Posted on 08/10/2009 5:11:48 AM PDT by reaganaut1
My sister nailed it many years ago when she said, "Your basic human is not such a hot item."
Keep that filed in your head as I tell my little tale.
About five or six years ago, roughly, I was solicited to write a column every two weeks for the Sunday New York Times Business Section. I was really thrilled. I have written for the Washington Post (when I was a teenager), for the Wall Street Journal edit page under the legendary Bob Bartley, for Barron's, under the really great Alan Abelson and Jim Meagher, for my beloved American Spectator, under the great Bob and Wlady, and now having a regular column at the Times was going to be great stuff.
The column went well. I got lots of excellent fan mail and fine feedback from my editors, who, however, kept changing.
The first real super problem I had was when the movie I narrated and co-wrote, Expelled--No Intelligence Allowed, was in progress. A "science writer" for the Times blasted the movie on the front page and noted that I, whom she repeatedly called "...a freelance writer..." (not a columnist ) for the Times was somehow involved. That was followed by a really fantastically angry blast against the movie by a reviewer who really hated it a lot. (I note that the Times also disliked Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Hmm.)
Expelled was a plea for open discussion of the possibility that life might have started with an Intelligent Designer. This idea, that freedom of academic discussion on an issue as to which there is avid scientific disagreement has value, seems obvious to me. But it drives the atheists and neo-Darwinists crazy and they responded viciously.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I read Ben Stein. I avoid the NYT like the plague. ‘Nuff said.
Oh, come on...
How could a critic NOT like “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off”?
Anyone? Anyone?
To be rejected and expelled from the New York Slimes is truly one of the last proofs of ethics and intelligence remaining in America.
So the NYT fires Ben Stein for “the appearance” of a conflict of interest? The NYT has given up on presenting “the appearance” of a real newspaper....
hh
It was supposed to be an “ethics” violation?
The NYT has ethics? Who knew?
That is a surprising thing to stumble on. The NYT is far more likely to shut someone down for giving sass.
Which Ben Stein did a lot. Like insinuating the Darwinists were akin to Nazis.
This reminds me of the Jeff Jacoby incident at the Boston Globe. There is no room in the Times propaganda apparatus for a conservative. And, by extension, if the truth favors conservatism, there is no room for the truth.
So in Stalinesque fashion, contrive some transparent charge against the offender and, “with great reluctance,” cut him loose.
The Times’ loss is Ben Stein’s gain.
NYT=smug Liberals who cannot tolerate an opinion contrary to their far Left position. Surprise, surprise.
Yet the NY Slimes puts opinion in every so-called "news story" they ever wrote.
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Expelled was a plea for open discussion of the possibility that life might have started with an Intelligent Designer. This idea, that freedom of academic discussion on an issue as to which there is avid scientific disagreement has value, seems obvious to me. But it drives the atheists and neo-Darwinists crazy and they responded viciously.
If you want proof of the viciousness of these atheists and neo-Darwinists, just go over LGF, run by 'Chuck' and backed by his profane minions.
In Bizarro Lefty Loony Land, it’s “Free Speech For Me, But None For Thee”.
I’m sorry to see Ben Stein lose his job due to stupidity at the NYTimes, but he would have lost it anyway - the Times is in a major financial landslide and, God willing, they will have to close their doors soon.
We can only hope!
“The whole subject reminds me of a conversation Bob Dylan had long ago with a reporter who asked him what he thought about how much criticism he was getting for going from acoustic to electric guitar. “There are a lot of people who have knives and forks,” he said, “and they have nothing on their plates, so they have to cut something.”
Great line
New York Times said it was the coldest winter in 17 years. I didn't feel so cold then.
I’m surprised it took them this long to get rid of that deluded relic. An earlier post of his here
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1945122/posts
from last 2007 contains these Kudlow-esque talking points, which were obvious knee-slappers to clear thinkers at the time and not just in retrospect:
“the media and the short-sellers on Wall Street are trying to scare us into having a recession.”
“it’s true that we’re having a very large housing correction...But housing is only about 5 percent of the economy at most...”
“Real unemployment has barely budged since the housing correction began more than a year ago. It will probably rise, but exports are shooting up so fast because of the weak dollar that overall unemployment may not rise by much at all.”
“there’s the subprime “meltdown,” as the papers like to call it...There may have been roughly $80 billion in losses so far (before liquidation of the collateral, which will greatly reduce the losses). There may be another $150 billion of losses out there, and maybe even another $200 billion...Those numbers seem immense, and to you and me they are. But in the context of the U.S. economy, they’re not large enough to do major damage unless the Federal Reserve Board makes serious mistakes”
“The truth is that we passed through a far worse crisis in the tech collapse of 2000-2002, when roughly one-sixth of the nation’s wealth was erased. Now, with the mortgage crisis and other problems, we’re not even talking about a loss of one-tenth of 1 percent.”
In fact, there was little in that article that hasn’t been proven to be completely wrong.
What sweet humility and honesty.
In the end it boils down to the fact that the Times didn't care for Mr. Stein's ideology, one that he never expressed in his columns.
So, the Times loses one of the few reasons to ever look at its product. Not bad. The flip side is that a good man like Ben lost a gig but, as he noted, I don't think this is going to cost him much. I'll miss his columns there. They were entertaining, informative and often, just plain fun.
Just a stupid decision by the Times that further demonstrates why its circulation and corporate income continue their steep decline.
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