I CAUGHT MICHAEL SAVAGE ON MSNBC TODAY...

What an obnoxious little twit.

IN OTHER NEWS...

There are rumors that they're lining the pipes in Hell for a coming cold spell.

LICENSE TO PREACH

There were some points I meant to get to in the below post that I never quite did because below was focused primarily on Bill Bennett. Now I'm going to take it to the abstract.

What makes someone a hypocrite?

Hypocrisy is conventionally defined as a "do what I say, not what I do" mentality. Thus, someone who is doing one thing but then saying that it shouldn't be done or vice-versa, they are a hypocrite. That much is pretty clear. If Thursday night, with a beer in my hand, I call a friend and tell him that alcohol drinking is a sin, then take another swig of my beer, I am a hypocrite.

Past vs. Present
Someone can also be a hypocrite for having done something and then telling someone not to do it, provided that they do not renounce their former deed. So, if I spent my teenage years getting high, I cannot tell my future kids not to do so unless I make an admission that I was wrong for doing so. If I make such an admission, then I am actually free to lecture hypocrisy-free. If I were to say "It was different in my day" and try to convince the kid that it was okay for me to do it (and therefore fail to renounce my involvement) then that is hypocrisy unless a forceful distinction can be made between "in my day" and "now." That would be possible when it comes to an older person's sexual escapades younger in life and now because of the prevalence of STD's. (inversely, the kid could argue that abortion is legal now so the difference actually works in his favor in that regard).

Rationale Overlap
Additionally, someone can be a hypocrite by condemning one thing and doing something else when the reasons for prohibition of one ought to apply to the other. For instance, if I am a Catholic woman preaching against homosexuality because it is contrary to my church's faith and then turn around and take the pill, I am being a hypocrite for engaging in an act different from the one I am committing by virtue of the rationale overlap (if one shouldn't be gay cause Catholicism says it's wrong, then they shouldn't have abortions either). Even if I don't invoke Catholicism but argue that homosexuality is wrong because it does not lead to procreation and yet I take the pill, I am also being hypocritical by virtue of the rationale overlap. This, like PvP, can be avoided with credible distinctions. In the case of the pill and homosexuality, I cannot think of any distinctions remotely credible. In other cases, their may be but such distinctions usually lead to two distinct rationales (homosexuality is wrong because it leads to indefinite non-procreation while one can go off the pill, thus not making the issue non-procreative sex but rather the indefinity of it).

Same But Worse
Lastly, someone can be a hypocrite by a hypocrite by condemning one thing and doing something similar. If I say "Heroin is bad because it messes with your mind" and then turn around and take LSD, I'm being a hypocrite. This is ostensibly similar to rationale overlap, but is different insofar as it is generally harder to get out of. If I say that heroin is bad because it messes with your mind but next Friday, just like last Friday, I'm going to get drunk again, I may or may not be a hypocrite depending on if a distinction can be made. Needless to say, it's much easier to make one between alcohol and heroin than LSD and heroin. For instance, if you are publically intoxicated, you have more freedom to roam about because you don't have to worry as much about getting caught. and therefore the amount that it messes with your mind is of less importance. Mostly, however, one messes with your mind to a much greater degree than the other so a distinction can be made about how much of the mind is messed with by any given narcotic.

There may be other cases where hypocrisy charges ring true, but these are the ones that come to mind. The only time that it is necessarily hypocrisy is when one is committing the very same act that they are condemning. Beyond that, it is up to the accuser to explain where the hypocrisy has occured, because this is not hypocrisy:

Sins In The Eyes Of Some
Someone is not necessarily a hypocrite if they engage in acts viewed wrong by many if they preach against other acts as viewed wrong by many, even if the finger-waggers are in league on some, or most, issues.

For instance, if I'm pro-life and so is Jerry Fallwell, and I donate money to his pro-life organization, does it then follow that I am held accountable for his views on homosexuality? Generally not. But let's say that I am someone believes that gambling, smoking, and drinking are wrong. Can I not be outspoken on those matters if I engage in homosexual acts because most organizations that oppose drinking, smoking, and gambling also oppose homosexuality? Would it make me a hypocrite if I was outspoken? It might if the reason I used was that "The Pentacostal Church says that gambling, smoking, and drinking are wrong, so we must not do it. Now, excuse me while I go have sex with other men." That would be hypocritical because Pentacostals also hold homosexuality in very low regard.

On a tangent, I once saw a CNN debate between Pat Buchanan and another fellow on abortion and the death penalty. They literally alternated in pointing out that the Vatican says that what they oppose is wrong. Neither addressed any form of distinction as to why the Vatican was right as far as they were concerned and wrong as far as the other was concerned. Both left themselves very much open to charges of hypocrisy as there were not any other substantive cases that either of them made.

My point is that it does not follow that someone who preaches virtue would necessarily have a restricted role of what's acceptable in every aspect of life. By viewing some things more restrictively than others isn't hypocritical, it's making distinctions.

There is a view on the left and the right that it's all black or white when it comes to intellectual consistency. If you're not a puritan but you're outspoken on the things that you do believe are wrong, you are a hypocrite to the left. The endgame of this is to just get you to shut up. It's a sign of the moral relativism on the left. Just because you view it wrong for you to do doesn't mean that you should view it wrong for others to. Or at least if you do, don't tell anyone lest we hold you accountable for views that are not your own.

On the other side of the gallery, of course, are the moral absolutists of the right. Those that believe anything fun is wrong. As for sex, well go ahead and do it since we have to for the preservation of our race, but don't enjoy it, lest you be labeled a hedonist.

In between is the center left, which doesn't mind vague platitudes of right and wrong but get very testy when someone says "It's wrong for me to do this, but it's wrong for you, to" when it comes to something not everyone agrees with. In an age where infidelity is publicly defensible, the boundaries of acceptability are becoming quite broad indeed. The epitome of this mindset are those that are pro-choice who say that "I wouldn't have an abortion but I believe it should be a woman's right" (a perfectly respectable position) but then when I say I view abortion as being wrong regardless of who is having it (with some very narrow exceptions) object not on the grounds that my views are wrong, but rather because I am judging others.

To the right of them and left of the puritans are those of us that are very vocal about what we view as being right and wrong, though are not inclined to push laws forcing our views on everyone else. I find myself getting increasingly testy when I'm constantly being told that I shouldn't call what's wrong wrong because I'm not allowed to judge the actions of others.

Chuck says in a comment to my post below, "It really is about glass houses and stones. If you care that much about how I lead my life, you'd better be sure your own life is in order."

That's a perfectly reasonable position insofar that if I say "Joe, you're doing wrong because you are cheating on your wife," Joe can turn around and say "You're doing wrong because you're living with a woman you are not married to"

Now, I either believe that premarital cohabitation is right or wrong. If I believe premarital cohabitational is okay and Joe doesn't, he is free to call on me and I am free to ignore him. If Joe believes in polygamy but that that premarital cohabitation is wrong, he can then disregard my condemnation as someone whose moral axis is screwed up. If he views both as being wrong and he sleeps better at night believing that all sins are created equal, power to him, I guess.

However, if Joe does not believe that premarital marriage is wrong but is merely bringing that up to shut me up, he is being fundamentally dishonest.

That is my problem with what Bill Bennett's critics are doing with him. I'd be much less bothered by all this if I believed that his critics actually believed that gambling is morally wrong. If I felt that were Joshua Green and Jon Alter's point, I likely wouldn't have written either of these two posts. I wouldn't agree with Green (I am generally in favor of legalizing gambling), but I'd chalk it up to a difference of opinion and my post (if I had one) would likely be on the subject of legalized gambling.

What they're doing, however, is telling us what we should believe. He's telling Bill Bennett what Bill Bennett must believe. It would be one thing if he made an argument that Bennett's views are inconsistent (as Michael Kinsley did), but it was not posited for a discussion and it did not invite any rationale response. Instead of making Bennett's beliefs (and the possible incoherency thereof) the issue, they made Bennett himself the issue. In the end, I'm forced to conclude that either Green and Alter are startlingly inept, or that was precisely the point: To silence a critic.

The message: Don't even speak of morality or we will hold you to standards above and beyond those that you are advocating.

Let me be clear that I am not a Bill Bennett fan. I disagree with him and his ilk on a number of issues. That's not the point, what is the point is that my personal views on premarital sex should not be the fodder by which my views on drug laws are shot down.

I'll go even further to say that I consider his actions, if true, immoral. Not the gambling so much as squandering $8M on such a self-gratifying enterprise. If I had $8 million, I would put quite a lot of it into an industry that didn't make its money in the dubious ways that the gambling industry does. It's one thing to gamble away play money (and I don't care how rich you are, $8 million is not play money, it's money that could go to some very worthy investments either via charities or companies that would improve our way of life) where you are essentially paying for the entertainment it provides. There isn't enough time in the world for that to be worthy of $8 million. But wait, since I don't believe that homosexuality is immoral, I suppose since I consumed a bunch of alcohol before hitting 21, I'm not allowed to talk about Bennett's immorality...

UPDATE: OTHER PERSPECTIVES

In the Comments Section below, Daniel pointed to a Michael Kinsley article on the subject that is definitely worth reading:

1) He never specifically criticized gambling. This, if true, doesn't show that Bennett is not a hypocrite. It just shows that he's not a complete idiot. Working his way down the list of other people's pleasures, weaknesses, and uses of American freedom, he just happened to skip over his own. How convenient. Is there some reason why his general intolerance of the standard vices does not apply to this one? None that he's ever mentioned.
[...]
2) His gambling never hurt anyone else. This is, of course, the classic libertarian standard of permissible behavior, and I think it's a good one. If a hypocrite is a person who says one thing and does another, the problem with Bennett is what he says—not (as far as we know) what he does. Bennett can't plead liberty now because opposing libertarianism is what his sundry crusades are all about. He wants to put marijuana smokers in jail. He wants to make it harder to get divorced. He wants more "moral criticism of homosexuality" and "declining to accept that what they do is right."

In all these cases, Bennett wants laws against or heightened social disapproval of activities that have no direct harmful effects on anyone except the participants. He argues that the activities in question are encouraging other, more harmful activities or are eroding general social norms in some vague way. Empower America, one of Bennett's several shirt-pocket mass movements, officially opposes the spread of legalized gambling, and the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, one of Bennett's cleverer PR conceits, includes "problem" gambling as a negative indicator of cultural health. So, Bennett doesn't believe that gambling is harmless. He just believes that his own gambling is harmless. But by the standards he applies to everything else, it is not harmless.

Bennett has been especially critical of libertarian sentiments coming from intellectuals and the media elite. Smoking a bit of pot may not ruin their middle-class lives, but by smoking pot, they create an atmosphere of toleration that can be disastrous for others who are not so well-grounded. The Bill Bennett who can ooze disdain over this is the same Bill Bennett who apparently thinks he has no connection to all those "problem" gamblers because he makes millions preaching virtue and they don't.

3) He's doing no harm to himself. From the information in Alter's and Green's articles, Bennett seems to be in deep denial about this. If it's true that he's lost $8 million in gambling casinos over 10 years, that surely is addictive or compulsive behavior no matter how good virtue has been to him financially. He claims to have won more than he has lost, which is virtually (that word again!) impossible playing the machines as Bennett apparently does. If he's not in denial, then he's simply lying, which is a definite non-virtue. And he's spraying smarm like the worst kind of cornered politician—telling the Washington Post, for example, that his gambling habit started with "church bingo."

Even as an innocent hobby, playing the slots is about as far as you can get from the image Bennett paints of his notion of the Good Life. Surely even a high-roller can't "cycle through" $8 million so quickly that family, church, and community don't suffer. There are preachers who can preach an ideal they don't themselves meet and even use their own weaknesses as part of the lesson. Bill Bennett has not been such a preacher. He is smug, disdainful, intolerant. He gambled on bluster, and lost.

This is the most worthwhile commentary I've seen on the subject. This one actually bothers to make an argument that Bennett is hypocritical. A pretty good argument, too.

This falls into the "Rationale Overlap" category above. If he opposes pot because of the "environment it creates" and does not oppose gambling, he is either (a) completely unaware of the troubles gambling causes or (b) draws a distinction between the two. One such distinction may be that pot is illegal and gambling is not. Given that likens gambling to alcohol, which is legal and also ruins some lives, that is actually a quite plausible. So what about legal behavior such as infidelity? Presumably he gauges those by the damage they cause to non-participating parties. And homosexuality? The only thing I can think of is that homosexuality always hurts the participants in his eyes, whereas gambling only hurts the poor. It's a stretch, but being pro-gay rights, I am biased towards seeing it as such.

So, if Bennett believes that something must be (a) illegal, (b) injurious to non-participating parties, or (c) always harmful to the participants, it is immoral. Of course, it would be immensely helpful if he would explain it this clearly, but then again politicians (which I consider him one) rarely explain everything clearly.

On the other side of the aisle is a great column by Jonah Goldberg.

I guess Aesop's Fables are now wrong.

You see, Bill Bennett's Book of Virtues contained various moral lessons from Aesop's Fables. So, if Bill Bennett has made a mistake in his personal life, he must have been wrong about the educational utility of everything in his book. And, come to think of it, every other virtue and moral and fable and story he ever promoted, advanced, or advocated must be wrong now as well. It's okay for kids to do drugs now, too, I suppose. And I guess it's okay for the president of the United States to enforce sexual-harassment laws while he plays the Sultan and the Slave Girl with an intern and then lies about it under oath. Hell, it must be okay for terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center now.

This sea change is all because Bill Bennett plays high-stakes video poker from midnight to 6:00 AM.

That seems to be the upshot of Joshua Green's and Jonathan Alter's newsitorials about Bill Bennett's gambling.

I find it hard to recall a more asinine and intellectually shameless "gotcha" story in my adult lifetime.
[...]
I can surely see why some religious conservatives who take a dim view of gambling might be disappointed in the man. But I can assure you that any man — or woman — held in high esteem will disappoint the public in one way or another when scrutinized. "Disappointment," however, is not a standard taught at the Columbia School of Journalism. Usually, to have caused a "scandal," a public figure is supposed to have broken the law, lied, cheated, stolen, been hypocritical, or victimized someone in some significant way. But no one has charged any of these things. The only conceivable victims here are the Bennett family, and a little bird tells me that they'll do just fine. The same bird tells me that Alter and Green couldn't give a fig about Bennett's family. As for hypocrisy, neither author mentions the word.

Indeed, the stunner of the story — that Bennett wagered $8 million over the last decade — isn't even as stunning as Green and Alter desperately want it to be. There isn't any evidence that he lost $8 million dollars, only that he's bought $8 million in chips over a decade. If, as is more likely, his losses are half that, he'd have spent less than what numerous movie stars and CEOs spend on their country estates, private jets, and divorces.
[...]
In fact, you can always tell there's a hit job in the works when the victim is criticized for not being hypocritical. "The popular author, lecturer and Republican Party activist speaks out, often indignantly, about almost every moral issue except one — gambling," writes Alter in Newsweek. "It's not hard to see why." Green is windier on this point, but writes, "If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler." In other words, if Bennett had spoken out against gambling he'd have been denounced for hypocrisy. And if Bennett had spoken in favor of gambling, he'd have been denounced for defending his preferred vice. If he's in the crosshairs for A, he'd surely be in the crosshairs for not-A as well.

I don't know that liberals are saying or implying that everything Bill Bennett says is naturally 100% wrong. They do seem to be (a) saying that this demonstrates that because Bill Bennett doesn't make it so, which is quite true, and (b) implying that anyone with a percieved moral blind spot has no business talking to anyone about morality. This argument would carry a lot more weight if his accusers actually thought Bennett had done something wrong. Instead, they're telling Bennett that he should believe that he has done something wrong. Why? Because people who are not Bennett say so.

But I digress. The lack of a journalistic angle is one of the things that has bothered me. If the articles hadn't been written by two liberal figures I wouldn't be reacting as I have. Even if it had been the New York Times (which I consider to be a liberal publication), it would have at least explored the issue from a couple of angles, gotten a substantive POV quote from someone against gambling, in favor of gambling, a Bennett support and a Bennett opponent (or six).

Which brings me to my primary disagreement with Goldberg, his assertion that there is no story here. I'll also tackle Andrew Sullivan's assertion that Bennett's privacy rights have been violated.

I believe that someone who puts himself into the public square automatically sacrifices some of his privacy. This is particularly true of someone who makes personal morality a staple of their niche. If a self-described paragon of immorality is doing something that many of his fellow travellers consider immoral, that's news. Why? Because it raises questions. It raises questions as to what Bennett truly believes, if he is a hypocrite (note, this is a question, not an answer), and why he breaks with his fellow social conservatives on this issue. But these are questions it raises, not answers.

Where I fall out of agreement with Bennett's critics is the "so what?" phase of the article. Namely, that Bennett is a hypocrite that should be ignored seems to be taken for granted, with only Kinsley explaining why that's the case. The "hypocrite" assumption is what I am mostly objecting to, not the "invasion of privacy."

"HYPOCRITES AND HERETICS WEAR THE SAME FACE THROUGH THE YEARS"

For those of you that that are not politically inclined and yet for some reason still read this page, critics of conservative moralizer Bill Bennett have discovered that he has the gambling bug and accused him of... well that's just it, they haven't accused him of anything. In fact, there isn't too much to accuse him of unless you're willing to go out on a limb. Except gambling, of course, but most of his accusers don't have a problem with gambling. But what they're really trying to say is... what, exactly? They're just trying to say that Bennett is a gambler, shame on him (even though they don't necessarily think that his gambling is wrong), and leave the readers to fill in the blanks.

So what are the blanks that need filling? Bennett is a moralizer who is doing something that many view as being immoral.

Well, yeah, that's true enough.

The missing link here, I believe, is a misperception among liberals of conservative thought. While I won't go as far as to say that liberals lack moral conviction -- because they don't -- they often misunderstand the unilateral and multifaceted nature of the conservative view of morality. They are also deeply uncomfortable with the conservative black/white view of the world in which they call what they see as a spade a spade, when liberals (and libertarians, moderates, and even other conservatives) see a club. When many conservatives see someone doing wrong, they are more inclined to say "that's wrong" and, for them, the discussion ends there. With liberals, on the other hand, that's where the discussion begins. "Did they do wrong? Well, what makes it wrong? What makes this wrong committed by him worse than the wrong committed against him by society? If it is in fact wrong, will punishing him really make him less inclined to do wrong in the future or will it in turn isolate him and thus make him more likely to commit wrong in the future?"

To be sure, I'm painting both sides with a very broad brush here, but in their most extreme forms conservatives clutch to their inner convictions even when they're based on ignorance and liberals eschew not just easy answers, but often any realistic answer. Bill Bennett and his accusors, Joshua Green and Jonathan Alter, are not at the extremes of conservatism and liberalism, but nonetheless often see each other through that lense. I got a letter from Bill Bennett the other day, in fact, suggesting that contemporary liberalism's goal is to bring us all into some post-reality world in which all wrongs will be overlooked in the name of tolerance. Green and Alter, on the other hand, naturally assume that because Bennett is a conservative, his doing something that conservatives oppose is scandalous and make the assumption that Bennett doesn't have a problem with gambling because he is a compulsive gambler as opposed to the notion that his ambivalent views towards the evils of gambling influenced his decision to go on numerous trips to Atlantic City.

The undercurrent of Green's and Alter's arguments are basically "Conservatives view gambling as wrong, Bennett is a conservative, and Bennett is a gambler. Discuss. Condemn.

This is in many ways an effort to catch conservatives with their pants down. Conservative opponents of gambling must either condemn Bill Bennett, with whom they agree overwhelmingly on other issues, or they must face the charge of hypocrisy. Inversely, Bennett must eschew his fellow-travellers and would-be condemners or face a similar charge of hypocrisy by allying himself with those that believe his actions are immoral. Charges of hypocrisy, sometimes righteous and sometimes not, are the stock of liberalisms opposition to conservative moralizing. It essentially sets the bar for personal morality so high that one must be sinless to have anything to say on the matter of sin.

Nowhere was this more evident than during the impeachment trials in 1998. Liberals combed over the history of all of Clinton's accusers for cases of sexual infidelity. In many cases they hit their mark. Henry Hyde not only cheated on his own wife, but he did so with another man's. When Newt Gingrich resigned and was replaced with Bob Livingston, they hit the gold mine. Case after case and woman after woman came forth and Livingston was exposed as an adulterer the likes of which Clinton surely envied. Then a funny thing happened, Republicans called on Livingston to resign. It would later come out that those that exposed Livingston never intended that to happen. Rather, they were trying to prove a point. Conservatives, as usual, didn't get it. There are those that suggest that conservatives only pushed Livingston to step down as a public relations measure, and that's partially true, but a good part of it was the sincere belief on the part of many Republicans that such a person was not suited for leadership of the party. People within the GOP who ordinarily would have bit their tongue instead spoke out and, before he was even elected leader, Livingston was driven to early retirement.

It has since come out that many others involved in the proceedings had skeletons in their closet. Gingrich himself was cheating on his cancer-ridden wife and outspoken Clinton critic Tim Hutchinson later left his wife for his twenty-something secretary. Liberals are inclined to say "See? Hypocrites!" but the anger directed at these two individuals within the conservative community was palpable. When Gingrich resurfaced condemning the state department (an argument conservatives are partial to), it mostly fell on deaf ears. Mainline Republicans didn't appreciate the attacks on Bush and grassroots Republicans had forsaken Gingrich some time ago, in part because of his failure as a leader but in large part because of his hypocrisy. Hutchinson got the GOP nod for re-election, but when he lost the general election I don't personally know a single conservative that felt the fault lied anywhere but with him and his actions.

In Dinesh D'Souza's Letters To a Young Conservative, he argues:

The conservative virtues are many: civility, patriotism, national unity, a sense of local community, in attachment to family, and a belief in merit, in just desserts, and in personal responsibility for one’s actions. For many conservatives, the idea of virtue cannot be separated from the idea of God. But it is not necessary to believe in God to be a conservative. What unifies the vast majority of conservatives is the belief that there are moral standards in the universe and that living up to them is the best way to have a full and happy life.

Conservatives recognize, of course, that people frequently fall short of these standards. In their personal conduct, conservatives do not claim to be better than anyone else. Newt Gingrich was carrying on an affair at the same time that Bill Clinton was romancing Monica Lewinsky. But for conservatives, these lapses do not produce an excuse to get rid of the standards. Even hypocrisy—professing one thing but doing another—is in the conservative view preferable to a denial of standards because such denial leads to moral chaos or nihilism.

While people may philosophically have a problem with the notion that we should hold ourselves to a standard that we cannot all achieve, this succinctly explains the conservative view on the subject. Puritanical ideologues aside (and no, we don't all fall into that category), most conservatives have a rather realistic grasp on the impossibility of human perfection. Nonetheless, most of us also see a reason to strive for these goals as much as possible and when people falter, not to make excuses for them. So if a Republican president were caught with his pants down and lying about it, would the GOP step up to the plate to defend him? In the name of pragmatism, most people allied with said president would. However, that would not fly in the conservative community and such a person would likely face a serious primary challenger in the next election, but I'm almost certain that he would meet a fate very similar to Mr. Hutchinson's. In an increasingly conservative state, he lost the conservative vote. Most straight-ticket Republicans still voted for him, but conservative-leaning independents didn't and many party-liners stayed home.

Liberals oftenly take a different view. Namely that personal morality should not only be taken out of lawbooks (which I agree with), but taken out of the public square. The recent round of attacks on Bennett are an indication of that mindset. The idea that "You should be careful to condemn others for what they do because there are those that would condemn you for what you do."

And there is some logic to that argument. Perhaps Bennett should have just stayed out of the morality racket altogether by virtue of the fact that he has what many view as an immoral hobby. But I think this line of reasoning lends itself to a number of dangerous ideas. Namely "let he that is without sin cast the first stone" squared is that no stones are ever cast ever. I think we've seen a lot of that in recent decades. Spouses are replaced with newer or more luxurious models while the welfare of children hang in the balance and people no longer bat an eye as long as that person's name isn't preceeded by Senator or Congressman. Even then, it's often overlooked. If we don't enforce morality by legal codes, and I don't believe we should, it makes it all the more imperitive that we do it societally.

Whether gambling or pornography or other ostensibly victimless crimes (except, perhaps, for the people that choose to participate) fall into this category is subject to debate. But waving your finger and saying "hypocrite" is not an adequate substitution for debate. Neither is yelling "homophobe" or "religious zealot." Inversely, societal standards are not adequately defended by saying "moral relativist!" or "heretic!"

I'd love to know what Green and Alter think about gambling and whether or not Bennett is right or wrong. Alter's article is typically vapid, but Green has the following to say:

Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to "homosexual unions" to "The Ricki Lake Show" to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling. This is a notable omission, since on this issue morality and public policy are deeply intertwined. During Bennett's years as a public figure, casinos, once restricted to Nevada and New Jersey, have expanded to 28 states, and the number continues to grow. In Maryland, where Bennett lives, the newly elected Republican governor Robert Ehrlich is trying to introduce slot machines to fill revenue shortfalls. As gambling spreads, so do its associated problems. Heavy gambling, like drug use, can lead to divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, and bankruptcy. According to a 1998 study commissioned by the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, residents within 50 miles of a casino are twice as likely to be classified as "problem" or "pathological" gamblers than those who live further away.

So then am I to understand that Green views legal gambling as a threat to our national health? Is he opposing casinos? He mentions the problems associated with gambling on a couple of occasions, but fails to take a position or cite anyone else taking a position on the issue (as opposed to making Bennett the issue, which he does). I suspect that's because Green isn't opposed to gambling as a public policy (though probably opposed to the Maryland governor instituting it), but saying or implying such would take all the air out of the story built on the hot kind.