“John B,” from Omaha, NE writes regarding my post about conservatives, Freakonomics, and Bill Bennett’s racism:

[I]f you had actually listened when Bill Bennett made the comment you quote, you would see it was NOT intentionally racist. You’ve taken the quote completely out of context. I’m willing to bet that you know you’ve taken the quote out of context, but really don’t care. You’ll do anything to make anyone conservative or republican look bad.

I guess we can argue about whether it was intentionally or casually racist, but what’s the difference. …Isn’t it racism either way?

For those just tuning in, we’re talking about William Bennett’s off-handed racism in answering a caller to his Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show.

I excerpted quotes from the transcript in my earlier post, but today I’m quoting the call in its entirety. Here’s the transcript from Media Matters. Feel free to compare it with the audio and my previous writings.

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.

Let me summarize:

It’s an absolute truth that “if you wanted to reduce crime, [...] you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” There are, of course, some caveats, “but your crime rate would go down.”

Why did Bennett feel the need to re-emphasise his the line “your crime rate would go down”? Why does Bennett equate blacks with crime? Why does it appear that his dilemma is about the general morality of abortion rather than the morality of racial persecution?

Eh, I’ve read Freakonomics, I’ve listened to Bennett’s full remarks, and I think I can tell you this: Bennett misrepresented (or misunderstood) the book, and exposed his racism on air with a caller.

Johnny, rise above the average Republican sniper, bring evidence, bring facts with you next time you write.

tags: bill bennett, bill bennett’s morning america radio, casual racism, conservative sniper, conservatives, freakonomics, ignorance, media matters, national media, quote, racism, racist, republican, sniper, talk radio, william bennett

Dwight Eisenhower’s eight years as president were about a lot more than I Like Ike buttons and interstate highways. From Wikipedia:

After his many wartime successes, General Eisenhower returned to the United States a great hero. It would not be long before many supporters were pressuring him to run for public office.

Eisenhower was generally considered a political moderate, and it was not immediately clear which party he would choose to join. Eventually he settled on the Republican Party, and in 1952 he was nominated as the party’s [...] candidate in the 1952 U.S. Presidential Election.

Unlike today’s Republicans, he refused to reduce taxes until he balanced the budget and left the preaching to the church men.

Eisenhower had mixed feelings about his Vice President, Richard Nixon, and only reluctantly endorsed him as the Republican candidate at the 1960 Presidential election. Nixon campaigned against Kennedy on the great experience he had acquired in eight years as Vice President, but when Eisenhower was asked to name a decision Nixon had been responsible for in that time, he replied (intending a joke): “Give me a week and I might think of something.” This was a severe blow to Nixon, and he blamed Eisenhower for his narrow loss to Kennedy.

Still, we should be careful not to oversimplify the man. It was with Ike’s support that the US started an active period of covert action in foreign countries. And Eisenhower put the Shah of Iran in power, setting the stage for the 1979 revolution.

Anyway, Richard Avedon’s photo of him is rather amusing. This one less so, but I want that tie — really, look at it.

Until then, the Ike T-Shirts (originally released in 1994) have been re-released and added to the collection with Beef T-Shirts and everything else..

tags: dwight david eisenhower, dwight eisenhower, ike, interstate highway system, interstate highways, moderate, nixon, president, president of the united states, republican, republicans, richard avedon, richard nixon, united states

David Rothman points to a Daily KOS story that points to a MyDD story titled “Aristocratic Right Wing Blogosphere Stagnating.” What’s the point? Of the top 40 political blogs, more than half are ‘liberal,’ and more importantly, they support community involvement — including basic features like comments — that the conservative blogs shun.

of the five most trafficked conservative blogs (over 200,000 page views per week), only one [...] even allows comments…

[...]

Community moderated blogging platforms [...] have provided us with an excellent means of finding new voices, and these are the voices that are generating the accelerated growth in the liberal and progressive blogosphere when compared to the right-wing blogosphere.

Chris Bowers may have a point. He’s certainly got the numbers and I suggest taking a look at the links above to get the full weight of the story.

Though I’ve had my own frustrations with comments here, I keep them open because I believe that honest debate is the center of democracy. I keep them open despite my concerns about the tone of comments in stories like this, and despite the comments from conservative snipers in a number of my political stories. Republicans are working hard to stifle debate in our traditional news media and our universities, it’s no surprise they’re doing the same for new media too.

Technorati Tags: aristocratic, blog, blogging, blogosphere, blogs, chris bowers, comment, comments, community, conservative, daily kos, dailykos, david rothman, debate, democrat, differences, difference, honest debate, liberal, mydd, politics, progressive, republican, snipers, stifle, story

The New York Metro reports that the sex industry is expecting a 20 to 50 percent uptick in business while the Republicans are in town for the Republican National Convention this week. Mary, a stripper at Ten’s Cabaret speaks from experience. She worked the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia and expects the strip clubs in NYC to be “really crowded” during the convention, adding, “the girls have been talking about it literally since June.”

Like many sex workers in Manhattan, Mistress Natasha is anticipating a dramatic upswing in business late this month as 5,000 delegates — and an entourage of 45,000 others — arrive for four days of work and play.

According to Mistress Natasha, a dominatrix in a midtown dungeon, “it always surprises me how many of my clients are not just Republicans but Bush supporters. I think, You wanted me to force you down to your knees when you’re in a pink tutu, but you support Bush?”

Conventions of all sorts and political affiliations seem to be a boon for the sex industry, but it seems the RNC will be a goldmine:

As the sex workers tell it, the consensus is that Republicans demand more outrageous acts. Mistress Natasha estimates that her clients are half Democrat, half Republican, but says, “Republicans are way freakier, probably because they’re way more repressed. They can’t be kinky with their wives.” She thinks it’s the submissive tendencies that create the conservative political identity. [...] “I believe that well before they knew whether they were going to be a Democrat or a Republican, they knew they wanted to be tied up and beaten.”

Eve, [a] sometime escort, says conservatives “are really interested in receiving anal sex or being spanked, or fetish or role play. I’ve often found that people who lead a more liberal life have already done all that or it’s not something they’re so fascinated with.”

republican, republicans, republican national convention, nyc, sex, sex workers, dom, domination, kinky, kink, new york, new york city, presidential election, rnc

Welcome the flacks. I don’t get many comments on stories here at MaisonBisson, so I was interested when I found a comment to my story about the Outfoxed documentary just an hour after I’d posted it.

Here’s my theory, and it’s supported by stories in Eric Alterman’s What Liberal Media and Al Franken’s Lies: conservative groups spend a huge amount of time identifying and attacking every liberal criticism. This mysterious Matt (perhaps from Ohio?) is a brownshirt on a mission. Are such personal attacks fair? No, but neither are Matt’s attempts to reframe my stories. It’s that reframing that so identifies the comments as conservative.

Answer the point, Matt. The question is about Fox news, an organization soundly criticized as biased and inaccurate by darn near every liberal, a bunch of centrists, and even a number of it’s own staff. You’re rhetorically and logically wrong to think you can disprove that by claiming other sources are more biased. But that’s how conservatives work: think Obi Wan as a republican saying “this is not the argument you’re looking for. You liberals should go chase your tail while we rewrite the constitution and shift your tax money to the rich.” Or something like that.

And that’s what’s happening in Matt’s comments to the Farenheit 9/11 story. Oh no! “Farenheit 9/11 contradicts itself.” But the Hitchins quote you offer as proof is less coherent than he claims the movie was. Here’s a fact, and let me suggest you watch Fog of War and read some psychology texts to understand it, people are not always logical, reasonable, or consistent. Furthermore, it seems people — heads of state included — will often tolerate extreme cognitive dissonance while in pursuit of money and power. The Hitchins quote plainly illustrates this fact, further darkening the sad conclusions Moore makes.

I will, however, compliment Hitchins’ rhetorical style. The play of equally unlikely and exaggerated opposites (“they do, or they do not; he is, or he isn’t”) create a lulling rhythm that leads nowhere, but appears sound.

As for Moore’s facts, let me repeat what I wrote in my earlier story: “Collectively, Bushwacked, Lies, and The Iron Triangle all lead the reader to the same conclusion Moore comes to. These authors’ references show a diversity of well researched primary sources — including government documents and qualified informants — that paint a fairly clear picture. It’s this brush that Moore uses for Fahrenheit 9/11.” I’ll gladly listen to any equally detailed and documented rebuttal, but please, no more empty accusations and false claims.

Finally, however, I’m amused by the apparent criticism of Moore for suggesting that troops should never have been sent to Iraq. That’s the point. Isn’t it? Our troops are suffering death and disability and and our nation deficits and diminished civil liberties in a war with no end in sight. This like like Vietnam and McCarthyism all it once if you think you can silence Moore and others for saying so.

[UPDATE]: Matt’s still at it….

Fox News is undoubtedly the most conservative news channel, and any argument to the contrary is intentionally misleading or stupid. Anybody who can count can tell you that Hannity gets three times as much air time as Colmes, and a mildly perceptive time counter will tell you that Colmes’ boss, Hannity, doesn’t allow him any time or opportunity to cross, correct, or criticize him. And that’s what happens when centrists are allowed any voice at all. Yes, one example is sufficient to characterize the entire network.

The problem isn’t that Fox News is biased, anybody who understands the history of journalism can tell you that the idea of unbiased news coverage developed sometime during WWII, peaked around 1970, and has been fading since. Democracy actually thrives amidst the cacophony of biased news outlets, so long as there is diversity and sufficient numbers of them. The complaint against Fox News is that they falsely claim the banner of “fair and balanced” despite contradictory evidence.

This is one of the reasons that former Fox News news anchor Jon Du Pre is speaking out against the channel. This is why former contributor Jeff Cohen is doing the same.

What is reframing? I put up a story about Outfoxed, you try to dismiss the argument with a comment that claims the source is too liberal to be listened to. I put up a story about Fahrenheit 9/11, again you try to dismiss it by claiming Moore is self contradictory. Another reader comments that he too has a family member in Iraq and is glad to find bumper stickers with a message he appreciates, and you dismiss him too. You ask what it means to (attempt to) reframe these stories? Clearly you know better than I do. Not once have you addressed the facts of any of these stories; you’ve made no attempt to demonstrate contradictory evidence.

What makes a liberal or conservative? The authors I name use primary evidence to discuss facts. Facts, by definition, can be neither liberal nor conservative. The authors don’t agree with my perspective, they’ve presented logical arguments based on independent evidence. That these authors make conclusions based on these facts that are offensive to people like yourself does not make them or their work liberal. You paint yourself as a conservative by claiming they’re liberals. Once again, these are facts, and nothing you’ve written here contradicts them.

But you knew that, you knew all of this. Why would you write such misleading comments in this blog, so far from the rest of the world? What motivation could you have? In the big picture, this conservative sniping serves a purpose, and I have to commend your efforts. But aren’t they sort of wasted here? In a larger forum, there’d be at least one idiot who didn’t see through you and would instead join with in wearing me or another blogger down with endless arguments about points off from my message.

Today, my message is about how conservatives like yourself are doing everything they can to snuff the flames of opposition. I’m up for a debate, but this isn’t debate. It’s a delay and distraction tactic. So here are your options: reveal yourself and enter a real debate with evidence to back your arguments (include citations), or leave. Further comments that do not meet this criteria will be edited or deleted as the commercial speech they are. This is an odd decision to make, as I believe strongly in the first amendment protects to free speech, but I also agree with the courts that commercial speech is subject to lesser protections. Further, I won’t let my blog, a media I pay for, be used as a mouthpiece for lies and deception in support of a candidate and ideology I oppose. That is to say, you can’t have both Fox News and my blog, but I’d gladly trade.

Technorati Tags: al franken, blog, colmes, conservative, conservative groups, conservatives, deception, eric alterman, farenheit 9/11, fog of war, fox news, hannity, liberal, media, news, obi wan, outfoxed, personal attacks, political, politics, progressive, psychology, reframing, republican, tax money, taxes