Monday, April 28th, 2008

Lists You Didn’t Ask For: Ben Stein Edition

by Jeff Giles

Happy Monday, faithful readers! Are you ready for a new series? We hope so, because we’ve got one for you. Welcome to the inaugural edition of Lists You Didn’t Ask For!

Here’s the deal: Since we know everyone out in Webland is a sucker for lists — and since we’re unapologetic whores for traffic — every other Monday we’ll be bringing you a new list based on a theme you never knew you cared about. Case in point: this week’s List of Other Things Ben Stein Defends.

As you may know, Mr. Stein has a terrible new movie out titled Exposed: No Intelligence Allowed. In what is being charitably called a documentary, Stein tries to make a case for the “intelligent design” theory by claiming a vast anti-ID conspiracy (and making thinly veiled comparisons between Darwinists and Nazis). Currently, Expelled is sitting at a richly deserved 9 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, thanks to reviews from critics like the Chicago Reader’s Reece Pendleton, who calls it “ludicrous propaganda,” and the Onion AV Club’s Steven Hyden, who dismisses it as “grossly unfair, contradictory, and ultimately repugnant.”

So we know Ben Stein defends the idea that “intelligent design” should be taught in schools. What else does he defend? We convened a panel consisting of Jason Hare, Robert Cass, yours truly, and our friends at the Hilton Head Island Packet, Jeff Vrabel and Tim Donnelly, to put together a list. Read on to find out what made the cut:

  1. Existence of “intelligent giant-hand-grasping” theory that questions gravity
  2. Visine, and its persecution in the public school system by the CLR corporation
  3. Your desire to win his money
  4. Unicorns
  5. Flatness of Earth and/or voice
  6. Pigeon rape
  7. Ability to turn 12-second teen-movie cameo into some sort of career as right-wing supercrusader
  8. Your right to turn Ben Stein on (a show which apparently God did not approve of)
  9. Ghostbusters II
  10. Shrinking the natural history museum down to a conference room titled “6,000 years of wonder!”
  11. Your right to keep using your appendix despite what “science” may tell you

Oh, that silly Stein. What won’t he defend?

And because no post here would be truly complete without a collection of tangentially related mp3s to go along with it …

Edgar Winter Group – Frankenstein
The Beach Boys – God Only Knows (Stack-O-Vocals)
ABC – By Default by Design
Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire – The Idiot’s Genius
The Call – I Still Believe (Great Design)
Frank Zappa – Dumb All Over

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  • What a waste. Ben Stein has made a career out of being a "sensible conservative," and we always hear how smart he is, and he is, no doubt, a very bright man. But it's horrifying, really, to watch him sell out basic intellectual honesty in the name of naked ideology.

    Then again, the signs have been there for a while, particularly in his continued, unreconstructed Nixon-worship. Remember the column he did a couple of years ago, when Mark Felt went public as Deep Throat, where he came right out and said that Felt had the blood of millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians on his hands? Read the whole thing: it's mind-croggling.
  • Neil
    Admittedly, Stein's movie is off-target. But what is even more sad is the fact that the overwhelming majority of 'commentators' think Stein burst onto the scene from his Cameo in Ferris Bueller. Ben, son of Herbert (Wall Street contributor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon) was a speech writer and lawyer for Richard Nixon at The White House and then for Gerald Ford. He's still crazy but he is an Ivy League educated lawyer- just like the Clintons and Obama.
  • If the evidence of the ID crowd is really so poor, then no one should be afraid of having it presented and laughed at.

    Actually, if the evidence of for Darwinism is so strong, then why is it so consistently misrepresented in textbooks? Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution documents this misrepresentation with devastating thoroughness.

    The bottom line is that Darwinian evolution is an inference. ID is an inference.
    For hard core creationists and hard core Darwinists, evidence seems not to matter that much. There are any number of tough problems with Darwinism, bitter debates that rage in scientific journals constantly. Most people really would like to hear a full account of the evidence for unguided evolution, pro and con, and make up their own minds. That's the American way.

    Even Michael Behe, one of the microbiologists in the ID camp, believes in common descent. Personally, I am skeptical about that for a number of reasons. But I'm willing to read his book and look at his evidence. Another book recently recommended by a friend was Your Inner Fish. Yes, people should read as much as possible. But our kids should see the evidence for and against the current models of evolution. They should understand the debates and arguments within evolution, which point up just how much of the process is really still up for debate.

    Why is it that censorship is anathema, except when it comes to ideas linked to conservatives?
  • Who's afraid of laughing at ID? And who's talking about censorship?
  • I'm content to laugh at ID. You can't just throw up your hands and insist "God did it," every time something happens that you're unable to explain. Sure, there are holes in evolutionary theory, the same way that there were holes in Newtonian physics (case in point, Mercury's orbit). Theories get refined, or replaced (i.e. relativity) by ones that fill in more of the holes. That's how science works. ID has no place in a science curriculum because it's not science.
  • J
    OK, he's an ass, but I loved "Win Ben Stein's Money". Is that wrong of me?
  • Johanna
    "Don't eat that yellow snow " Frank Zappa
    "Thank you for Dumb All Over" Myself
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