BENNETT REDUX
The Bill Bennett gambling revelations continue to draw much chatter in the blogosphere and elsewhere, for reasons that escape me. Richard Bennett wants Bennett to change his name because playing slots demonstrates a remarkable lack of understanding of the odds and thus gives Bennetts a bad name. He also quotes Howard Stern as saying slots are for little old ladies. Meryl Yourish, an honorary Alabamian, thinks Bennett (Bill, not Richard) is an “obnoxious moralizer,” likes Michael Kinsley’s take on the issue so much that she may yet allow him to marry her, and disagrees with the people over at NRO, especially Stanley and, by extension, Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan defends gambling but notes that Leocons, Neocons, and Theocons don’t like it.
Meanwhie, Bennett (again, Bill, not Richard) has promised to quit gambling if people will just shut up.
As I just wrote over at my place–I think this mostly boils down to the fact that people don’t like people who like to tell them what they ought to do (and not to do), especially if the source of the “oughts” and “oughtn’ts” is religion-based or in any way absolutist. Hence the whole “moralizer” business–which Jonah Goldberg deals with quite well at NRO (and linked from my Blog–I am too lazy to get the link right now). As Goldberg points out, everyone moralizes. Heck, by saying that it is “obnoxious” that Bennett moralizes is moralizing!
Meryl might want to reconsider. Back in the Medieval era, the Catholic Church devised a new doctrine whereby unrepentant sinners who were still good souls would have to marry Michael Kinsley. It was called “purgatory.”
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