Ben Stein, Propagandist, in Expelled
Spending that Ferris Bueller capital
By Vadim Rizov
Tuesday, April 4 2008
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Ben Stein became a minor cultural icon with Ferris Bueller's Day Off, almost making people forget that, from his early days as a Nixon speechwriter on, he's been a rigid cultural conservative. Stein capitalizes on that good will with Expelled, a propaganda "documentary" he co-wrote and hosts. His thesis: Teaching Darwinian evolution but ignoring intelligent design in America's public schools and universities is the biggest threat to American freedom today—bigger, presumably, than Al Qaeda, Iraq, and the recession combined. A series of interviews with ID true believers has him playing Michael Moore–dumb—no hard questions for the folks at the Discovery Center, whose infamous leaked 1993 "wedge memo" stated as one of its primary goals the propagation of the idea "that nature and human beings are created by God." ID'ers protest that they're simply interested in secular alternatives to Darwinian evolution; their scientific opponents, meanwhile, are potential Communists and Nazis. Bizarre and hysterical.
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