Another "open mouth, insert foot" situation...

[GS wanted]

Ahhh, good ol' race relations again...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050930/...s/bennett_race

Bennett: Black Abortions Would Lower Crime
WASHINGTON - The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.

"The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Bennett, on his radio show, "Morning in America," was answering a caller's question when he 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," said Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues."

He went on to call that "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."

Responding later to criticism, Bennett said his comments had been mischaracterized and that his point was that the idea of supporting abortion to reduce crime was "morally reprehensible."

Bennett was education secretary under President Reagan and director of drug control policy when Bush's father was president.

[RON430]

Originally Posted by GS wanted

Ahhh, good ol' race relations again...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050930/...s/bennett_race

Bennett: Black Abortions Would Lower Crime
WASHINGTON - The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.

"The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Bennett, on his radio show, "Morning in America," was answering a caller's question when he 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," said Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues."

He went on to call that "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."

Responding later to criticism, Bennett said his comments had been mischaracterized and that his point was that the idea of supporting abortion to reduce crime was "morally reprehensible."

Bennett was education secretary under President Reagan and director of drug control policy when Bush's father was president.

I recommend that before you get your jollies off on this story too much, you spend a bit more time researching it. Even here in the land of the liberal, one of our radio talk shows already spotlighted this story last night and played Bennet's actual quote. When a SF radio talk show, and no, it was not on the conservative channel, goes into how Bennet was misquoted, I doubt this story will have legs. Its a shame Pilosi didn't check her facts as well but then that would be out of character for her. Having said that, Bennett was not totally blameless in this area.

But we have a lot of problems in this country and crime is one of them. Instead of just mindlessly posting somebody elses article, I would recommend you get Freakonomics, the "recent book" that was at the center of the issue but not named in the story. Interesting that they had no problem naming Bennett's book by title. When you look at statistics and their use and misuse, which is a very poor way of summing up Freakonomics, you can reach some erroneous conclusions. Or at least conclusions that no one wants to have pointed out to them.

When you have a politically correct society, there are forbidden topics, and the black population appears to be one of them. When you combine Department of Justice statistics, and that is where this topic comes from, that point out two trends, the first being that crime went down after Roe v. Wade and the second is that the vast majority of those incarcerated in this country are black - far out of proportion to their amount of the population, you can draw the conclusion that aborting black babies would reduce the crime rate. The statistics can be interpreted to support that conclusion. But the reprehensible nature of this argument is what Bennett was pointing out and unfortunately for him, he also put a few words in here or there that were poorly chosen and well suited to being misquoted.

In case you think I am letting Bennett off the hook, you are mistaken. You would think that someone with his background would know that he is on the liberal radar screen to make political gain. But our society is broken in a lot of ways and the desire to not address problems because they are deemed not genteel enough to be discussed is not a way to solve them. For example, if you go back to those DoJ statistics, you can find a few other pearls. Far and away the majority of serial killers in this country are white. Statistics, you gotta love em.

[GS wanted]

I don't make a habit of "getting my jollies off" on misquotes, comments taken out of context, or the latest "(insert celebrity/politician here) said (insert stupid comment)."

I don't doubt this another sensationalized commentary meant to grab headlines. It's race and another caucasian (Republican former appointee) making a controversial comment about abortion and aborting African-American babies. Talk about killing two birds with one stone...is there a pun there? (ha ha)
However, I agree that context is always important. (Should apply to some of Farrakhan's outlandish comments taken out of context as well.) Also agree with your stat references.

[RON430]

Originally Posted by GS wanted

I don't make a habit of "getting my jollies off" on misquotes, comments taken out of context, or the latest "(insert celebrity/politician here) said (insert stupid comment)."

I don't doubt this another sensationalized commentary meant to grab headlines. It's race and another caucasian (Republican former appointee) making a controversial comment about abortion and aborting African-American babies. Talk about killing two birds with one stone...is there a pun there? (ha ha)
However, I agree that context is always important. (Should apply to some of Farrakhan's outlandish comments taken out of context as well.) Also agree with your stat references.

I guess aftter listening off and on to the talk radio show here that worked this thing pretty hard last night I was already tired of it. The host was trying to make the point that a SFO talk syndicated talk show host early in the day had started this by misquoting what Bennett said. He played not only what the local guy said but Bennett. Unfortunately, he was then inundated by callers who heard what they wanted to hear. The evening guy extended the topic to the second hour, so my wife and I heard the continuation after we got out from dinner, except now he really wanted to focus on what he was talking about. Namely, how certain topics are so inflammatory, and guaranteed to get viewers/listeners that creative misquoting can easily be done to play the race card to get viewers/listeners. And what do I see this morning? Nancy Pilosi and at least two networks trying to give this story legs. Now I believe Bennett should have known better but this whole thing demonstrates, once again, that the popular media (left or right) will do whatever it takes to make a story and earn revenue including misquoting, poorly reporting facts, poorly researching facts, et. al.

And I found it interesting that the original article you copied from Yahoo obviously named Bennett's book, "The Book of Virtues", which I have not read and have little interest in reading but it coult not bring themselves to mention the book that Bennett quoted during the infamous piece, "Freakonomics", which I have read. Obviously there was not much to be gained by attempting to savage the authors of Freakonomics when compared to Bennett. And of course lost in the whole issue is any discussion of the underlying premises.

Sorry.