He starts up a conversation with a bunch of local teenagers. He is quite impressed with them. He finds out what high school they go to. Soon after he leaves a note with the principal's secretary that he would like to come by and work with students. He offers his experience in language arts/English, drama, and politics/history.
This is the high school that my middle school students feed into. Classy guy, just kind of happy he did not visit the biology classes.
Ben Stein walks into a Taco Bel, he tells the impoverished woman behind the counter to be happy when a rich foreign diplomat demands sexual attention.
There is no punch-line.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Once upon a time, I might think Ben Stein being at my high school was cool.
These days, not so much.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Classy guy, just kind of happy he did not visit the biology classes.
HA!
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
if he was impressed with them, why's he trying to ruin their education in return
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: if he was impressed with them, why's he trying to ruin their education in return
Regardless of anything else, he is an excellent historical primary source from his speech writing days.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
For some reason I envisions Ben Stiller when I read the OP.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Who is this guy? I don't think I've ever heard of him.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
He was a speech writer for Nixon and Ford who later went into acting. If you've seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off you'd probably recognize him as the teacher who gave the dry economics lecture. He had a game show called Win Ben Stein's Money in the 90s which you also might have seen.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
He did the dry teacher act on Wonder Years to.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.: Who is this guy? I don't think I've ever heard of him.
He achieved a reputation as a really smart guy, but has tainted it with some anti-science activism.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
And by making predictions about the economy that proved laughably wrong.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
And by blaming the victim of a sexual assault, based mostly on the fact that she was poor and her attacker was rich.
Nice guy right?
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Ben Stein had a pretty cool talk show. It was honestly pretty cool! And he's walking breathing proof that you can have a profound wealth of knowledge and intellectual capacity and yet be a bat-huffingly insane moron. To, not to put too fine a point on it.
Expelled! No Intelligence Allowed was the most inane national release documentary I can think of — it's basically a Ron Lambert evolution thread in movie form — but he gets extra bonus credit points for how completely absurd his defense of Strauss-Kahn was in terms of that rape controversy.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Oh I remember him now. I think he was in the Mask, but I certainly remember his gameshow and his scenes in Farris Bueller. Say, what did he say that was so stupid about science?
Posted by tertiaryadjunct (Member # 12989) on :
Among many other things, released a ridiculous pro-Intelligent Design "documentary".
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
OH I see. Yeah, that's pretty stupid.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Also, I love that Stein completely misquoted Darwin, rearranging and omitting entire sentences and parts of sentences, just to twist it into something he thought would help him.
That kind of misrepresentation shouldn't be allowed to make it into a film. If it does, they should be fined for it. Look at the differences here:
Stein's quote of Darwin:
quote:With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The actual quote from Darwin:
quote:With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.
The differences are staggering. I really can't believe it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
It's bad enough when someone comes by that sort of zealous stupidity honestly. Considering Stein's background and career, though, that becomes somewhat difficult to credit. He is at best some shade of liar-either for not reading and claiming he did, or worse for reading, and then knowingly lying about what was written.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: ...but he gets extra bonus credit points for how completely absurd his defense of Strauss-Kahn was in terms of that rape controversy.
To be fair, it sounds quite a bit like this lady tried to shake Kahn down*.
*so to speak
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
any fair point in relation to the Strauss-Kahn issue is lightyears away from how Stein tried to defend him
Lol wow, you'd think for a smart guy he'd have more common sense, but that so-called defense of his is just stupid.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: any fair point in relation to the Strauss-Kahn issue is lightyears away from how Stein tried to defend him
I'd forgotten some of those defenses...
Posted by ElJay (Member # 6358) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: ...but he gets extra bonus credit points for how completely absurd his defense of Strauss-Kahn was in terms of that rape controversy.
To be fair, it sounds quite a bit like this lady tried to shake Kahn down*.
*so to speak
Are you basing that on the translated phone call that was recorded? You know that the defense's translation was disputed, right? The victim did get a settlement from Kahn to drop her civil lawsuit, but I wouldn't call that a shake-down.
The prosecution dropped the charges because they didn't think the case was winnable, and said the victim's story wasn't consistant. There have been many studies that show that victims of trauma, including sexual assault, frequently come across as inconsistant afterwards because of how the brain deals with trauma. I'm not making a judgement here about what happened one way or the other -- we don't have anywhere near the facts to know. I'm just saying that given that, saying that it sounds like she tried to shake him down is not, in fact, being fair.