Pro-DSK

Ben Stein at The American Spectator thinks that Strauss-Kahn has been treated very shabbily. He points out how unlikely it is that a man in such a station in life would have committed such an attack. He says putting him in Rikers Island is shameful.

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N. writes:

Ben Stein is better suited to appearing in movies and commercials than he is at attempting to pretend to think.

Here is a clear example: even as the housing bubble was failing, precipitating a financial crisis that we are still riding through, Ben Stein was on television insisting that a relative handful of no-document housing loans couldn’t possibly be a problem. He claimed this on the basis of his credentials as an economist—credentials that should have been revoked on the spot.

Stein is just another gadfly of the right-liberal media, not as intelligent as Mark Steyn, or Ann Coulter, not as educated as Jay Nordlinger … but a gadfly just as the others are. I see no reason to pay any attention to his opinings on such a case, because the man does not think, he emotes.

LA replies:

I agree that Ben Stein does not think, he emotes. In 98 percent of his columns that I’ve seen, all he does is talk about his feelings and personal experiences. Leaving aside his movie on Darwinism, which had some worthwhile aspects, I’ve never understood why he has had any kind of career as a “conservative” writer who is regularly published in “conservative” magazines, or at least in one “conservative” magazine. (I guess with my use of scare quotes I’ve answered my own question.) However, I felt he did make a couple of reasonable points in this column, along with some weaker points, and I thought it would be fair to post an article taking DSK’s side and criticizing the authorities’ treatment of him.

Jim C. writes:

You totally underrate Stein. See Wikipedia’s article on him.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 17, 2011 12:38 PM | Send