Isn't Anybody Against Porn?

Hey, I was biased before bias was good business. ... 2:07 p.m.

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It's "Mr. Trope" to You, Buddy: My former Slate colleague Noreen Malone, in a piece on Star Parker's congressional candidacy, criticizes an "old trope" about welfare and race:

That stereotype of welfare recipients as black and female started in the '60s and '70s, with Ronald Reagan's racially coded description of a welfare queen driving her Cadillac around Chicago's South Side. (In fact, a 1998 poll showed that just about 10 percent of welfare recipients are black and female.)

I hope Malone's deceptive liberal counter-trope doesn't gain renewed traction. Blacks have always made up a minority of those who get welfare for some period of time over the course of a year, but a much larger portion of those who stay on welfare for a long time. In the late '70s and early '80s --the era Reagan was talking about--a Michigan study estimated that blacks comprised over 60 percent of those dependent on welfare for a long period.

After the 1996 welfare reform, the welfare rolls only got blacker, as whites found it easier to leave the program. The New York Times reported that

By early 1997, blacks accounted for 37 percent of the nation's welfare caseload, though they are just 13 percent of the general population. Hispanic families accounted for 22 percent of the welfare rolls, though they are 11 percent of the general population.

Whites, by contrast, accounted for just 35 percent of the rolls .. ... [snip] ... That is the smallest white percentage since the Government began compiling figures in 1973. The vast majority receiving Federal aid are single mothers and their children.

This picture undoubtedly changed recently, as whites have been thrown out of work in the deep 2009 recession. But as of 2008 the "active cases" for the basic federal welfare program were: 34% black, 31.5% white 28% Hispanic. I bet the African-American percentage is still a lot closer to 37% than 10%--and much higher for long-term recipients. ... 1:16 p.m.

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Everyone Loves Porn? Christine O'Donnell, answering a debate question about her support for the "regulation of private sexual behavior," including her opposition to pornography:

"Those questions come from statements I made over 15 years ago," said O'Donnell, who is Catholic and known as a staunch social conservative. She called the years-old statements a result of her newfound faith and beliefs, which she has said previously she discovered sometime in college.

O'Donnell said while "my faith has matured," if she gets to Washington, she would be guided by "the Constitution" rather than her personal beliefs.

Are we really such an advanced nation that even an extreme "staunch social conservative" has to deny opposing pornography? There's something depressing about that. If not Christine O'Donnell, who? ... 1:26 p.m.

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