Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell calls William Bennett everything but a wife-beater and child-molester in the black-crime-abortion controversy — his is an “ill-chosen hypothesis,” his comments were “disgusting,” “racist,” and “ignorant,” though more the last than the second.
Ditto Freakonomics author Stephen Levitt, who predicts crime based on socio-economic profile — his is “an unseemly theory,” he’s got “arrogance” that “frightens . . . and offends” her.
She reduces black crime to selling dope to whites, who “drive” crime, saying nothing about who commits it. (Put dope on the free market, I say, but that’s another story.)
In any case, she rejects Levitt’s contention that you can predict high incidence of crime using as your measure “income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is,” as he said. It frightens and offends her (as above).
But isn’t that beside the point, which is whether Levitt’s right or not? Does Mitchell present her feelings in the matter as more important than Levitt’s argument?
If Mitchell wants to get to the heart of the matter, she should calm down, forget her feelings, and THIMK!
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