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:
- Existence of “intelligent giant-hand-grasping” theory that questions gravity
- Visine, and its persecution in the public school system by the CLR corporation
- Your desire to win his money
- Unicorns
- Flatness of Earth and/or voice
- Pigeon rape
- Ability to turn 12-second teen-movie cameo into some sort of career as right-wing supercrusader
- Your right to turn Ben Stein on (a show which apparently God did not approve of)
- Ghostbusters II
- Shrinking the natural-history museum down to a conference room titled “6,000 Years of Wonder!”
- 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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