Um… why does Bennett get to decide what the world in general should accept as a vice, while omitting his preferred ones?
Isn’t the fact the there are Gambler’s Anonymous groups and treatment therapies and facilities worldwide indicate that gambling to those levels of lose (whether or not you have the finances to pay for it) pretty much an indication that it’s a vice?
I would just like to weigh in on this whole Bill Bennett thing and say that personally I really don’t give a crap what vices he personally participated in or not. Yes, there was a certain amount of schadenfreude involved, I suppose, in seeing someone who so loudly preached about personal virtue get caught out in something that most people would consider to not be very virtuous. However:
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It’s possible to not practice what you preach and still have the message you preached be valid. (I said POSSIBLE. I think Bennett’s family value crap was just that, a load of crap, but that’s on its own merits and not because he personally had a problem with the slot machines.)
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As stated in item 1 in this list, I think his message was a load of crap anyway, so what do I care if he violated it?
I would also like to state for the record that I am official card-carrying liberal (just kidding about the card-carrying part, liberals don’t make people carry ID) and I have not wished death on any prominent conservative pundits or politicians, nor will I. I don’t suppose this will make a lick of difference to Shodan’s smug, self-righteous stance that all liberals are bad because we go around wishing death on people while conservatives definitely never do that. But then I generally think that Shodan is just yanking people’s chains in political discussions, anyway. He might really believe what he says, but I think it’s just as likely that he doesn’t and is just saying it to get a rise out of people, and therefore his posts aren’t really worth reading. In my opinion, that is.
Throughout the media there is a difference in how liberals and conservatives act. Rush and Beck and the other righties claim to talk reasonably to liberals. They do not . They shout them down and call them names . When a panel is on TV , it is generally the conservative who is yelling and insulting. It is accepted behavior that shows all the way down to the bottom, the tea baggers.
The majority righties on the dope are very impolite, insulting and name calling. There are a few lefties who respond in kind, but over all the lefties try to present reasoned discourse. That is my totally neutral analysis.
He doesn’t. But he does get to decide what he HIMSELF considers a vice. And since the key element in hypocrisy is claiming one belief and then behaving another way, what Bennett believes are vices is crucial to sustaining the charge of hypocrisy.
Bennett claims, “A, B, C, D, and E are vices! Don’t do them!”
The Second Stone says that this makes Bennett a “scold,” and so now he’s also a hypocrite for violating F and G, which many people ALSO think are vices, but Bennett does not.
See the difference? Bennett writes a book urging the world to agree that A, B, C, D and E are vices, and should be eschewed. That makes him a hypocrite if he secretly does A or E. But it doesn’t make him a hypocrite for doing G.
I’ve always voted conservative (well, Federal. I tend to vote Quebec Liberal in provincial elections) myself, but these American can be real idiots, wot? I’m guessing that since there are so many of them milling about at random, individuals seize upon simple arguments and focus on trivia like a candidate’s religion in the hopes of catching and holding the herd’s attention for a few minutes.
Except that’s not what he does. What he does is declare what is virtue and vice, and decry people who indulge in vices he disagrees with. If nothing else, he’s a hypocrite for not recognizing everyone else’s right to do the same.
Not at all. Your throwaway line “…whether or not you have the finances to pay for it…” is a key element. It makes all the difference in the world whether or not you have the finances to pay for it.
I like opera. I have season tickets to the opera. Two tickets for Sat evenings for this season’s Un Ballo in Maschera, Salome, Madame Butterfly, Don Pasquale, and Iphigénie en Tauride: over $2,000.00.
Irresponsible? A vice?
Yes, if I’m sending my kid to school in Goodwill castoffs and skimping on his medical care so I can afford it. But not if I’m able to comfortably meet other financial obligations. There’s nothing per se wrong with spending $2000 on opera, in other words, but there’s clearly something wrong if you cannot afford necessities because of it.
So, too, with gambling. If someone as wealthy as Bennett (or Bill Gates, or Michael Jordan) drops $8 million in gambling over the course of several years, there’s fine. His money; he can do what he wishes with it.
Gambler’s Anonymous doesn’t use the amount of money as a yardstick at all. They ask, “Has gambling caused ‘…growing and continuing problems in any department of his or her life?’”
Well, I think the first part of The Second Stone’s argument is certainly valid. I think there’s no better word for Bennett than “scold”. If I harped on and on about you Bricker not following a moral code that I followed but you didn’t, how would you feel about my attitude towards you?
And that also leads to why I think so many people don’t like what Bennett did. Bennett wanted people to follow not just any moral code, but the specific moral code of William J. Bennett, which includes eschewing vices “A, B, C, D, and E” but not “F and G”. Which the appropriate response to all along should have been “Who the fuck died and made Bill Bennett the arbiter of moral good?” Nobody elected Bill Bennett Secretary of Morality. No religious body designated Bill Bennett as Righter of Wrongs. Maybe the Reagan administration designated Bill Bennett as Secretary of Education, but last I checked public schools weren’t charged with morality codes (and if they were, would you send your kid to a public school with a Democrat’s morality code in place? Thought not, Bricker). Bennett’s moral code isn’t even consonant with yours, Bricker, seeing as you support same-sex marriage and he sees it potentially opens the floodgates of the end times (only exaggerating a little here).
So I think it’s completely understandable that many felt Bennett was hypocritical on gambling. In The Book of Virtues (God, what a disgustingly smug title, but I digress), Bennett argued for “self-discipline.” Maybe you, Bricker, don’t feel that throwing millions of dollars down low-percentage slot machines is an excessive breach of monetary self-discipline, but surely you can also see how others might beg to differ.
To the contrary – his work is to persuade people to agree with him. He obviously recognizes that he cannot force his definitions upon others. But why is he forbidden from seeking to persuade people that his view of the various virtues and vices is correct?
And, again, why must anyone on earth believe him, especially when he preaches self-discipline but only, apparently, a version of self-discipline defined by him?
If Bill Bennett is free to preach morality, the rest of us are also free to say that his morality isn’t amicable to our own moral code. Which I’ll happily do right now, in fact.
Goddamn, but you’re a whiny little bitch. I think the “persecution” you experience here has less to do with your politics and more to do with your personality.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Oh, I’ve always found his cheeful good nature and open-mindedness to be refreshing, if some what coy.
Me? Tequila and bongwater, why do you ask?
I don’t care about Bennet’s gambling. it is his money and he can do whatever he wants with it. Casino gambling is legal not like Rush’s drug problem which was illegal and unethical . He should have been rejected by his dittoheads for saying one thing and doing another. But he was forgiven. Do as I say not as I do works for his audience.
Because I am entitled to have an opinion, just like Bankroll Bennett, and publish it, just like Bankroll Bennett, here on the internet. The fact that he told people in general what vices were, and in all his speeches and books and columns and appearances omitted the vice of excess gambling. His hypocrisy is that he has set himself up as a paragon of virtue and refuses to recognize out loud that he in fact has a vice of excessive gambling, while remaining silent about it during his harangues. What you are saying is that for someone to be a hypocrite that they must commit the particular vice that they are denouncing. When someone denounces all vice and recommends all virtue and then sets themselves up as a virtuous person, if they have any major vice, then they are a hypocrite. In Bennett’s case he even knew about the vice, adopted the argument that you have accepted for the purpose of claiming he wasn’t a hypocrite. That doesn’t mean that I or the rest of the people to whom he directed the argument need accept it. William Bennett was never a virtuous man who succeeded and became rich because he was virtuous as he implies is the reward for virtue and his reward. He was born a rich white guy with connections and made gambling his secret drug of addiction.
As for me, unlike Bennett, I have never claimed not to be a hypocrite. I am well aware that I fail in the very things I would like myself and others to do well in. But I haven’t set myself up like Bill Bennett writing books on virtue. I am well aware that gambling sets off the same brain responses as drug addiction. I think it is hilarious that the former “Drug Czar” (hey I thought Republicans hated all the administrative Czars?) is a junkie.
Now maybe you and Bankroll Bennett don’t think that I should have an opinion that hypocrisy is broader in definition than you would like it, that such use is improper English. Have I in the past claimed to be anything other than a descriptivist in the use of English language? No! While I enjoy the precise use of the prescriptivists, watching them fight battles like this is funneriest.
I’m fucking sick of people attempting to convince the unconvinceable. Liberal Dopers, you will never convince some (not all) of the conservative Dopers that liberals have valid points sometimes. Conservative Dopers, you will never convince some (not all) of the liberal Dopers that conservatives have valid points sometimes.
There are people who, by virtue of their posts on this board, have proven themselves to be uninterested in hearing “the other side.” In spite of that proof, well-meaning but deluded posters continue to attempt to engage those unconvinceables in honest, good faith discussions.
Stop doing this. It inevitably hijacks otherwise interesting threads into a never-ending saga of nonlistening.
Only if you define “personality” as “being right and rubbing your nose in it”.
I’m quite sure you know perfectly well how unpleasant some of you look when you let your inner motivations slip out. And I know you would like everyone to pretend that you hold the high ground morally. The trouble is, you don’t, and I have no intention whatever of letting you off on it.
I am going to embarrass you, and laugh at you, and make fun of your hypocrisy, and mock the politicians you want to worship and adore. and generally amuse myself very much at your expense.
I like it, and I am going to continue to do it. The fact that it irritates you and makes you pitch these tantrums is part of the fun.
Regards,
Shodan
This is what I was referring to in my prior post. I mean, right there, basically he is saying, “I am trolling you. Disregard anything I ever post because I am a troll and I don’t care about what I am posting about except insofar as it makes you angry.” I guess there’s something to be said for being open about it. Most of our trolls try to be more subtle.
Incidentally, I don’t even believe in “moral high ground” so I don’t really care if anyone else thinks I am occupying it or not.
How can you tell if you are a rightie?
Read above Foxworthy. Sanctimonious excuses for blazingly poor manners and a proclivity to insult. Not my fault, the Liberals made me do it.
I again feel sorry for SHODAN who does not know what he really is doing nor how he sounds childish.