Kill Bill (Volume III - This Time It's Personal)

I saw someone on some show last night criticizing the media. He was saying that frequently our media finds a hot button storyline, and in chasing the buzz ignores other equally compelling issues. This was in the context of Hurricane Katrina discussion, and he mentioned that there are a lot of discrepancies in the media coverage of Katrina, And, tragic as the disaster was, a lot of reports were sensationalized (for example, reports of rapes and murders in the Superdome still have no evidence behind them.)

In his book “Three Uses Of The Knife” David Mamet, a man very familiar with gripping storylines, comments:

Aristotle wrote that no evil can befall a good person in this life or after death.

That is, whatever befalls the good person, however devastating, cannot be evil if it does not spring from his or her own actions.

Things that can equally befall a good or bad person cannot be evil; they can only be accident and, as such, are the fit subject not of drama but of gossip.

He also remarks, and I'm paraphrasing while using quotation marks here, “A legal battle consists not of a search for the truth, but in jockeying for the right to pick the central issue…”

So what are we talking about here?

What’s the central issue?

I’m looking around and seeing the reaction to Bill Bennett’s racially sensitive comments. And as a black guy, I could care less about Bill Bennett really. He is definitely not the central issue.

I’m always a little shocked at the moral outrage in this country. You shouldn’t need a subversive indie flick to tell you that morality is shady ground in our history.

Politicians should be slooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwly learning that no one cares about their self-righteous grandstanding. And it’s because of the W factor. George Bush has overdone it, he’s filled the bullshit cup up to the rim with BRIM ( that stands for something, I don’t know what, but the first word is bullshit).

Because of Bush, it’s all starting to be scrutinized a little more closely. Now, no one believes any source anymore. Right after birth we pop out with an ibook (umbilical-ethernet port on the latest models) and do a Google search on our “mother.” It’s like...

“hold on miss, I just want to verify you as my parent real quick. Hold on just one second ... I’m sure it’s being discussed on a message board somewhere… just bear with me. *fingers drumming keyboard* Sorry miss, sometimes the connection comes and goes. I can’t wait to go wi-fi. Could you maybe move your belly a little to the right some. Thanks. Oh wait. Ok. Well it looks like on Dooce, people are saying you’re probably not my mother, and that’s like a motherhood site now. Yeah it is. What’s that? Oh yeah I uploaded the picture of me attached to the umbilical cord on flickr, but no one is really swayed. They think it’s photoshopped. Right after I posted some other people uploaded pictures of them attached to you as well. There’s also a flash intro of you giving birth to Paris Hilton on some old man’s website. But wait, let me refresh…. Opinions are like assholes you know … lol …wait I didn’t mean to say that, I could actually just laugh out loud. But then how would everyone else know …. hmmmmmmm …..”

Jokes aside, we’ve had too much moralizing with no substance behind it. Iraq is a joke. A gross mistaken miscalculation. Our quarterback has fumbled the ball five times, and thrown fifty interceptions in his last three games. We should definitely be looking to make a trade. At the least licking our wounds and moving on to the backup plan. Unfortunately everyone knows this except the right guy …

I can see taking issue with Bill Bennett’s statement. But it basically amounts to a poorly worded sentiment. Really he just needs a better writer (ahem, ahem) …like me or copyranter …

Cause what Bill was trying to say, the sentiment of the statement, is if you remove a big contributor to the problem you naturally will see a decline in the problem. If you were to kill every black person in this country today, tomorrow there would be a decline in the crime rate.

That’s a true statement. And those are hard to come by these days.

So what are we talking about here?

The quote is certainly venturing into dicey territory, you may want to perk up your ears, and squint your eyes a bit in his direction … that’s certainly warranted. But there’s no need to attack. There’s no need to defend. Are we afraid that the ideavirus of aborting black babies is going to spread and catch on … like blogging. Are we near The Tipping Point for aborting negroes, and one more sneeze might do it? Time People of The Year 2006 – Black Children Aborters. Stand up and take a bow!! You soldiers of justice…

If that’s a legitimate concern, we have MUCH bigger problems than Bill Bennett.

Perhaps, just maybe, implicit in Bill’s statement is that if you were to abort white babies, the same thing would happen. His point is not to platform the issue for discussion, his point is to say, “we can come up with a number of dramatic scenarios, none of which will apply to our current problem and need for a solution.”

In the Washington Post article linked to here, the actual context of Bill Bennett’s racist remarks aren’t provided until the third to last paragraph:

Bennett's comments came Wednesday, during a discussion on his talk show "Morning in America." A caller had suggested that Social Security would be better funded if abortion had not been legalized in 1973 because the nation would have more workers paying into the system.

So what are we talking about here?

Bill Bennett, was comparing someone else’s absurd statement with one of his own. He was discussing the validity of seeing a correlation between abortion and social security….

So my question is, why aren’t we???