May 8, 1:58 p.m.: The moral hypocrisy of Bill Bennett

Bill Bennett plays America’s moral czar on television, but appears to have some trouble of his own.

By: Hank Kalet
   There are few things around that beat the fall of a slimy hypocrite.
   That’s what lends the obsequious pleas from William Bennett, exemplar of public virtues, that his gambling does not represent a moral failing their sense of delicious irony.
   I have no problem with gambling, though I find it a rather boring way to spend an afternoon, evening or night. I’ve dropped a couple of bucks in Atlantic City in the past, though I always feel like I could find better use for the coins I’ve left in those machines.
   And under other circumstances, I would say this discussion of Bill Bennett’s penchant for video poker or whatever it is he likes to play should end, that his gambling habit is no one’s business but his own.
   But by playing the very public role he has chosen to play, that of public moralist and finger-pointer, he makes himself fair game.
   After all, Mr. Bennett has spent the better part of the last two decades preaching his particular brand of moral hogwash, explaining for anyone who would listen (a list that has included several presidents and much of the broadcast and publishing industries) that we are on the road to perdition lest we rediscover our moral compass.
   "A favorite theme of Bennett’s is the need for personal self-control," writes Sheryl McCarthy in her regular column in New York Newsday. "He’s written and spoken about the need for abstinence to control the spread of AIDS; about the wrongness of any movement to legalize drugs; and of the need to raise the spiritual condition of welfare recipients by requiring them to work longer hours and teaching them the benefits of marriage. And what made him apoplectic about Bill Clinton’s presidency was that the man lacked self-discipline in his sexual life, and that Americans accepted him anyway."
   Of course, while he is preaching and teaching, he’s also hanging at the casinos, dropping large sums at the tables and ignoring that bit about self-control, a bit of moral hypocrisy that cannot be brushed aside by saying that he never criticized gambling, only everything else.
   Ultimately, what this mini-scandal (scandal is probably too strong a word, but let’s stay within the limited mindset of the Washington pack media) is about is the folly of this kind of public moralizing. Telling millions of people that you know better than they do how they should live their lives is, to put it mildly, the height of arrogance and hypocrisy.
   So I have to smile when the moralizers get sucked into the moral quagmire.