After failing to inspire a national movement of his own with the pro-ID-as-science documentary Expelled, arch-conservative pundit Ben Stein is now hating on people who have the audacity to be, you know, actually popular:
STEIN: I want — I’m glad you brought up this Denver thing. I don’t like the idea of Senator Obama giving his acceptance speech in front of 75,000 wildly cheering people. That is not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America. We have a contained number of people in an arena. Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that’s something the Fuehrer would have done. And I think whoever is advising Senator Obama to do this is bringing up all kinds of very unfortunate images from the past.
BECK: Well, yeah, you know what? I’ve been — I’ve been saying that we’re headed towards a Mussolini-style presidency forever. (emphasis added)
I find it utterly amazing that Stein manages to say, with a straight face, that huge rallies are just “not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America.” Really? Politicians both Republican and Democrat have huge mass rallies (even bigger than 75,000) as a regular order of business in their campaigns, all without a Godwin-esque peep from Beck or Stein. And national convention speeches are, while not exactly the Superbowl, watched by millions of Americans on television. How exactly do we go from millions of viewers to 75,000 people in person crossing some invisible line over into the Third Reich?
And note Stein’s use of one of the most bizarre meta-inanities of modern politics: bringing up a nasty associative smear while at the same time fretting over the supposed poor campaign advice that would give him the chance to make that very same smear! It’s a testament to the strange evolution of cable news coverage, wherein actual political analysts were first put on panels with hardcore partisan pundits (you know, for balance!), and then wholly replaced by them. Now we have the pundits pretending to both give sage analysis of politics while at the exact same time stumping for their party and politics.
Between this and Expelled, Stein really takes the cake when it comes to trivializing the Holocaust.
July 27, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Having both Ben Stein and that dullard Glenn Beck’s mugs in my line of sight at the same time might be too much for my otherwise-robust constitution.
August 5, 2008 at 5:08 am
I would highly suggest for you, and any one else interested to read the book ““The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions.” by self-professed secular Jew and mathematics/philosophies teacher David Berlinski.
This tells the story of a Jew who was forced to dig his own grave prior to being shot by a German soldier. Prior to being shot, the old Jewish man advised the German that “God is watching what you are doing.” The Jewish gentleman pointed what i think is the real problem with atheism. “If you have the time please check the book out
August 7, 2008 at 8:04 am
I’ve read the book, and in fact have been working on a review of it. Short version: a scientifically illiterate man tries to blame all the evils in the world on empiricism, based on crackerjack, fundamentalist-level apologia for religious faith. The fact that he claims to be a “secular” person neither makes any difference to the crumminess of his arguments, nor really even makes any sense in light of his prejudices, which are indistinguishable from the most rabid anti-secularists. He might as well be an anti-semitic Jew for all the sense his own claimed situation makes.
August 8, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Huge rallies not the stuff of American politics?
Gee, Ronald Reagan made a half-dozen stadium speeches in California in 1965 and 1966. Ex-president, getting ready to run again in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt packed Tacoma’s Stadium Bowl in 1911.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/1047/story/321792.html
Of course, they were Republicans. Plus, they weren’t as stupid as Ben Stein and Glenn Beck who, together, can do more damage than any mini-black hole at the Large Hadron Collider.