We have a black man in a mercedes driving the speed limit...take him down.

First of all, can somebody tell me what fucking century we are in right now?

And before anybody gets huffy, yes, I'm going to quote this out of context. But you can read the entire transcript and hear the damn thing at www.mediamatters.org, the following was said by Bill Bennett, the former Secretary of Education under Reagan

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."

Apparently somebody called his show claiming that the lost revenue from all the aborted fetuses from the past 30 years would be enough to preserve America's Social Security's solvency. And Bennett went on to make the point that such ridiculous extrapolations like that of aborting every black fetus would lower the crime rate, have the right idea but they are too dangerous, immoral, and wrong by design. I like how he covers himself there at the end, we wouldn't want anybody to get the wrong idea.

Maybe I'm looking into this too much, but this is sounding like some colonial slave talk right here. Wasn't one of the arguments for the slave trade the idea that Africans were incapable of living by themselves because of their savage nature? That they would tear themselves limb from limb if it weren't for their white saviors, what the fuck is going on? People still think like this? Is this guy really saying that the crime problem in this country will dwindle if the African-American new born population is discontinued? How long until somebody suggests this to living breathing human bodies? I don't want to get melodramatic and all doom propheting and there's probably no connection to this kind of thinking from idea to practice, but this is really freaking me out nonetheless. He's not advocating this solution, but his words indicate that the reasoning behind it is not completely artificial. And it's not just that he's a racist, that's not what bothers me about this. Yes, it's reprehensible to say that black people are predisposed to crime and violence, don't get me wrong. But this guy's line of thinking is so violently aggressive and hateful. I just don't understand how anybody could react like this in the year 2005. At the same time, I understand also that this guy (hopefully) speaks for a very limited and powerless minority, but then again he was the Secretary of Education for the united states, he's in charge of the education standards for the children of this country. Again, what the fuck?

If a former or current government official went on CNN and said that the world was flat, wouldn't he be discredited and laughed off to obscurity. Hopefully the same will happen to this guy.

The day after he made the initial comments, like Pat Robertson, he was back to discredit his attackers (as he calls them, why do all these right-wing guys think they're martyrs?) But, as it turns out he defended his comments with more falsehoods. You can read his response here, which never really addresses the true nature of his words, merely the context in which his dumbass presented them. I know what I heard, and believe me, it doesn't bring me any pleasure to write about shit like this, hopefully this guy will wise up. I used to think people still hated each other as much now as they did back then, they just knew how to hide it better. I guess they're not hiding it anymore.

I'll let PVT. Train take you home...
"This great evil--where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we mighta known? Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow and the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you too? Have you passed through this night?"