Ben Stein Watch: That Gusher of Hope

What he's been hearing is a Niagara gusher of hope. Oh, I feel so relieved. I refer, as it happens, to something our boy Ben wrote for The American Spectator.

And he's got a new commercial with Shaq out, too. With a Western theme. Ah, could lfe be any more magnificent? At least they aren't still literally shackled together. That was creepy.

So why does Stein think good times are back? because he trusts the American people, who "know, even if the newspaper editors don't, that America is not so much a political and geographical state as a state of mind."

Remember Chauncey Gardiner's words of hope in a similar (though fictitious) time of troubles? "In spring, the new growth returns." Of course, he had no clue that his words were being taken as an economic prophecy. He was babbling about the garden, which was all he knew.

I'm beginning to suspect that there is an analogous void in Ben Stein that makes him incapable of knowing or caring how others will take his words. Chauncey, thine hour has come.