Bennett defends radio comments
WASHINGTON – Conservative commentator William Bennett on Friday defended comments he made on his radio talk show suggesting that aborting black children would reduce crime, saying he was merely musing about a hypothetical argument and he made plain to listeners that he was not stating his own position.
Bennett, a former U.S. education secretary and national drug czar, is under fire from Democrats, civil rights leaders, black conservatives and, as of Friday, the White House and Republican National Committee for saying on Wednesday that “you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”
He followed this by adding immediately that such a thing would be “an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do.”
On Friday, with the storm over these comments intensifying, Bennett released a defiant statement saying critics unfairly had pulled his comment out of context: “A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should not have received the condemnations it has.”
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean denounced the remarks and called on Bennett to apologize. “Bill Bennett’s hateful, inflammatory remarks regarding African Americans are simply inexcusable,” he said. “… Are these the values of the Republican Party and its conservative allies?”
The White House and other Republicans made haste to say that the answer to Dean’s question is no. Asked President Bush’s reaction to Bennett’s remarks, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, “The president believes the comments were not appropriate.”
Similarly, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, who has been reaching out to African Americans and other minorities, called Bennett’s comments “regrettable and inappropriate.”
The combative Bennett, whose syndicated radio show airs on the Salem Radio Network, offered no apologies. He explained that his comments came in response to a caller who suggested that Social Security would be in better financial shape if abortion were illegal, leaving more people to pay into the system. Bennett cautioned against making such far-reaching arguments and drove home his point by offering what he called “a noxious hypothetical analogy” to reducing crime by aborting black children.