"What Liberal media"??

[judyvillecco]

Refreshing debate Gimpy. You are a fireball! I'm with you Keith! The old liberals are great! The new ones scare me a little but both sides have merit. It's great to read this debate with some on ignore! What's wrong with a $2.00 bet? I bet on horses once and the lotto one time. Guess I'm a hypocrite. Still like Bennett but not Limbaugh or Hannity. My problem with Hannity is he won't fight himself for our country as stated on his show but doesn't mind sending others. Got no respect for that. As for O'Reilly, I love to hate him and watch him every night. As for the Gimp I'm a fan!

[SuperScout]

Did Bennett at any time condemn gambling, or those who participate in this hobby? Are you equating a gambler with a dope-smoking, draft dodging, woman-abusing loather of the military? When did Bennett put himself on a higher plain than anybody? You make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[blues clues]

Neil,you are right about the Jackson,sharpton's and who every but neil just how long will it take the rep/conserv/right wing nut's to get over the eight years of Clinton? everytime any kind of talk starts about the conservativative/republican all you have to do is look to the right and here it comes some-old- dog and pony show I do wish you guy's would get a new act this one is wearing kind of thin.
razz

[Gimpy]

Even though I'm ABSOLUTELY no "fan" of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et all.

These is NO WAY (Neil) that you (or SuperScreamer) can sit there and try to convince ME or anyone else that when Jesse Jackson's little "extra-martial affair" became "public knowledge" in the media just a few years ago that YOU (both) weren't "bitchin, moaning, and hollering"from the "highest rooftops of moral-superiority" that HE was a "hypocrite" of the worst kind. Same, same with Bill Clinton as well.

"Morality", virtuous behavior, values of honest and forthright resonsible behavior and "setting the necessary, permissble conduct" of society was the FOUNDATION of W. Bennet's publications and the "sermon's" narrative of those "$50,000" speeches he accetped so "graciously" as payment "rendered" for his "brand" of "conservatisim" and "moral" superiority"!

Ain't it funny how you guys can be so "blind" when the proverbial "shoe" is "on the other foot", huh??

Typical "right-wing" behavior, as always, DENY--DECEIVE---DISAVOW any and all evidence contrary to the "pary's perception" of so-called "moral majority"---Yea, well that's just about as full of $hit as Bennets "excuse" for his behavior!

Adios & Ta-Ta,

[Gimpy]

Here is WHY Bennet should be considered a "hypocrite" and condemned for his actions!

**********************************
Berate and Switch
Bill Bennett's kinder, gentler defenders.
By William Saletan
Updated Tuesday, May 6, 2003, at 2:38 PM PT


Here come the Bill Bennett defenders. In case you've been sitting in front of a video poker screen for the past week, here's the story: The Washington Monthly's Joshua Green and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter reported that Bennett, a conservative moral lecturer and author of The Book of Virtues, has gambled at casinos for years, losing as much as $8 million. Slate's Michael Kinsley and other liberals jumped on the story, spanking Bennett for hypocrisy.

Now conservative pundits are coming to Bennett's aid. They argue, as Kinsley predicted, that Bennett's gambling is 1) OK because it hurts nobody else directly and 2) non-hypocritical because Bennett never explicitly criticized gambling. Either point can be argued separately. But together they don't stand up. Bennett's hypocrisy isn't that he gambled while faulting others for the same habit. It's that he says it's OK for him to indulge in a habit that hurts nobody else directly, but it isn't OK for you. To excuse his conduct, his libertarian defenders are substituting their standards for his.


Bennett told the Monthly: "I don't play the 'milk money.' I don't put my family at risk, and I don't owe anyone anything." He compared gambling to alcohol: "If you can't handle it, don't do it." His defenders make the same point. "Bennett deserves privacy; he deserves whatever means he can legally use to relax when he is off duty," writes Andrew Sullivan. "What he does with his money is his own business," agrees Jim Glassman. "The only conceivable victims here are the Bennett family, and a little bird tells me that they'll do just fine," says National Review's Jonah Goldberg. Unlike adultery, gambling doesn't involve a "willingness to hurt others," adds the Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last.

Sullivan, Glassman, Goldberg, and Last are fully entitled to make this argument. But Bennett isn't. As drug czar in 1989 and 1990, he constantly emphasized that anyone who patronized that addictive industry was responsible for its victims. On Meet the Press, he advocated mandatory sentences for "recreational, yuppie" marijuana users, blaming them for "the murder and mayhem in Washington, the fact that we have babies now being born addicted to cocaine. ? These people are accessories to all those things, and they need to start paying a price." He told the Wall Street Journal that the "casual user ? is driving the whole enterprise." He told USA Today, "For your middle class or your yuppie user, let's do what they do in Phoenix: Weekend in jail, counseling program, and you pay the cost of it." He criticized celebrities who admitted to past drug use, warning that such disclosures gave kids the idea that "you can do drugs and still be rich and successful."

You can argue (contrary to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission) that gambling doesn't trap and destroy people the way drugs do. But again, Bennett can't. The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators 2001, to which Bennett wrote the introduction, says, "Approximately 2.5 million adult Americans are pathological gamblers; another 3 million have been classified as problem gamblers. ? According to the American Psychiatric Association, 'pathological gambling is persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior ? that disrupts personal, family, or vocational pursuits.' "

To quell the furor, Bennett has issued a Clintonian non-apology apology: "It is true that I have gambled large sums of money. I have also complied with all laws on reporting wins and losses. Nevertheless, I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set. Therefore, my gambling days are over." It isn't about the example, Bill. It's about you doing for gambling what you said pot smokers did for the drug trade. If you'd caught any of your libertarian sympathizers with a joint, they'd have spent the weekend in jail for patronizing a corrosive industry. Lucky for you, they're more forgiving.

**************************

[judyvillecco]

Gimpy you are right!
Bennett deserves the attention for his hypocrisy just like Clinton I agree. He deserves to be all over the media too. What's right is right on both sides. He has no right pulling the moat out of others eyes and whatever in his own so to speak. Many people with money think that gives them the right though. If they have money and power or money or power.

Then those of us without it complain loudly about those who have it. I do anyway.

[HARDCORE]

Recon Old Friend -

Your analogy is not totally accurate! In that you say, if I read you right - "When a Republican f--ks-up, everybody is on his case, where-as when a Demo bites ass, no one responds!?"

I (and many others my friend)make it a point to strike in both direction, not for political motive, but for Americanism! A man has to be open-minded, do you not agree, on all issues. Willing to praise where praise is due, and to rebut that which he feels in error, regardless of the author of the feast or famine!

As no one, party, or faction of any kind, is always right or always wrong, the only true axiom, in my humble opinion, is Americanism! And right or wrong, this is our one true (original) handle!

When something is wrong, it is our duty to attempt to fix it! When it is (what we perceive to be) right, then it our responsibility to compliment it also! "OUR TOTAL COUNTRY" should and must be our primary concern, for unless we find a means to pull together, we will most assuredly all pull apart! (Just my usual insanity)

KEEP PUNCHING MY FRIEND!!

VERITAS

[11BRAVO]

When one becomes the "self-appointed-moral-pontificator", one should have a closet free of skeletons.....Granted, spending $ 2 million dollars++ ( money derived from his sermonizing-moralizing books and given to casinos who feed on addictive behavior ... ) gambling was legal ( and what happened to privacy here ?? ) etc., but what if he had only gambled 1/10 of the total and given the rest to some worthwhile charities, as he is constantly reminding us, vis-a-vis his books, that we should be doing...I would like to see him contribute time and money to organizations which help gamblers kick the habit, and have something positive come out of all of this, instead of the usual "hot-political-air" from both sides....

11BRAVO

[judyvillecco]

Bravo to both. Well said and Amen

[Gimpy]

Bill (please don't call me a hypocrite) Bennet!

*******************************

NATION/WORLD > Ruth


Bill Bennett Rolls Snake Eyes On His Reputation
DANIEL RUTH
Published: May 11, 2003

Why, there hasn't been this much clucking since they held auditions for ``Chicken Run.''
After all, this country's national pastime isn't baseball. It's the always delightful blood sport of reveling in the fall from grace of hypocritical public figures hoisted on their own petards of hubris.

Jimmy Swaggart? Oh, baby, baby!

Jim Bakker? A mother lode of lechery!

Jesse Jackson? A shrine of shamelessness!

Bill Clinton? The hall of fame of debauchery!

And, of course, there are the lesser lights, from Marion Barry to Robert Downey Jr.

So imagine the glee, the delight, the unabashed joy at the news that former drug czar and self-coronated arbiter of righteousness William Bennett had accumulated $8 million in high-stakes gambling losses over the past decade.

You know, when word got out that professional golfer John Daley spent more time at the craps tables than on the driving range, nobody really took much notice or cared.

Good grief, Daley is a walking multiple-choice 12-step program.

But Bennett has made his name, his reputation - indeed, his fortune - as a professional scolder, roaming the land tsk-tsking away in moral judgment of public figures and popular culture.

It would be one thing if Bennett's expertise had been pontificating on professional wrestling, as one phony to another. Who then would pay the slightest heed to the schlemiel hunched over a video game losing enough money to cover the Vatican's candle budget?

However, when you're best known as the author of ``The Book of Virtues,'' it's best not to be on a first- name basis with every croupier from Atlantic City to Las Vegas.

It didn't take long for Bennett's detractors to start dancing around the Maypole of Payback, accusing the vicar general of rank hypocrisy.
Maybe so. Maybe Bennett, who probably has written more IOUs than Argentina's finance minister, is nothing more than another modern- day Elmer Gantry of double standards.

Still, it would seem a more nagging question overwhelms this story.


Another Hobby?

It's not the act of gambling, per se, that's the humiliation here. Let us not forget he did nothing illegal.

But there is only one real way to lose $8 million by gambling: You have to be really, really, really bad at it.

And therein can be found Bennett's biggest public relations dilemma.

In order to pull off the con that he is some credible, high-minded Torquemada in pinstripes, Bennett has to convince the rubes who believe in him that he also is a very smart guy.

Oooopsie!

Even giving every conceivable benefit of the doubt, one would think that if one lost, say, $1 million playing slot machines, one might conclude: ``Holy #@!&%! This is insane! Maybe I ought to find another hobby.''

There's a reason slot machines are known as one-armed bandits.

But noooooooooo! It took the Bishop Sheen of the strip $8 MILLION (!!!!) to conclude that the odds of his luck changing were about the same as Al Sharpton winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

How unspeakably dense does one have to be not to figure that out sooner?


Phony To Phony

At the same time, it also apparently never dawned on Bennett that sitting around casinos at all hours of the day, losing at times hundreds of thousands of dollars largely earned from books and speeches claiming to have the corner on correctness, was hardly the sort of behavior expected from a one- man, holier-than-thou star chamber.

How clueless. What parallel universe of arrogance must he be living in not to understand that?

Finally, didn't he ever think that some might say $8 million flushed down the toilets of casinos might have been better spent by a man in full of himself underwriting some charitable endeavor?

So, Mr. Bennett, the Billy Graham of baccarat, what's the title of your next tome?

``The Book of Vigorish''?

*************************************

Now let's hear from the "peanut gallery conservative commentators" and how THEY like having THEIR "poster boy" of PC&V V (political correctness, Virtue & Values) finally EXPOSED for his arrogance & disgusting, failure of "character"!!

PS--Thanks Judy, Razz & 11BRAVO for your comments and participation in the discussion. Also, Neil & SuperSleuth---keep the "excuses" coming, PLEASE---they are becoming a plethora of comical perusements--HAR--DE-HAR-HAR!!!