Tag: William Bennett

Irish Eyes are Reading.


A very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and yours. (Don’t miss this chance to rent Miller’s Crossing and/or have a Guinness or three.) My own St. Paddy’s should be relatively downbeat, for, as I suspected, it’s been much busier than usual over in these parts. Freelance work aside, I’ve been swimming neck-deep in political theory for a solid week now in prep for the big day. And I’ll be lugging a sack of books with me this weekend on what passes for my Spring Break vacation…Vegas Redux. (I know, I was down on the place last year, but it’s always good to catch up with old friends, and perhaps the glitz of the Strip will seem less jarring this time without the 24-hr CNN greenscreens of war on the other channel.) At any rate, if you want to approximate the GitM experience this weekend, peruse The Road to Serfdom or Democracy in America, while occasionally plying your hand at Deuces Wild. Between Hayek and games of chance, I’m feeling like Bill Bennett’s dream American at the moment.

Where’s the Outrage?

All over the press this Saturday morning: moral exemplar William Bennett is a high-roller, losing over $8 million in the past ten years at various casinos. I play a biweekly poker game and have been known to throw down some money in Vegas, so I’d be the first to argue that gambling within limits is a minor vice at worst. But then again, I haven’t made a living peddling sanctimonious garbage like The Book of Virtues or The Moral Compass either. Yes, this is gotcha journalism making entirely too much out of a mildly disreputable pastime – it’s not like Bennett is a child molester or anything. But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy watching Mr. Virtue squirm on the petard of his own hypermoralism. Mr. Bennett, is schadenfreude a forgivable vice in this instance? Update: Mrs. Bennett drops the hammer. Update 2: Mike Kinsley weighs in, also invoking the schadenfreude angle.