10 September 2009

Ben Stein Watch: Self Parody

Somebody at The Raw Story has gone back three years on our boy Ben and discovered this screed from a more or less "respectable" publication, The American Spectator.

The point of the babbling seems to be to distract the attention of as many people as possible from the then-current Mark Foley scandal. Foley's interest in the young boys serving as Congressional pages so disconcerts Stein (hiding something, Ben?) that he goes to extravagant lengths to defuse the impact. Gays are the "primary constituency" of the Democratic Party, he tells us, and most gay men are interested in little boys. So Dems shouldn't be allowed to make political hay out of Foley.

The following brief passage gives us a sense of Ben's understanding of what constitutes evidence for a large claim. "I hope it won't come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys. (Take a look at anyone renting Endless Summer next time you are at the video store.)"

Now that he doesn't write for The New York Times anymore, maybe he'll have more time to hang around video stores, testing his gaydar.

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Knowledge is warranted belief -- it is the body of belief that we build up because, while living in this world, we've developed good reasons for believing it. What we know, then, is what works -- and it is, necessarily, what has worked for us, each of us individually, as a first approximation. For my other blog, on the struggles for control in the corporate suites, see www.proxypartisans.blogspot.com.