Goodnight, Billy

A few final thoughts for the day on William Bennett...

The White House and Republicans finally reacted. Well, kind of. Mr. Bush's adorable mouthpiece, Scotty, said the President found Mr. Bennett's remarks "inappropriate". Um, OK. I thought "inappropriate" was putting your elbows on the table - for some reason, I believe speaking to 1.2 million radio listeners about aborting Black babies to reduce crime rates goes a little further, even if Billy was only trying to make a hypothetical point.

But that's just me.

GOP poster-boy Ken Mehlman echoed the word "inappropriate" in his comments (don't these guys have a thesaurus?), but then identified the real issue over which we should be indignant. According to the Washington Post,

Mehlman also lashed out at liberals whom he accused of engaging in racially divisive rhetoric when it suits their interests: "What's much worse is the hypocrisy . . . from the left."

Thanks for setting us straight, Ken.

Apparently, the Administration's wrist-slap of Bennett was, once again, too little, too late for the African-American community. Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote that,

The reaction was swift and angry to former Reagan honcho William Bennett's oddball racist crack that aborting black babies could reduce crime. The problem, though, was that those who instantly denounced Bennett were all Democrats. Even as calls were made for an apology or for Bennett to be fired from his syndicated national radio show, neither President Bush nor any other top GOP leader said a mumbling word about Bennett.

I guess the thing that bothers me deep down about this whole tawdry affair (in addition, of course, to Bennett's original statement) is the automatic and predictable tendency of the Right to ignore the facts of a given situation, and to think of nothing other than circling the wagons. To deny. To spin. To stonewall. To obfuscate. To counter-attack.

Take a look at what our greatest source of carbon dioxide, Rush Limbaugh, had to say to his millions of gullible fans. Not a hint of regret, or admonition - or common sense, for that matter. Why do the Republicans not instinctively react to wrongdoing the way any levelheaded person would, automatically? Instead, they criticize their own only begrudgingly, after all other diversionary options seem to have failed.

Bill Bennett was wrong, no matter how you slice it, and deserves to spend the rest of his career in exile, handing out leaflets on an obscure city street corner. But our President and his minions were wrong, too. Seems the one thing they do know how to do is respond too late.