Thursday, September 29, 2005

Compassionate conservatism and all them darkies.


This is priceless. And, by all means, follow the link to the original Media Matters piece where you can read the actual exchange between Bennett and the caller, where the caller is so obviously pulling his beliefs out of thin air, as in this excerpt:

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER
: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

See, in that first statement, the caller has no idea what the statistics are but he's not going to abandon his position. In that second statement, however, the caller is referred to a specific and published statistic but simply dismisses it because he doesn't like the implications.

Jesus, with that kind of selective analysis, the caller could have been Weasel Boy.

AFTERSNARK: You know, if you were totally tasteless, you could have some real fun with Bennett's abortion-based generalizations. Let's see here:

  • You could reduce political corruption by aborting every Republican fetus in the country.
  • You could reduce breathtaking stupidity by aborting every wingnut, fundamentalist Christian fetus in the country.

Man, the possibilities are endless, aren't they?

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