William Bennett: another neocon with a warped sense of race relations

I forgot to get to this one following the election, but it's no less relevant.

Want to know why I no longer watch CNN? The network's employing conservative stooges like Glenn Beck (who will predictably move to Fox News in January) and GOP stooge William Bennett is one of the bigger reasons.

On election night, listen to this exchange between Bennett and CNN's Anderson Cooper (the latter being one of CNN's few bright spots):

Anderson Cooper: I mean, if he does become president, and it still is an if, does anyone know what this means in terms of change of race relations in the United States, or perception of?

Bennett: Well, I'll tell you one thing it means, as a former Secretary of Education: You don't take any excuses anymore from anybody who says, "The deck is stacked, I can't do anything, there's so much in-built this and that." There are always problems in a big society. But we have just - if this turns out to be the case, President Obama - we have just achieved an incredible milestone. For which the rest of the world needs to have more respect for the United States than it sometimes does.

Hmm, let's see, Obama will be our 44th president, and since we've had one in 44, now centuries of bigotry, racism and discrimination will all just magically melt away, right?

Here's another thought - maybe in regard to race relations, specifically Republicans, the rest of the world has a noted lack of respect because people like Karl Rove and Bennett himself have been proponents and architects of political tactics that have made it more difficult for African-Americans to vote or to have their vote count once it's cast. Or maybe it's the noted lack of African-American Republicans in Congress; the last time I checked, there were no black GOP Senators, and I with the retirement of J.C. Watts in 2003, there aren't any black Republicans in the House, either.

But, now that Obama has won the presidency, people like Bennett are quick to try and take the credit, but people of his political ilk so strenuously opposed his candidacy in the first place.

Pretty amazing, even by Bennett's often asinine standards and justifications.