The Discerning Texan

Remember the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" back in grade school? It involved a self-important person who continues to cry "wolf" because above all he craves attention. In the fable, eventually after several "false alarms" the wolf really showed up--and the boy's cries were ignored. And the citizens were the big losers in the transaction.

It seems to me that this fable is so remarkably applicable to today's media and the exxagerate-everything-to-the-max Democrats, that one could make a case that this constant sensationalizing and injecting partisanship into every single news story is numbing the collective "public mind" to any story that really does carry weight.

The examples of this phenomenon are everywhere: any Michael Moore movie ever made; the complete fabrication of numerous ugly stories of gang violence in New Orleans, coupled with the gross exaggeration of the death toll for dramatic effect (all designed, of course, to cause the maximum discomfort for the Bush Administration); the spectacle of the false indictment of Tom DeLay by partisan Democrat District Attorney Ronnie Earle (probably the only DA in the country with his own "reality TV" crew...)... the list goes on and on. But perhaps the most elementary illustration of the media's all-"wolf"-all-the-time mentality is the complete twisting of center-right talk-show host Bill Bennett's supposedly "racist" words, which were (naturally) taken completely out of context. This from the man who wrote the bestseller "The Book of Virtues," a person who doesn't have a racist bone in his body. I happen to listen to Bennett evey morning on the way to work--and there could not be a more decent, kind, and considerate human being.

Suddenly, though, the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons are coming out of the woodwork over a conversation Bennett had on his radio show that was quoted completely out of context. Protein Wisdom has documented the details (bold emphases are mind):

On his “Morning in America” radio show a few days back, Bill Bennett—in the context of responding to a caller who’d suggested that making abortion illegal would create more workers 20 years hence—said:

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.

Predictably, the race baiters sprung immediately into action, and, instead of trying to understand Bennett’s point (which has nothing to do with anything inherent to blacks—and in fact, is an argument for just the opposite), decided instead to seize upon the remarks robbed of their context and intent to charge Bennett with racism and demand an apology. (For the record, Bennett was merely referencing “Freakonomics,” which posits the hypothesis that falling crimes rates are related to increased abortion rates decades ago—a position which I take it he rejects).

Sadly, prominent Democratic leaders, pundits and lawmakers have spearheaded this smear campaign, which I suspect they see as merely one more move in the give and take of the political game; because I refuse to believe that they actually believe Bennett is racist (although some likely do), and so are instead playing gotcha by putting him on the defensive to force him to defend remarks that they know had no racist intent. It’s as if because his words, taken out of context, can, to the uninformed, be taken to mean something they were never intended to mean, his words are therefore useful insofar as they can be deployed to cause him public discomfort—and, by extension, to taint the whole of the Republican party by association.

And the White House, increasingly incapable of taking a principled stand, provides these disingenuous race baiters with cover—presumably still reeling from the last round of disingenuous race baiting, which came in guise of Hurricane outrage.

None of this, given our partisan culture, is unexpected. But what gives these calculated and malicious rhetorical and performative ploys their political force is twofold: first, the willingness (in this case on the part of Democrats and the press, and now, the White House) to consider Bennett’s remarks outside of their argumentative context; and second, the idea that Bennett’s words are still his beyond his intent to use them in a certain way—which simply echoes the old Judith Butler axiom that “actions continue to act after the intentional subject has announced its completion,” which, while true, is nevertheless incidental, and becomes dangerous as an assertion when interpretation is released from the ground of appealing back to the speaker’s intent. That is, what is at stake here is the role the subject plays in the “meaning” of the act vs. the role played by contingency in giving that act its (subsequent) meaning(s)—or, to put it more specifically, what William Bennett meant vs. what his words can be made to look like they might meanby those in whose interests it is to damage him. In short, they are taking ownership of his words, resignifying them, then using that resignification to taint Bennett with the charge of racism.

All of which takes us back, of course, to our discussions of Allah in the swirly cone, the Flight 93 Memorial, and Captain Ed’s use of “articulate.” Many of Bennett’s critics don’t particularly care what he meant. Instead, they care that what he said can be shown to mean something other than what he meant if it’s removed from context and resignified—though they will then turn around and argue that he really did mean his comments to carry a racist component (either consciously or unconsciously).

Others will argue that, even if Bennett didn’t intend his argument to carry a racialist component (beyond using it as a hypothetical to make a moral point), he nevertheless should have known that some people would interpret his comments incorrectly, and so should have been more circumspect in making them.

The first argument is linguistically sound insofar as it ascribes to Bennett a particular intent; the second argument is linguistically corrupt, in that argues for some inherent meaning in the signifier—that the marks “mean” something beyond some intention to turn them into language by providing signification.

In this case, most of the criticism seems to me to be linguistically sound, though interpretively sloppy (and, in many cases, intentionally so). Because a fair, rigorous, and judicious reading of Bennett’s comments in their original context suggest he is arguing that, for any number of reasons—from a history of racial divisiveness to poverty to the crutch of the welfare state to failures in public education—blacks are, statistically-speaking, more likely to commit crime (in Bennett’s reading of crime statistics; others would argue that blacks are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement. But for our purposes, it is important that we understand Bennett’s premises). And from that premise, he suggests that, if a society wanted a pragmatic and morally untenable way to reduce crime, it could begin aborting those more statistically likely to commit crime. But doing so would be morally untenable precisely because the procedure would also eliminate a lot more people who wouldn’t, statistically speaking, fall prey to the criminal lifestyle; and so in order to correct a complex statistical issue in a way that is pragmatically expedient, society would be sanctioning something that is morally repugnant.

But why bring up race in the first place?

Well, as Bennett himself tells ABC News’ Jake Tapper:

"There was a lot of discussion about race and crime in New Orleans,” Bennett said. “There was discussion – a lot of it wrong – but nevertheless, media jumping on stories about looting and shooting and gangs and roving gangs and so on.

“There’s no question this is on our minds,” Bennett said. “What I do on our show is talk about things that people are thinking … we don’t hesitate to talk about things that are touchy.”

Bennett said, “I’m sorry if people are hurt, I really am. But we can’t say this is an area of American life (and) public policy that we’re not allowed to talk about – race and crime."

And Bennett is precisely right: fear of being branded a racist simply should not keep us from discussing racial issues—though that is precisely the practical effect in a culture where the levelling of such charges is easy and carries with it almost no consequences for the person doing the accusing, even if the accusation is made in bad faith, or is based on the flimsiest of pretenses.

Still, as it becomes more and more apparent that Bennett’s argument was manifestly not informed by racism, however, and that his critics’ intitial interpretations appealed to an intent on Bennett’s part that they incorrectly gauged —I expect they will begin shifting their condemnation toward the linguistically corrupt notion that the signifier, divorced from intent, is nevertheless the responsibility of the utterer. And indeed, such a procedure is already underway:

Robert George, an African-American, Republican editorial writer for the New York Post, agrees that Bennett’s comments were not meant as racist. But he worries they feed into stereotypes of Republicans as insensitive. “His overall point about not making broad sociological claims and so forth, that was a legitimate point,” George said. “But it seems to me someone with Bennett’s intelligence … should know better the impact of his words and sort of thinking these things through before he speaks."

Like “scratch” before him, George argues that, because other people could potentially misinterpret Bennett’s meaning, Bennett himself should have been more careful in choosing his words. And such an argument effectively gives the interpreter power over the grounds of interpretation and relativizes language.

But what would Robert George—and scratch, and all those who argue for the primacy of the signifier—say if I were to seize upon their linguistic position to argue that, for instance, a rape victim should have known better than to wear a low cut blouse, or that a Muslim who was accosted should have known better than to wander into an area heavily effected by the 911 attacks...?

**** update: To their credit, both Matt Yglesias and Brad Delong defend Bennett.

**** update 2: For those of you who wish to dismiss this kerfuffle as the consequence of a soundbite culture about which Bennett, as a political pro, needs to be more cognizant, let me remind you that the way we find ourselves in a soundbite culture to begin with is that we’ve traded context and original intent for brevity and the kind of resignification that comes when an editor decides what to show us is representative of an original utterance. Part of this is the nature of the media beast; which is why it is so important that we be able to trust those who are doing the initial interpreting for us.

**** update 3: John Cole has more. Be sure to read his comments, where you’ll find every conceivable justification for calling Bennett a racist, most of which boil down to, “because deep inside he probably is, being a Rethuglican and all.”

Eventually, as in the fable of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", the sensationalizing of every single statement by every Republican or conservative that could possibly be taken out of context will--over time--only serve to drive the voting and viewing public even further from the hysterical Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media.