Ben Stein Watch: Black Folks

I'm not sure what to make of Ben Stein's latest column in The New York Times.

He talks about his first job -- selling shoes at Shoe Giant. The point? Apparently that sales can be tough but exhilirating. He repeatedly quotes Willie Loman, the fictitious salesman of Arthur Miller's famous play, to that effect. Indeed, the subhead of the column is a paraphrase from Death of a Salesman.

But what is Stein selling here? There's no real effort to draw any lesson that might either help or enlighten his readers. My guess? He is selling himself and the idea of his own benevolence. Or, maybe, he just felt the pressure of a looming deadline in the utter absense of inspiration.

One good thing about this column, though: there's no effort to pontificate about civil rights, or about how nice were the black people buying those shoes. He doesn't make us feel like we're stuck inside a showing of Hairspray.

Why should I bring that up? Because this isn't the first time Stein has told the world about his brief shoe-selling fling. In 2001 he contributed one paragraph to a Fortune Magazine column. The columnist, Grainger David, asked several prominent people what their first job had been, and stein was one of the respondent. There, too, he talked about shoes, but he gave it a Hairspray twist.

All I can say to that is: Wow. He likes black people. Awesome. He probably wears his baseball cap on backwards, too.

Come on, Ben. You have prime jourbnalistic real estate in the business section of The friggin' New York Times. Give us something.