

The idea of dividing whites into "racists" and "non-racists" is itself an interesting game. The word "racism" could import some meaning if it weren't perverted over the last 40 years into essentially meaning "observant and honest." I don't know any white people who do not believe that blacks are a greater crime threat than whites. How can I be sure what others think? Because I don't know any whites who have chosen to live in black neighborhoods (and thus save tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process). Actually, I did meet a white woman who lives with her husband in Harlem (precisely to find affordable NYC housing), but she was under no delusions regarding the danger around them. But almost without exception, no white people will live among blacks. And it's not like white folk find black folk dislikable - in fact whites fill their virtual worlds with black entertainment. No, the reason for the actual segregation that exists can only be explained by fear. So if there is any outrage that Bennett's remarks should engender, it should be this: Why are so many whites so blatanly dishonest about the way they actually feel about race? Why this need to lie to yourself and others?