The grand design of Ben "The Collaborator" Stein

There's been a lot to write about, rant about, piss and moan about this past week.

Schadenfreude once again became the hot political stance as those angry, righteous frauds who got cheated out of their much-deserved, illegally-obtained billions by that smug wharf rat Spitzer could wish upon him the deepest level of hell (is that the first or the ninth, I keep forgetting?) for having sex with a prostitute and getting caught. For shame, Eliot, for shame! You've sullied the good name of the New York State Office of the Governor! This is Albany! We don't cotton to that sort of corruption in, well, uh, oh, never mind! Just resign or we'll impeach you for getting caught doing something illegal that none of us have ever gotten caught doing! And swallow your own face while you're at it!

Then there's oil up over $110 a barrel. None of us who lived and drove through the last 19 oil crunches of the past 30 years has any right to complain. But hey, we're Americans! To complain self-righteously about problems we pretty much created with our own arrogance and gluttony is our birthrite, dammit! Love it or leave it, you tree-hugging, Prius-driving pansies!

But that's all over the place now. In less than a week's time, it's gone from cutting-edge to passe to write, rant, piss and moan about those topics. And you can call me a lot things, from a loony liberal to a tree hugger to an anti-Christian to a terrorist sympathizer to a spoiled suburbanite to a nerd to a geek to a slacker to a rambler who unconsciously channels the discarded lyrics from Beck's "Loser" and what was my point again?

Oh, yeah. You can't call me passe. Well, all right, you can, but no one reads this damn thing anyway, so it's unlikely anyone knows I'm here to be called passe.

But my point (finally!) is that today I came upon a topic that hasn't been covered to the point of being smothered, and it's yet another in the annals of my favorite issue that I wish weren't so ubiquitous as to be anyone's favorite issue: Stupidity.

I came upon today's topic in an even more roundabout than usual way. I logged on to the Internet Movie Database homepage this morning, which had a link to New York Times article about Orlando Sentinel film critic Roger Moore (his real name). Moore, a proud liberal member of the always inaccurately classified media, last week found himself shut out of a local film screening of a new documentary entitled Expelled, subtitled "Intelligence Not Allowed." The screening, like others around the country, was intended for local clergy, but Moore found himself with what was probably a mistaken invite. The film's distributor, Motive Marketing, had rescinded the invite before the screening, but Moore had already accepted, so he went anyway, probably spouting pointless sanctimony to no one in particular just to fit in, and wound up screening the film. (Actually he denies posing as a clergyman, so it was probably just an oversight, perhaps his hosts conteding with an obstructed view looking that far down their noses.)

Expelled purports to be a documentary about the shameless suppression of intelligent design and its proponents by the elitist, leftist intellectuals who control public education in this country. Moore panned the film and went so far as to compare its narrator to a Holocaust denier.

The narrator/interviewer is noted commentator - speechwriter - lawyer - humorist - game show host Ben Stein. I don't think I'd go quite so far as to equate Stein with Holocaust deniers, but he may well be the most self-loathing Jew of any public figure short of Krusty the Clown. He's a conservative Christian wingnut-sympathizer, and while he certainly wouldn't deny the Holocaust happened, he seems ever eager to drink the right wing's Kool-Aid, which in this case would most likely be Vichy water.

(Note: I've just been alerted by the Nevada State OSHA that if I mix any more metaphors in today's entry I'll be fined for operating without a valid hazardous materials license.)

Now I understand that stupidity abounds in the activities and positions of the radical Christian right, so much so that you might wonder why it's any better fodder for my first posting in six weeks than Spitzer's dalliances or oil price gouging or any other outrage du jour. But this one also contained the rare element of real irony, to the point where it made me laugh out loud.

Stein, while always openly and proudly aligned with the right, is known for his deadpan wit. He is labeled a humorist almost as often as he is a lawyer, commentator or Nixon speechwriter. And I can attest to the fact that, at various times in the past, he has made me laugh. But when Ben Stein is touting the incomparable joys of freedom, family values and right-wing America, he is invariably 100 percent serious.

In 2000, he appeared on a TV panel of well-known comedians and humor writers discussing the contest between Bush and Gore. The moderator asked several questions, and the panelists, for the most part, responded as expected, with tongues generally resting in cheeks. However, in his response to one question, Stein found no opening for humor.

“What,” asked the moderator, “is the biggest advantage each candidate has in this race?” Stein cited that Gore had already been vice-president for eight years. And Bush? “George W. Bush's biggest advantage is that he's a decent, honest man!” Perhaps it's not so scary in the context of the time, after Bush had gone into recovery but before he'd occupied the White House. But after having witnessed some of Stein's more recent comments on Bush, on the War in Iraq, on the “war on Christmas,” on liberals, on the '08 presidential race, on his general worldview, I honestly believe Stein still believes George W. Bush is a decent, honest man. Martin Lawrence has demonstrated that there's a point where a humorist can go well past comedy into the realm of certifiable mental defectiveness. If Stein still believes in President Bush's unimpeachable decency and veracity, I think he qualifies.

Back to present day. The aforementioned irony came in the Times article when Stein explained why he chose to participate in Expelled: “'there's just a lot of people who don't believe that big science and Darwinism should have a stranglehold on academic life, and they have been waiting for a voice.'”

Big science? You mean, like “big oil,” “big pharma” and “big health care?” An unofficial cartel of extremely powerful and moneyed corporate interests seeking inordinate control of the domestic and international puppet strings of economics, politics, reportage and even individual thought through the use of lobbyists and other influence peddlers, corporate-controlled media and myriad other methods of manipulating the general public? That's the image you have and seek to propagate of the world scientific community and its stalwart adherence to theories such as evolution that can be supported using the scientific method, its unwavering insistence on educating people using FACTS and EVIDENCE? That's what you see as an unreasonable “stranglehold on academic life?”

Ben, Ben, Ben. You're treading dangerously close to being a punchline on The Simpsons. Trust me, an Ivy League educated lawyer and nationally recognized commentator should not ASPIRE to have Homer cite him as an expert when he defends his beliefs, be it that no one remembers what team Babe Ruth played for, or that the waffle affixed to the ceiling with maple syrup is his deity (“Mmmm....sacrelicious.”). And you also might want to avoid demonizing those with opposing viewpoints with anachronistic pop culture references such as the title of a 1984 new wave album by Laurie Anderson.

Lest someone of your supreme intellect and accompanying arrogance be confused by this, Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolutionary Biology in explaning the origins of the species homo sapien, which you and your ilk so condescendingly refer to as "Darwinism," is supported by a century and a half of that annoying evidence, whose validity has been subjected to that equally annoying scientific method. Whereas your Theory of Intelligent Design is supported by 15 or so years of evangelical revisionism whose validity has been subjected to bloviating right wing talk show hosts who prove the validity of their every point by quadrupling the decibel level and comparing their more subdued opponents to Adolf Hitler.

And, for the record, "Big Science" has for centuries pretty much flat out rejected as proof of a theory the ability to locate holes in an opposing theory, no matter what some quack in the biology department at Lehigh trumpets at the top of his own voice. Gaps in the fossil record and biologists' inability to explain beyond a shadow of a doubt how DNA proteins clustered the way they did do not scientifically prove the existence of an intelligent designer. Those high-minded bastards, with their government grants and electron microscopes and their unfair stranglehold on academia, long ago ensured it would be more far complicated than that to untangle their well-woven web of liberal dogma, university sanctioned bureaucracy, and those pesky, intractable facts.

Bill Kristol to provide neocon agitprop to the one remaining media outlet that hasn't yet given it a forum

“Stupid is as stupid does.”

It may be one of the most oft-quoted movie lines to come out of the 1990s. And no, it isn’t a genuine classic. Neither are others among the decade’s co-leaders: “I amuse you? I make you laugh?”; “I’m king of the worrrrrlllllld!!!!”; and perhaps the most regrettable of all, “Show me the money!”

(I know, I know, what about the superior Gump-ism, “Life is like a box of chocolates,” and the heart-tuggers at the end of Jerry Maguire, “You complete me” and “You had me at hello?” Well, the fetal filmgoers who found these lines original were exactly the audience Hollywood was shooting for with these jackpot hitters at the box office and the Oscars, people of all ages who either weren’t alive for or simply don’t remember anything significant that happened in this world before Reagan took the oath of office. None of these lines was original to the film in question. Hell, “You complete me” was lifted straight out of a Joni Mitchell song from 1974!)

In 2003, our president -- yes, all of ours, and it’s time for all of us to start accepting our collective responsibility for him, whether you voted for him or not -- ordered our armed forces to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was developing even more sophisticated and dangerous ones with the help of a starving African nation, and because Iraq was in bed with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, and because the White House and Congress had irrefutable intelligence that Iraq sponsored terrorism and we had to fight them there so that we wouldn’t have to fight them here, and because the sun rose that morning and set that night, and on and on.

Those who thought these defenses were utter bullshit then have since welcomed to the fold all those who eventually arrived at the same conclusion. But then there are those who continue to argue that our freedom, our democracy, indeed our entire “way of life” is at stake.

I read a book recently entitled Common Ground, a very reader-friendly but still effective collaboration by liberal stalwart Bob Beckel and conservative commentator Cal Thomas. The book is a combination “how we got here” and “what do we do about it?” guide for the shouted-down majority of Americans who lean more toward the middle than toward either extreme of the American political spectrum.

Only one chapter of the book is explicitly written by the two men separately (assuming the whole wasn’t ghosted by a third party with the two pretty much acting as advisers), the explanation for which is that the chapter’s subject is the one polarizing on which the two men could not find common ground: the war in Iraq.

Beckel authored the bulk of the chapter, which consists of many of the commonly touted arguments that paint the 2003 invasion as self-serving, egregious or flat out stupid and the war without end that’s followed it as a fiasco wrapped in a farce drowning in a quagmire.

The last two pages, however, are Thomas’ rebuttal, a bitter, full-throated defense of the invasion, including the argument once again that Saddam had the WMDs and just cleverly hid them before the U.N. inspectors arrived on the scene; an explanation for why we need to have a strong military presence in the Middle East lest we allow jihadist activities and the islamofascist virus to mushroom until takes over the entire world and then infects our very shores; and finally, as always, an attack on those who disagree because they don’t accept that we are on the side of the angels and don’t see the plain-as-dirt threat to our freedom, our democracy, indeed our entire way of life check your citizenships at the door you America-hating wusses blah blah blah....

Cal Thomas, for anyone who isn’t aware and might be shocked by this factoid, is best known for the commentary he provides for the Fox News Channel.

Apparently, though, William Kristol, one of his high-profile comrades in arms in defending the decision to forever keep our desert-deployed comrades at arms, recently accepted employment with another media outlet known for its distorted, bloviating haranguing of anyone who doesn’t view Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh as the modern day equivalent of the three wise men. You know the media powerhouse I’m talking about. The one the Bush acolytes eagerly read every day with gusto and hang on its every proclamation, the one that causes heartland Nascar devotees to froth at the mouth over its unimpeachable assailing of terrorist-caressing ACLU supporters, the publication that makes The American Spectator and The Weekly Standard look like whiny campaign brochures for public education, welfare cheats and Al Gore.

I’m talking, naturally, about The New York Times.

Times Public Editor (fronting for all the private ones, I guess) Clark Hoyt wrote an opinion piece in last Sunday’s edition that, at first glance, seems to give a “tsk, tsk” to all those who wrote in and expressed unprecedented outrage at the paper’s decision to give its open conservative columnist slot, vacated by the right wing but still far more open-minded (and, if I might, talented) William Safire in 2005, to the nightmare bloviator whose father Irving began to spread the neocon ebola some decades back with his launch of The Weekly Standard.

But while Hoyt might have wished to give the impression up front that he sought to make nice with the right and with his editorial overlords who decided to pay Mr. Kristol ever-deflating dollars to spew his pro-war, anti-intellectual, anti-reason opinions with support provided in the form of an endless litany of facts manufactured by Fox News, a full perusal of the piece gives a far different impression.

So what does all or any of this have to do with the quote at the top of the post? Mr. Kristol, like Mr. Thomas, still firmly believes in the war in Iraq, mainly that it was an action absolutely necessary to protect the U.S. and democracy in general from islamofascism and other threatening neocon neologisms, and he further believes that the U.S. Armed Forces must remain a substantial presence in Iraq for as long as it takes in order to restore peace and order to the country and give our intelligence community a “Big Brother”-like view of all potential terrorist activities there and throughout the Arabian Peninsula. In other words, until hell (with all its Judeo-Christian infidels) and paradise (with all its former virgins pleasuring its islamofascist martyrs) freeze over.

Do people like Messrs Kristol and Thomas really, honestly believe that our presence in Iraq is doing anything to curb, much less halt, terrorist activity? The only argument the neocons have been able to make that hasn’t been laughed off the stage by everyone else on the political spectrum is that we haven’t had any more domestic attacks since 9/11 (unless you count Rudy’s ongoing attack on our senses about 9/11). Reality check-plus-reminder here, folks: those terror-martyr-brainwash victims were almost all products of Saudi Arabia madrases, and their benefactor was born and spent most of his days in Afghanistan. But neocons are notorious for refusing to let facts get in the way of a good rant. They’re also notorious for waving the flag and cheering while other people (and other people’s children) camp out in the desert and wait to be blown up or fired upon.

And as the evidence mounts, day after day, year after year, nearly five years since the immortal “Mission Accomplished” banner proudly flew on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, the stalwart neocon brigade continues to fly squarely in the face of said evidence by repeatedly insisting at the tops of their lungs, and in print, that we have to defeat them there so we won’t have to fight them here.

And to date, of the more than 3,700 U.S. troops who have given their lives for that sentiment, not a single one has been either a neocon bloviator or one of their offspring. So maybe we should tinker with ol’ Forrest’s pearl of wisdom.

Stupid is as stupid forces someone else to do?

Welcome to the New York Times editorial page, Mr. Kristol. I look forward to following your work as you continue to uphold Jayson Blair’s fine traditions of honesty, integrity and, most of all, practical, insightful and well-analyzed commentary on what is truly best for our great nation.