Posted 7:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Bennett
I haven't been able to post because I'm very busy. I have meant to write a post on Bill Bennett's gambling but I found that there are so many angles on this that I'm paralyzed--that's a good thing because I'm amused in so many ways. No problem--others have taken up the slack. I was particularly amused by Michael Kinsley's take in Slate. The fact that Bennett has the cosmic foot of karma up his butt is all the more amusing by the lame defenses of him--and the attacks on the Washington Monthly. Here's a sample of Jonathan Last's defense of Bennett in The Weekly Standard:

I don't understand what the big deal is. The news that Bennett gambles big-time isn't new. In 1996 Margaret Carlson reported that Bennett won $60,000 in a single outing in Las Vegas. Of course being old news wouldn't matter if it was a serious charge. But legal gambling is, well, legal.

The issue is not legality but it is one of a self-restraint and hypocrisy. Here we have a pompous ass who has made a lucrative cottage industry on lecturing the American people about integrity and restraint. I have always known Bennett to be a phony because he rarely if ever brings up the moral failings of Republicans (scroll down to April 3). But he is a complete hypocrite for taking money from gullible Americans who wanted to be more virtuous and blowing it on the slots. That is rich.

The Weekly Standard should be well aware that Bennett is a phony. Bennett played fast and loose with the facts on gays in an article and rejoinder to a letter he received about it in the Standard. That didn’t seem to bother the boys at the Standard. Did such dishonesty bother the boys at the Standard? No, what bothers Last is that the Washington Monthly was supposedly weak in its treatment of the charge of rape (which was frivolous) against Bill Clinton.