Joke night.(on the right)(aborting black mothers to control crime rates )

THE rhetorical blur decalcifies straight thought. William Bennett thought he was being asked about crime rates. Well, he was being asked about crime rates, but the blur took over and the world found itself deliberating whether he wished to abort all children of black mothers.

So he had to begin not with the point he had set out to make, but by affirming that not only was he against aborting black babies, he was against aborting any babies. Ah, but that statement bumps squarely into Roe v. Wade, which, invoking the right to privacy, entitles mothers to abort their children without any reference to their ethnicity.

But how did we get into all this? By egging on foggy thought--especially if it can be said to defend against ethnic slurring or challenges to the new constitutional postulate on abortion.

Poor Mr. Bennett was driven to saying: Look, if you want to end all crime you can do that by aborting all babies. That sounded ridiculous enough to slow down, if only for a minute, the posse determined to find him guilty of racist thought.

But the argument had many tentacles. A few nights later, Bill Maher, who chops logic on HBO, worked up a frenzy of scorn for his guest Ann Coulter for refusing to ascribe to poverty full responsibility for crime. Maher does not advance his thought methodically, but here is the rough sequence intended:

--If there is more crime committed by black Americans than by nonblacks, it is on account of poverty.

--Poverty is what happens when Republicans control Congress and the White House.