William Bennett on Abortions, Blacks, and Freakonomics

I heard the replay of the program and read his words too.

There is no way that he could logically say that he was mischaracterized unless he has a long lost twin brother named Michael Brown who recently resigned from the FEMA directorship.

Although he gave a slight disclaimer to the statement, he proceeded to say that the black abortion of babies would indeed lower the crime rate.

The statement took away the cake he was trying to have and eat too.

The irony of it all which is no surprise is the opinions of those who primarily the Republican Party thought were the "safe" appointees of past administrations as well as the current political party overall.

Time has given these people enough rope that they are hanging themselves with as a way to get rid of the rope;)

The broadcast has not been replayed to indicate whether the words were spontaneous or planned.

The president always seems to create self-inflicted wounds on his leadership when he speaks "off the cuff".

So to know how people really feel, ask them when they put away their speeches and words that were prepared for the moment that they really do not believe anyway it seems.

Bennett contradicted and negated his own attempt at a disclaimer if there was one indeed.

Maybe he owes somebody some money;)

It's sad, but we all know that there are people who will pick up his comments and run with them to our community's harm.

But to look behind the curtain, Bennett did not create the essence of his words.

His words came from one of two books that I have that talk about how little things mean so much and how things and issues that seem unrelated really are.

One author is Malcolm Gladwell who I met briefly when he was doing a book signing here in Atlanta.

Being that his mother was of color, I doubted that it was Gladwell directly.

But another book entitled Freakonomics could have been used by Bennett to form his opinion. Freakonomics was written a two-man team and one is an economist that is relatively young.

Bennett needs (or I hope so) to reveal his sources or reference material so the true source can be disputed.

Bennett has discredited himself regardless.

I still cannot get out of my mind Strom Thurmond's questioning of either Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill years ago as if they were children on a playground with something to the effect "You're not going to do it again, are you?"

The excuse of being drunk, drugged, and other conspiracy theories are not going to get such spoken and recorded words off the hook;))

It is like the ghosts of deceased plantation owners and Willie Lynch are being channeled for the world to hear:)

Bennett made these comments because he is within the majority population and made the statement regarding the minority population is why the statements hit so hard.

It was a verbal "kick them while they are down" mentality expressed.

If he had said something like a political columnist made about Chief Justice Rehnquist after Rehnquist's death (about how terrible Rehnquist was a Supreme Court justice), then who knows what the results would have been with Bennett's stature as a former cabinet member.

The White House is distancing themselves from Bennett for this reason alone especially that Bennett was a part of President Reagan's cabinet.

One cannot help but think about the cliche' "Birds of a feather flock together" when thinking about the statements and who said them.

One of the authors of the book "Freakonomics" is saying the same thing in their blog about Bennett's comments.

Bennett was the Education Secretary under Reagan and the drug czar under the first President Bush I read recently. Since his history goes back to the White House in the 80s, the statements become a little more powerful and more absurd in that context.

It is being reported that the White House is saying that the comments were "not appropriate" versus "not true", so the unraveling continues.

I have not finished reading Freakonomics yet.

I have done a little research and discovered that the book does argue that abortion has caused the crime rate to go down, but it does not specify race (yet from my research).

So Bennett is guilty for looking at the results of the judicial system versus the causes of crime as well.

As I discovered that it was indeed Freakonomics that Bennett was referencing, I found this link:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&q=freakonomics%2C+bennett%2C+abortion&btnG=Search+Blogs

Now the author(s) of the book are tasting a little backlash themselves and are taking Bennett to task on their blog.

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