Much Ado About Nothing

I have been following the Bill Bennett (no relation) controversy, and think the whole thing is rather silly. Yes, he probably could have spoken a little more profoundly and sensitively, those are the perils of talk radio, but he really said nothing wrong. Even Steven Levitt, the economist whose ideas preempted the whole thing , and hardly a crazed rightwinger, defends him. If Bennett is a racist for suggesting that blacks are more likely to commit crimes, then aren't Conyers and Rangel equally racist for stating that blacks are more likely to be poor? Am I racist if I state the statistically provable fact that Asian-Americans tend to get better grades than whites? The average host on Air America says things everyday that are far more offensive, but to warp an old adage, "If a liberal talk show host falls in the forest, and there is nobody listening, does anybody care?"