Cobb

" have often been asked if I think America is a racist nation. I suppose the answer has to be yes, otherwise nobody would ask such a patently offensive question."

no shit.

check out a recent republican martyr's recent fulmination:

" 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."

bill bennett "morning in america":
http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006

how this kind of republican demonica passes as digestible chit chat boggles my freaking mind. do you, citizen cobb, really consider repub party-staples like bennett to be outliers? how harsh a hint will the kept company have to send before the hardsore revulsion sets in?

I read Freakonomics and I understand the import and context of the argument. It was the first thing that popped into my head, and sure enough, that was the context given at the site you cite.

I know Bennett well enough to know that he was speaking hypothetically.

are you saying he was speaking hypothetically because you didnt spot a bent coathanger in his hand?

couldn't bennet have 'spoken hypothetically' by suggesting that you could cut down on crime by aborting both black & white babies -- since im sure its safe to guess that white men and women havent suddenly stopped breaking laws.

as it reads, his on-air comment defines a notorious percentage of black births as Born Criminals. i cant believe youre comfortable with this smug sentiment, cobb.

You're eating out of the hand of Pelosi. Stop chasing ghosts.

From the NYT:

"I was pointing out that abortion should not be opposed for economic reasons, any more than racism or for that matter slavery or segregation should be supported or opposed for economic reasons," he said. "Immoral policies are wrong because they are wrong, not because of an economic calculation. One could just as easily have said you could abort all children and prevent all crime, to show the absurdity of the proposition."

Mr. Bennett, who was the secretary of education in the Reagan administration and is the author of a best-selling book on morality, said he was referring to a debate in the online magazine Slate that had discussed race in the context of an argument about whether abortions contributed to lowering the crime rate. That debate, involving Steven D. Levitt, an author of the best-seller "Freakonomics," apparently appeared in Slate six years ago.

In an interview with Fox News, Mr. Bennett said critics had distorted his comments by omitting his statement that aborting all black babies would be "morally reprehensible."

"When that is included in the quote, it makes it perfectly clear what my position is," Mr. Bennett said, "They make it seem as if I am supporting such a monstrous idea, which I don't."

The Democratic Congressional leaders, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, both sought to put the remarks in the context of a Republican effort to court African-American voters. Mr. Reid said Mr. Bennett's comments would "feed the fires of racism," and Ms. Pelosi called them "shameful words."

yo cobb, you're eating out of the hand of the Lugosi's. Stop chasing quotes.

think for yourself. use your own sentences. use your own eyes and your own mind about what bennet meant when he said the words "i do know". to mine, he said that he 'knows' aborting every black baby in the US will cut down crime. he is calling a solid percentage of blacks born criminals. so for the third time my man-- in your own words, and without cutting and pasting and pointing to "context" or the Steno York Times -- how can a guy with your tuned accuity defend these words as noble or thoughtful of accurate or human?

You haven't read Freakonomics, so you've never heard the argument before. You're shocked and scandalized. Poor you.

did i need to read the Freakonomicon to grok the decline and fall of Jimmy the Greek?

ok so now you believe that Bennett is FOR abortion but only if the fetus is black. Plonk!