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>But that's the problem... regardless of what we think he meant, or what he probably should have said, we can only go by the transcript... and that's exactly what he said:

Well "we can only go by the transcript" should also limit the reading between the lines too, don't you think?
While I can agree that it could be that he heard himself and started backpedalling, that's still only a guess. I suppose that it's equally possible that he had it scratched out on a piece of paper, at the ready for when the issue did come up.

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>Yes, and again... to be fair, I would tend to believe this should be filed under "extremely unwise word choice" rather than "Holy crap, Bill Bennett's a racist... film at 11!" But I can definitely understand why it's got some feathers ruffled.

That's more reasonable. But I still see it as the "PC crowd" eviscerating someone for a particular combination of words from a specific source. We'll never know, but my bet is that if President Clinton had said the same words in some intellectual discussion it all would have passed by with nary a mention.

I still do not like Bill Bennett at all (just to be clear)