Saturday, October 07, 2006
Update: Ben Stein Not Crazy; just an ass
As reported yesterday, humorist Ben Stein recently wowed the readers of The American Standard with his take on Foley's Follies. (Apparently, it was all Clinton's fault.) At the time, I gave Stein the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he had slipped into premature dementia (possibly brought on by naphazoline overdose). I was wrong.
In this most recent essay, Stein invokes the demons of pop-culture sexuality and genocide as gris-gris against Foley's Republican wanga, trivializing the scandal in comparison to "those teenage girls in Congo who get raped, have their arms chopped off, and then are murdered".
Which girls were those, again? Does he mean these people? Or these? Indeed, atrocities occur every day. That must be why he writes about them all the time, .
Truth to tell, an afternoon spent scouring the internet turned up nothing to suggest that Ben Stein could spell "Darfur" before this afternoon. I am not suggesting that Stein is unintelligent. He is not. I am just curious as to why this wellspring of sympathy for the plight of the world's impoverished has poured forth now. Stein has written over a dozen books, yet not one has featured "the 3,000 women and children [who] are raped and/or murdered every day in Congo". When, exactly, did this issue start preying on his mind?
Luckily, we don't have to wait for the answer with Amazon.com around. A quick search of "ben stein" returns his latest work, How Successful People Win: Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life.
Ah-hah. See, friends, it's all so clear now. Ben Stein isn't crazy. He's just an asshole.
Apparantly, I'm not the only person who thinks so.
In this most recent essay, Stein invokes the demons of pop-culture sexuality and genocide as gris-gris against Foley's Republican wanga, trivializing the scandal in comparison to "those teenage girls in Congo who get raped, have their arms chopped off, and then are murdered".
Which girls were those, again? Does he mean these people? Or these? Indeed, atrocities occur every day. That must be why he writes about them all the time, .
Truth to tell, an afternoon spent scouring the internet turned up nothing to suggest that Ben Stein could spell "Darfur" before this afternoon. I am not suggesting that Stein is unintelligent. He is not. I am just curious as to why this wellspring of sympathy for the plight of the world's impoverished has poured forth now. Stein has written over a dozen books, yet not one has featured "the 3,000 women and children [who] are raped and/or murdered every day in Congo". When, exactly, did this issue start preying on his mind?
Luckily, we don't have to wait for the answer with Amazon.com around. A quick search of "ben stein" returns his latest work, How Successful People Win: Using Bunkhouse Logic to Get What You Want in Life.
Ah-hah. See, friends, it's all so clear now. Ben Stein isn't crazy. He's just an asshole.
Apparantly, I'm not the only person who thinks so.
// posted by Jason Seneca @ 5:41 PM 
