Claremont Independent

Last Updated: 10/31/06 Section: Opinion

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As a conservative, walking out of the packed Athenaeum after hearing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak, it was difficult not to feel outraged. Beyond righteous indignation (and a profound respect for the stamina it must take Arnold Schwarzenegger to survive a Kennedy family gathering), there was nothing especially constructive to be gained from Kennedy's much-anticipated visit to the Athenaeum.

Kennedy's opening assertion was that he has "been disciplined over 23 years as an environmental advocate about being nonpartisan and bipartisan in approach to these issues." The greatest shame of all is the blatant untruth of this statement with respect to his lecture.

During the course of the evening, Kennedy took every opportunity to attack the moral credibility of the right. He spoke of "Republican hypocrisy" when he mentioned the greater presence of violent crime and divorce in red states, though U.S. Census Bureau data suggests that the correlation he spoke of does not exist. According to him, a man in a red state is also more likely to "impregnate your teenage daughter" because blue states like Massachusetts have the lowest abortion and teen pregnancy rates, while Texas, Mississippi, and other red states have the highest in the nation. By dividing the number of reported abortions from 1996 and 2002 by the population of these states, however, it is clear he misrepresented the data. In 1996, New York and Massachusetts had abortion rates of .772 percent, and .477 percent respectively, while Texas and Mississippi had rates of .467 percent and .132 percent. The 2002 data demonstrates a similar pattern: New York and Massachusetts had rates of .668 percent and .393 percent, while Texas and Mississippi had rates of .367 percent and .125 percent.

Beyond pinpointing abortion as an example of the right's supposed hypocritical moral policy, Kennedy mentioned the "right-wing media," saying, "if you look at where Americans are disproportionately getting their news, that's where it's coming from." Citing statistics from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Kennedy tried to demonstrate that a majority of Americans are unknowingly limited in their news sources to those with a conservative bias: "30 percent of Americans say their primary news is talk radio, which is 90 percent conservative, 22 percent said Fox news or MSNBC, which are right wing stations, and 10 percent say the Sinclair network." Despite his generalizations, Kennedy was correct in citing these numbers. He did not, however, read the many other studies conducted by the Pew Center, which state that when it comes to describing the press, twice as many Americans say news organizations are "liberal" as say they are "conservative".

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools