Bill Bennett: The Man of Virtues Has a Vice

lola - I must admit to considerable ignorance of Bennett, both his history and present day actions.

Can you give us some specific examples of his engaging in what you call "self righteous finger pointing"?

Good night, Scrat. Where do you live? If you haven't seen Bill Bennett self righteously pointing his finger dozens of times, then you must be livin in a cave somewhere. He's been on Larry King Live on CNN repeatedly. He's been all over the place. The very voice of virtue and purity. Why he's so f--kin pure he makes my stomach turn.

I guess I live in a cave then, because no, I haven't seen much of Bennett over the last year other than him pimping for his k12.com venture.

I wish it had been sex, maybe some of that hot "man on dog" action that Senator Rick Santorum is so keen on chatting about. But let me not be picky. Since we are talking about that thundering sultan of sanctimony Bill Bennett, high-stakes gambling will do quite nicely. In eleven books, including the mega-selling Book of Virtues, a PBS cartoon series on morality for kids, countless speeches at $50,000 a pop, a slew of op-eds and more face time on TV than the man who squeezes the Charmin, Bennett has made himself our Cato, inveighing against everyone else's licentious, addicted, family-destroying ways. Abortion!, he growled. Drugs! Rap! Adultery! Homosexuality! Divorce! Single moms! The Simpsons! To the wall with you, feminists, gay priests and fornicating Democrats Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and Gary Condit!

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Bennett's point was never just that people ought to obey the law: Sure, drink yourself into a daily stupor, as long as you're not driving. No, The Book of Virtues evoked the old Aristotelian/ Stoic/Christian/Early American civic values: piety, sobriety, temperance, honesty, prudence, self-control, setting an example. It's hard to imagine John Bunyan or George Washington giving Bennett a high-five on his way to private rooms at various Las Vegas casinos, where he was such a loyal and lavish customer he was comp'ed for limos, rooms and Lord knows what else.

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Bennett's defenders make much of the fact that he never condemned gambling and so was not actually a hypocrite. Leaving your own pet vice off a long, long list of sins, and then, when you are found out, exempting that vice as practiced by you but not as practiced by others--that's not exculpation from charges of hypocrisy, that's what hypocrisy is.

If Bennett were a jolly, modest fellow, full of love for fallen humanity and the first to admit he was just another sinner like the rest of us--if he were less quick to impute the worst motives to perfectly ordinary behavior, like having two kids; if he spent less time promoting rigid, puritanical morals and more time promoting, oh, kindness and tolerance and looking into your own heart and cutting other people some slack because you never really know what demons they're contending with--no one would be piling on now.

But then, with a message like that, no one would have heard of him in the first place. You don't get to play Christian on TV, or amass real political power along with your millions, by urging people not to throw the first stone, especially if they live in a glass house.

Jesus tried that, and look what happened to him.

Bennett's defenders make much of the fact that he never condemned gambling and so was not actually a hypocrite. Leaving your own pet vice off a long, long list of sins, and then, when you are found out, exempting that vice as practiced by you but not as practiced by others--that's not exculpation from charges of hypocrisy, that's what hypocrisy is.