Bennett's Boo Boo

I'm tellin ya Tim my penis is this big

Sometimes being angry can just be exhausting. But then guys like Bill Bennett say something stupid like aborting black children will lower the crime rate. And I have no choice but to be angry. But then I took a deep breath and actually looked on Bennett's site for unedited audio of what he said and then I formed an opinion.

First off, there are no two ways about it he did say it. But his words were taken out of context. He had a caller who suggested that if there was no abortion we would not have any Social Security problems this lead to a discussion to where Bennett argued that this is an unknowable proposition and he sited the analysis and discussion on the closely related topic of crime and abortion in the best seller Freakonomics (written by Yale alums Steven D. Levitt and Stephan J. Dubner) and then he went on with a hypothetical analogy to point out how absurd the original proposition was and that's when things got ugly.

I can honestly say that Bill Bennett doesn't think that all black women should have abortions. But he shouldn't have used that particular analogy in such a cavalier fashion. Not while there is a National debate going on involving poverty and race.

It pisses me off that black people are so easily manipulated by the media. Here we have the opportunity to actually have a national debate about race and poverty in this country after Hurricane Katrina and what does the media do? They go the sensational route and run with a story involving an ex-Reagan cabinet member making racist comments on his talk show. This kind of sh*t takes our collective eyes off the ball ladies and gentleman. Bill Bennett's comments were taken out of context. But please make no mistake folks, there are plenty of white people out there that think black women having abortions would lower the crime rate, but BILL BENNETT is not one of them. Also let's be honest here this kind of thing is good for his show (hell I even listened to the unedited clip of the show before writing this post).

Bill Bennett's comments don't piss me off. What does piss me off is the divisive fashion the media uses race to divide us more then already are. It's as if they are saying SEE BLACK PEOPLE WHITE PEOPLE STILL HATE YOU. I don't need the media to point out this out to me. I would rather have the media spark a debate about why white people feel that the race problem was solved with the passing of the Civil Rights act, or why did black people's humanity have to be legislated? These are some of the things that lie at the core of the race people in this country.

Now some of my friends actually have opinions about this, I promised that I would use their quotes in this post but I will refrain from using their real names and instead I will use pseudonyms my friend Big Fun was quoted saying: "Well, I *think* what Bennett is really saying is that you could make an argument that aborting the children of people under a certain income level would likely end reducing your crime rate, but doing so would be every bit as reprehensible as aborting all black babies to achieve the same end. I think he is drawing the correlation between race and income level which, as we all pretty much know is not entirely without merit...but probably didn't really need to be said to make his point."

Not quite Big Fun he was actually using the analogy to make a point about how eliminating abortion wouldn't solve the Social Security problem.

This comment ended up pissing off my friend Ironman to where he responded with the following comment: "No, I think he's saying blacks are responsible for crime. He didn't mention aborting white babies. The way I read it, it's almost like he says "Damn! We just CAN'T DO IT!...because it's bad. But if we could, exterminating the Black Population by aborting all their babies would certainly drastically lower the crime rate." I recall a similar argument made toward Jews awhile back. Sadly, he is just speaking to the converted that is his audience."

It's truly amazing how my white friends approach stuff like this from two different angles. The funny thing is they were only going on what the media put out there.