Posted on 09/29/2005 9:07:37 AM PDT by jettester
This morning while driving to work, Rick Robert's was going off on Bill Bennet for a statement he made either during his show or an interview. The clip he played was of Bennet saying (as best as I can remember): "If you really wanted to lower the crime rate - even though that would be horrendous and unthinkable, would be to abort all of the African Amercian babies." Robert's was saying how stupid this was and that Bennet had given all of the liberals/race baiters/etc. something to be critical of.
However, Robert's did not play enough of the tape to allow what Bennet was talking about to be fully understood in context. Does anyone know what Bennet was speaking about? Bennet has made some stumbles in the past, but I enjoy listening to him debate political issues. This statement of his is either taken so entirely out of context or Robert's was right - Bennet must have been "smoking something."
Ouch! Engage brain before putting mouth into gear.
Hard to imagine a good context for that statement.
Unless it started with "If you were a liberal, and supported abortion for any reason, and had no moral standard, you might say something like this:"
Immediately after Bennet said this, he added something like, "Of course it's absurd and evil and could never happen," etc.
Too late. He's done. He was pretty weak as a talk host anyway. Not funny, hemming and hawing.
Sorry Bill, this one, you will not recover from. That's the nature of the media beast. "Aborting all the black babies to reduce crime" will haunt you forever.
My guess is someone made a comment like how abortion has helped lower crime rates, and Bennett was just making a snide comment. It is hard to tell, but I am certain that absurd comment was a response to something equally dumb.
Mr. Bennet should remain at the blackjack tables and away from microphones...if he truly said all that. If he did, he should be ashamed. If he didn't...next!
You beat me to it, and with graphics, no less!
Absolutely Wrong! He prefaced his statement by saying that it was morally reprehensible but had the same logic as the arguement that "abortion lowers crime" which was what he was refuting. This is another case of white talk show host is not always to use race in a discussion or analogy (Uuuuuummmmmm, I heard you say "blaaaaack") while that's the only thing some black talk show hosts ever ever do i.e. Tavis Smiley.
It's one of the dirty little secrets of the pro-abortion crowd.
From his comment, Bennett doesn't seem to be aware of this.
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.
I heard this, and the context was a caller who said that if abortion hadn't resulted in millions of children not being born over the past 32 years, we'd have many more people working, paying taxes, and it would be easier to adequately fund social security. Bennett said that a problem with that argument was that not every child born would have been in a position to make equivalent contributions. He asked, how many abortions occur among single mothers, or among people in poverty; implying, I guess, that they would be more likely to be unemployed than gainfully employed and contributing. Then he asked, sort of rhetorically, if you aborted all the black babies, would that result in a decrease in crime. A poor choice of words and poor example, but then Bennett does go off on tangents sometimes.
Definitely smoking something.
I surmise that Bennett was referencing the National Criminal Victims Survey that the DoJ maintains. That survey shows that black on white crime vs white on black crime is about 50 times more likely on a per capita basis.
Stupid comment nonetheless.
I didn't know he was pro-choice!!
Of course not! We're talking Rick here....
IT may be that the NCVS was referenced by Freakonomics.
"Of course it's absurd and evil and could never happen," etc.
Not so absurd. It's being touted as a benefit of Roe v. Wade. And, the rate of abortion is greater among black women than any other ethnic group.
Margaret Sanger is laughing from hell.
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