For MONTHS Sheehan has mouthing off - and posting - the most outrageous anti-American, anti-Semitic crap and none of it gets a mention in the MSM; all they do is recount her pathetic "bereaved-mom of soldier as dove" meme, ad nauseum.
But Bill Bennett says something controversial and the MSM is all over it as if he he'd endorsed what he was ACTUALLY condemning, and as if the statistics on black crime weren't what they have been for the last 40 years (when Moynihan first started taliking about the collpase of the black family structure and how that was probably reponsible for the disporportionate amount of poverty and criminality in the black community. Neither Moynihan of Bennett EVER asserted that this was genetically caused, both in fact have argued that it is sociological and related to unintended but perhaps unavoidable adverse side-effects of the welfare state).
Bill Cosby has said similar things, and while he was criticized for it he was not tarred and feathered in the MSM like Bennett. WHY? Becuase Bennett is a conservative GOP booster and a figure in talk-radio. And the MSM hates him for that.
YUP: This is a simple example of MSM bias: those who reinforce the meme's they like get preferential treatment; those who expose the falseness of their meme get tarred and feathered. They like to portray themselves as objective, but they are not. The MSM is merely the propaganda arm the the Left. Their declining ratings (and the demoicning fortunes of the Dems) and the burgeoning success of FOX and talk-radio - and the increasing fortunes of the GOP PROVE the American people know this very well - and it's why they keep turning off the MSM and voting GOP in ever increasing numbers.
I like what Mark Levin wrote in THE CORNER:
BENNETT [Mark R. Levin] - So, what do we have here? We have another attempt, by a Democrat front-group (funded largely by George Soros), to smear a thoroughly decent man who harbors no racial prejudice of any kind. We don't need to split hairs in defense of Bill Bennett. We don't need to accept the spin that's used as the basis for the smear by those who seek to destroy him. Nothing Bill Bennett said, when read in full, is racist. Now, the former lead researcher for this Democrat front-group, who was hired by Chuck Schumer to work on his Democrat campaign committee, is now under investigation for illegally securing the credit report of one of the highest ranking African-American public officials in the nation, Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. The same media that regurgitates David Brock's poison barely noticed. Robert Byrd, who actually was an active racist, is still treated like some kind of wise man by the Democrats and the media. Jesse Jackson, whose anti-Semitic statements are well known, is called upon to pass judgment on individuals who have a far better character than he. Let's no cede the moral high ground to people who've never held it.
Indeed.
7 comments:
You are clearly showing your bias here. A few months ago, Senator Durbin made a reasonable remark which could easily be taken out of context so as to appear unreasonable. The full speech is available here. In the following month, you made at least four entries saying that he should apologize and/or step down from his position in the senate. 1,2,3,4
Now Bill Bennet has said something reasonable, but which can easily be taken out of context so as to appear unreasonable, and you are defending him. There is nothing wrong with defending his words, but the contrast makes it clear just how partisan you are.
There are some differences between Durbin's remarks and Bennet's. Durbin said that if someone read a description of some practices that were allegedly taking place, you would think they must be describing a Nazi or other totalitarian prison camp, when they were actually describing a US prison. This was then misstated as him actually calling the US prison the equivalent of a Nazi prison camp. Bennet said that if all you cared about was reducing the crime rate, you could abort every black baby, but that it would be a morally reprehensible thing to do (and said it in a way that showed he would not consider it to be good policy). He was replying to a comment about lost tax revenues from abortions reducing the number of people paying taxes, and seems to have been making the point that abortion should be discussed as a matter of abortion, and not based on the practical affect it has in other areas.
The main difference between the remarks that generated so much outrage is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with what Durbin said, while Bennet's statement is very slightly objectionable. If it bothers you that the description of alleged treatment of prisoners sounds like it comes from a Nazi prison camp, then you should either complain that the allegations are false or that the treatment should stop. You should not complain that comparing US prisons to Nazi prisons is unfair, because that wasn't done. Durbin just said that these actions were the sort you would expect out of Nazis, not that US soldiers were acting like Nazis or that US prisons were like Nazi prison camps. Bennets comment is mostly reasonable, but does contain a very small grain of implicit racism. He could have just said that aborting every baby would reduce the crime rate, he could have said that aborting every white baby would reduce the crime rate, but he chose to specifically say that aborting every black baby would reduce the crime rate. All the statements are true, but by specifying a subgroup, it suggests that that subgroup is more responsible for crime than the general population. This is a very minor point that should not cause all the outrage that has been caused, but it does make his statement slightly more objectionable than Senator Durbin's.
James
james;
you are totally wrong.
durbin's remarlks wee worng on the facts and indefensible.
he said GIT*IMO was like a gyulag and liek the killing fields of pol pot and like hitler's concentrations camps.
thius is totally wrong/ 50 million diued at stalin's hanfds, pol pot murdered 3.5 MILLION of his own in the killing fioelds, and the concrentration camps incinerated MOST of eirpe's Jews - SIX MILLION.
No one has died in GITMO, and most prisoners ahve PUT ON WIEGHT!
by equating the two - bennett's accurate statement, (which was also a CONDEMNATION of anyone who proposes abortion has ANY good side effects) with durbin's, you expose yourself as a dupe or an ass.
take your pick.
or apologize.
Are you trying to prove that you are illiterate or that you are stupid? I linked to his speech so that you could read it. Here is the relevant part of what Durbin said:
"When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
Which facts are you disputing? Are you claiming that no FBI agent ever wrote a report like that? Are you claiming that if someone just read that statement of prisoner treatment to you without saying what prison they were describing, you would expect that it had come from a description of an American prison? Durbin did not make up the treatments, he read them from an FBI report.
Also, he did not say that gitmo was like a Nazi prison, a gulag, or something done by Pol Pot. He said that the actions described in an FBI report were the sorts of things you would expect in such prisons, and that any reasonable person should be shocked to find out that Americans are treating their prisoners like that.
Durbin's statement was unreasonable only if you think that Americans should be leaving prisoners without food, in freezing rooms without clothing, in boiling hot rooms, and in rooms with loud music for long periods of time. If you actually do support such treatment of prisoners, then you are a horrible person.
It is possible that the FBI agent was lying, which would be a horrible thing. It is possible that no FBI agent ever wrote such a report and that Durbin made the whole thing up, but other senators had access to the same reports and none of them made that claim, so there is no evidence that he did. If an FBI agent wrote that report, it is reasonable for Durbin to have expected it to be true, in which case his claim was reasonable.
James
james - you are a dolt.
here's a quote from your paste-hob:
"... you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
as i said: the nazis camps killed MILLIONS; the gulags killed MILLIONS ; pol pot killed MILLIONS.
anyone who compares GUITMO to them is an ass, a dope, a stioooge, a liar or anti-American. OR ALL OF THE ABOVE.
as durbin is no dope, i think he was DELIBERATELYT trying to smear the USA and our military, and AHD to know this would be fuel for our enemies.
therefore DURBIBN was TRAITORUS.
he should have been censured by the senate.
had he not apologized - while crying! - he would have been.
NOT ONE NATIONAL Dem criticized him (ONLOY mayor daley did).
this shows the moral nakruptcy of the Dem Party amd Dem leadership.
when Trent Lott misspoke,. he was REMOVED from leadeship by the GOP.
the GOP has guts and morality; the Dems do NOT.
The FBI agent DID NOT MAKE THE EVIL ANTI-AMERICAN FALSE COMPARISONB; DURBIN DID. DURBIN MISCONSTRUED AND ISOLATED REPORT INTO A DIATRIBE AGAINST THE USA, AND ONE THAT DEMEANS THE SACRIFICES MADE BY INNOCENT SOULD IN THE USSR, NAZI GERMANY, AND POL POT'S CAMBODIA.
What Durbin did wasd LIE in order to BESMIRCH Bush, the US Arned forces, and the USA.
Durbin is SCUM.
NOW: your cpmpariuson of Durbin's assinine and utterly false remarks to Bennett's - which MIGHT be construed as asinine (IF AND ONLY IF ONE EXCISES HIS CONDEMNATION OF WHAT HE WAS HYPOSTESIZING) but are TRUE: blacks commuit a disproportionate amount of the crime in the USA.
that may be very VERY un-PC to say, but it is a fact, and has been un-PC since Moynihan said it 40 years ago.
You have miscontrued what both Durbin and Bennett said.
Wake up and smell reality, apologize - or get lost.
how can i start a blog
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