These fucking whiners honestly think they are free speech advocates:
Saturday July 2021. A month that will live in infamy. If there is such a thing as “history” in the Biden–Orwell–Soros omni-dictatorship, July 2021 will mark the month that the Constitution, the “greatest work ever thrown off by the hand and mind of man,” as Gladstone put it, was thrown into the Ministry of Truth Memory Hole.
It was put into the “History Erase” well. A bottomless pit.
In this month, actually starting with the month before, that the superpowers of the tech world, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo, admitted to working with the Biden/NKVD administration to suppress free speech.
If there is so much fucking censorship how come I hear every single fucking one of their bad ideas? I literally can go to youtube and search for “best way to cut a mango” and within three clicks a video from PragerU is telling me there was something to pizzagate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ben Stein used to have an entertaining quiz show on the comedy channel. I think Jimmy Kimmel was his sidekick. That’s when he peaked.
Major Major Major Major
Wow, haven’t thought about Ben Stein in ages. What a dipshit.
NotMax
Almost feel left out as never have gotten any such recommendations at YouTube, only ones germane to whatever I’m watching/listening to.
Almost.
Citizen Alan
I’m genuinely surprised to learn that Ben Stein is still alive. Also slightly disappointed.
Suzanne
Go gentle into that good night, Ben.
Matt McIrvin
The guy made a whole movie about how academia was unfairly censoring creationists. There’s no point in listening to anything he says, even if you are Bueller and he’s calling your name.
swbarnes2
@Major Major Major Major: Sweetest $5k I ever earned
Morzer
Sad nonsense, but that’s only to be expected from “conservatives” these days. They literally have nothing to say worth hearing.
Wyatt Salamanca
Ben Stein’s appearance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the only worthwhile thing he’s ever done in his life.
Speaking of stupid things said by Republicans:
h/t https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-contributor-says-trump-supporters-arent-getting-vaccinated-because-biden-is-trying-to-take-credit-away-from-him/
Viva BrisVegas
The full quote from Gladstone actually goes:
“As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”
It is qualified by the phrase “at a given time”, i.e. the US Constitution was impressive for its time.
Another Gladstone quote:
“Liberalism is the trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.”
Not one of Ben Stein’s favorites I suspect.
bbleh
Oh please, they love nothing more than the sounds of their own voices whining about how unfair it all is, how they’re victims, how they’ve always played by the rules and never had any advantages while all these other people (and you know who they are) are just getting all sorts of special advantages, and really they’re almost like Jesus in their righteousness and suffering and blah blah wah wah wah.
Scratch a Republican and you’ll find a spoiled 6-year-old. And the scratch will huurrrt!
MattF
Ben Stein considering himself an economist is a bad joke. His dad was an actual economist (Herbert Stein, of ‘Stein’s Law’: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”) and, for a while, the NYT, in a lapse of judgement that I hope still embarasses them, employed him a couple of decades ago as a personal finance columnist. Felix Salmon used to publish items from Stein of really exceptional stupidity under the heading ‘Ben Stein Watch’ but eventually gave up. I could go on– Stein pushes my ‘Jews are good with money’ button– but I’ll stop here.
Amir Khalid
Why does the post headline make me think of Michael Bolton? Now there’s another guy I didn’t need to be reminded of.
RaflW
Jebus. The “Biden–Orwell–Soros omni-dictatorship”. What a turgid pile of nonsense. Embarrassing, even for the American Spectator.
Origuy
@swbarnes2: You won Ben Stein’s Money? I used to watch that show all the time. He was pretty strong on history and politics, but outside of that he could be beaten.
Mike in NC
Ben Stein used to reliably show up on CBS Sunday Morning. A reliable douchebag.
Comrade Colette
I feel like 90% of the time my response to any post here is “fuck that guy.” Or occasionally, “fuck that lady-parts-haver.” Not that I’m blaming the front pagers – it’s exhausting to track and enumerate all the people who really should go fuck themselves. There are just so damned many of them.
In other news, yesterday I got a check in the mail from Uncle
JoeSam for the advance child tax credit, and then an hour later the child in question called me to ask how to register for the selective service. (He just turned 18.). Talk about whiplash! The Fed giveth, and the Fed already maketh contingency plans to take away.RaflW
Also, holy heck, I popped over to Ben’s twitter feed. Don’t do it.*
*Thankfully, based on his follower count, looks like not many people do.
Benw
@Comrade Colette: Cosigned. Often I have nothing to add beyond fuck that guy. So here’s the dance at the end of Dirty Dancing.
Nobody puts baby in a corner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtZFfEy_Eyk&t=15s
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RaflW:
Heh. Well and concisely put.
VOR
Ben Stein was hired as entertainment for a conference I attended during Obama’s first term. The conference was held at the Gaylord National Harbor outside DC, which is the regular venue for CPAC. Attendees for our conference ran about 50% international (non-US) from all over the globe.
Stein opened with “everyday I wake up and thank god I am an American”. He attacked global warming as a hoax. He told an extended airline joke whose repeated punchline was the plane being made in Brazil. I thought about the group from Brazil whose table I shared for dinner the night before.
After it was mercifully over I ran into the head of our team from Sweden. He was livid and felt he had to apologize to his customers over the choice of entertainment. When you’ve pissed off the Swedes, you know it went badly.
Mel
@Amir Khalid: Especially since he plagiarized the Isley Brothers’ music, and managed to then make the partially stolen tune sound as sketchy as his stuff!
Just for an extra helping of Bolton horror, wasn’t there a creepy Bolton-Trump-Marla Maples love triangle scandal at some point? <shudder>
Off to find brain bleach to purge that image…
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Win Ben Stein’s Money. Fun show.
Major Major Major Major
@swbarnes2: ha, nice!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
First Bill O’Rielly now Ben Stein, there some “Conservative Super Stars of ’00s” Re-union tour going on?
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
Zombie Phyllis Schlafly warming up in the stage right wing.
:)
Ruckus
@Wyatt Salamanca:
As if fucking SFB had anything to do with the entire torrid vaccine deal, other than fucking it up and getting a few hundred thousand people killed because of his bullshit and incompetence.
Maybe if we wrote about what SFB really did(n’t) do and what he actually did do, do you think that would make them happy when it shows exactly how bad he fucked up, instead of the endless trucks full of BS that they barf all over the truth?
Mel
@Major Major Major Major: I think the last time he crossed my radar, he was doing some very unfunny “comedic”commercials peddling eye drops.
What a shame that he didn’t slink away and stay gone…
Ruckus
@bbleh:
You give them way, way too much credit.
Think about this, They seem like they all want to be SFB.
Think how bad the world is with one of him, now think of the world with a few million of him.
Amir Khalid
@Mel:
Eew. Ewww!
eclare
@Ruckus: What is SFB?
2liberal
Shit for Brains
pardon the language please
Zilch
@Amir Khalid: youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA
Mel
@NotMax: Possibly worth the resurrection it if she could be then be turned into a convenient zombie carry-all, Michonne style, and used to tote around masks, Lysol, and hand sanitizer in the halls of the Capitol.
Zilch
@Amir Khalid:
@Amir Khalid: youtube.com/watch?v=rW9-FOLG-iA
eclare
@2liberal: Thanks!
Ruckus
@eclare:
Shit For Brains
I believe that explains it.
Ruckus
@2liberal:
pardon the language
Are you saying that I’m being too nice to him?
OldDave
I’d like to thank Cole for reminding me of this glorious old Dan Hicks earwig.
Lucidamente
Ben Stein is the James Woods of David Horowitzes.
smike
I was gonna go with Sonofabitching Fucking Bastard…
pardon the language please
Brachiator
@Wyatt Salamanca:
This is so stupid that there might be some Republicans who actually believe it.
But otherwise, nah. Just some lame ass rationalizing.
Ruckus
@OldDave:
I like this one for the visual alone.
OK the music is OK as well, IMO.
Steeplejack
@Ruckus:
And you keep having to explain it. Maybe stop trying to make it a thing. Y0u’re retired: you’ve got time to type out “Trump” or even the universally recognized “TFG.”
Stuart Frasier
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I was on Win Ben Stein’s Money. They told us in the green room, “If you are a pretty woman, Ben will make a pass at you. Ignore him.” Another friend who was on the show confirmed that they got the same warning.
Ruckus
@Steeplejack:
Actually I don’t, others do it for me. I just do out of curtesy. And I got tired of typing out shitforbrains. I also like to be reasonably descriptive when discussing people who have killed thousands of people by using the vast array of intelligence and human qualities that they seem to have hidden some where, or possibly never possessed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: SFB is fetch.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: The entire time he was in office, I couldn’t call him Trump. And TFG is far too benign. So I used a changing set of epithets/slurs for the imbecile. I think we all process our anger, fear, hatred, etc differently, and I don’t see what’s wrong with calling him “SFB” — it seems pretty obvious from context whom you mean, after all.
swbarnes2
@Stuart Frasier: I did not get that warning. I was told he’d be cross if he lost, especially to someone like me, and he was. Co-host and crew were pleased I won.
HumboldtBlue
I really like this energy. T-Pain
If nothing else, if we ever figure out how to fund universal music education again we will be much more melodically better off for it as a species.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
One could call him FAt. Fucking Asshole trump.
I could make up many of these, I have nothing but contempt for him. And he’s earned far worse. How much better would humanity be if it wasn’t for him?
And the concept that he had anything whatsoever to do with the vaccine? No one can stretch reality that far without breaking it into a billion pieces.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus:
With you. I have a seemingly boundless reservoir of anger and hatred towards him, to process. As a friend put it, he’s taken up a rent-free dwelling in our heads, all of us. It’s big and spacious. Sigh. I really do wish we could get past it, do we could get on with our lives. But the anger …. the anger …. I know that if I had the chance, I’d do some truly abominable things to him ….. [ok, enough torture porn]
eclare
@HumboldtBlue: Epic rant!
Ruckus
I’m sorry but after 4 yrs of this fucking moron as president and his decades of racist, misogynistic bullshit, of watching him parade around like he thinks he has some actual decent human qualities I’m supposed to be polite and watch my language? Really? My language or description of him is the offensive part? Of course it is, he is one of the most offensive humans for so many reasons. Sure he hasn’t actually chopped off any heads, or even had it done, but look at the damage to our country, to our politics, to our lives. Or loss thereof. Why aren’t some even more pissed off? I enlisted in the US military during war, with no concept of where I’d end up or what I’d be doing when I got there, and sure I wasn’t overjoyed about it but I did serve and I did my best to be a citizen doing it. This SFB ass paid to avoid that, not that the military wasn’t better off. But at least no one had to shiv him or toss him over the side. No, he’s lived a life of relative luxury, with all the class, grace and stench of a lanced boil.
Mallard Filmore
@Ruckus: Hear hear. I’m with you. TFG is more widely known, but SFB is a better way to say it.
patrick Il
@Amir Khalid: Michael Bolton once took Opera lessons and thought he was so good that he booked himself on Letterman to sing a duet with Pavarotti. Unbelievable ego, terrible voice. Dave watched in disbelief.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
?
mrmoshpotato
All of these Dump-humping Soviet shitpiles are tremendous bigly being “sensored!”. Of course. Naturally. And fuck ’em!
Ivan X
I just assumed SFB stood for Stupid Fucking Bastard. Why not?
NotMax
@patrick Il
“We managed to snag Rocco Pavarotti. He’s in ladies’ underwear at Macy’s.”
JWR
Is this the same Ben Stein who ruined a few episodes of Married … with Children?
Ruckus
@Ivan X:
No reason, that’s a perfectly good interpretation.
NotMax
Presumably y’all have seen something about this.
2liberal
https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/07/19/paul-hodgkins-sentenced-to-eight-months-sentence
Chetan Murthy
@NotMax: Oh lordy, I hope they’re all fully-vaccinated. Courage, these people had. I wish they’d taken more precautions, but …. well, water under the bridge. Brave folks.
Chetan Murthy
@2liberal: OTOH, Tommy Chong noted that he got 9mos for selling bongs (that traitor Hodgkins got 8mos for trying to destroy our country). https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-tommy-chong-prison-sentence-paul-alan-hodgkins-20210720-s57xrtn5gjdhrademgbzlkoxia-story.html
The Pale Scot
@Viva BrisVegas:
Then he’s a bloody idiot, Britain doesn’t have written constitution, they have patchwork set of procedures and customs that are totally inadequate for today’s media market. 200,00 due paying Tories get to choose the government. Under the terms of the new EU treaty, the UK isn’t able to rejoin because their government does not meet the definition of a democracy. Except for decade a decade ago, the Tories have been in power for 60 years
AlaskaReader
Those Texas Democrats should have been vaccinated months ago.
John Griffone
Freedom means being able to lie with impunity on someone else’s platform.
opiejeanne
@AlaskaReader: My understanding is that they were all vaccinated. Just like the Yankees players who tested positive just before their game with the Red Sox.
eclare
@opiejeanne: The gymnast at the Olympics was too. Haven’t seen anything on Coco Gauff.
Chetan Murthy
@opiejeanne: That’s a comfort. Thanks.
Patricia Kayden
NotMax
@Chetan Murthy
All reporting I’ve seen states the entire group has been fully vaccinated.
Sloane Ranger
@The Pale Scot:
And we’ve all seen how a written constitution is so much better by looking at how its been working in the US. Oh wait, the Republican Party has spent decades exploiting loopholes and appointing judges whose interpretation of the clear wording of that written Constitution stretches the normal usage of the English language beyond breaking point. Democracies survive not by words on paper, but by the willingness of the players to follow norms and customs.
The British electoral system, at least in theory, allows voters to select their government and hold them to account against their manifesto commitmens. Other systems usually lead to coalitions, followed by horse trading, leading to a government with policies which even the people who voted for one of the coalition partners oppose.
As for the Tories being in power so long, look to a Tory supporting media, Labour infighting and the increase in small and secessionist parties plus a willingness to appeal to white working voters worse instincts.
Patricia Kayden
Patricia Kayden
@Wyatt Salamanca: Trump downplayed the seriousness of the Coronavirus so no, he doesn’t get credit for the vaccination. He does, however, get full credit for the unnecessary Covid-19 deaths during his horrendous presidency.
Keep in mind that he didn’t even let the public know that he took the vaccine in January. That info was leaked months later.
brantl
@Chetan Murthy: TFG also conveniently stands for “That fucking Guy” as well; I think that whenever I see it, it was the first thing that hit me when I first saw it, and it stuck.
r€nato
I’m old enough to remember when conservatives lustily cheered on a president who believed he had unlimited powers, but that was way back in 2020. Probably unfair to remind them of something from so long ago.
r€nato
@Wyatt Salamanca: Now that it is thoroughly proven that the various vaccines confer a high degree of protection (greatly reducing the problem of ‘collateral damage’), I have no problem at all with conservatives refusing to get their jabs in order to stick it to the libs because their messiah is not getting the credit they hilariously think he deserves for them.
Chris Johnson
Because it’s always projection. They’re telling you what they’re fixing to do. You’re welcome.
Rob
@Ivan X:
In my not completely awake state I parsed SFB as Savage Feral Beast
Dave P
@Amir Khalid:
Because the term “no-talent ass clown” applies to both Michael Bolton and Ben Stein
ThresherK
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
“Win Ben Stein’s Money” was fun. “The Man Show” (co-starring Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla) was funnier than it had any right to be.
I don’t watch late-night TV any longer–I don’t stay up that late now. But at some point it occurred to me that Jimmy Kimmel has some charm to him, and he maybe was the key to making these shows work.
Barry
@MattF:
“…in a lapse of judgement that I hope still embarasses them,…”
Unpossible. They are incapable of that emotion.
Starfish
@Omnes Omnibus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pubd-spHN-0
Starfish
@Ruckus: The problem for others was not the language but that you have just invented an acronym, and no one else understands what you are talking about.
If I am going to critique what it stands for, it lacks the creativity that the best people put in their invectives.
As far as the rest of it goes, I agree that That Tub of Macaroni and Cheese Ice Cream is offensive as all hell, but I am not going to start shortening it to TTMCIC because no one is going to know what I am talking about.
Matt
@RaflW:
Meanwhile he’s invoking Soros as a boogeyman.
TFW Jews get such a fascist boner from the occupation that they forget that they’re nodding along to the arguments of actual Nazis.
zifnab25
Can’t wait until “vaccines are fake and Trump’s genius created them” just flow like water, uninterrupted, as a singular dogmatic belief.
sherparick
Ben Stein is an example of arrested development that started afflicting American male teens in the 1960s when, as John Rodgers pointed out we would read two books. “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
Ben Stein is more evidence of the harm “Atlas Shrugged” has had on the world. He has never moved beyond the cruel and vapid ideas of Galt’s Gulch. Nor his belief that every woman he meets wants him to play the leading role in rape fantasy.
Mike in NC
Fuck Benny Stein and the American Sphincter magazine.
Ruckus
@Starfish:
I invented an acronym is the problem.
OK then, that’s the problem.
Clarity is the issue, perfection is the issue.
Sorry I’m not perfect enough for you.
I’ll fucking try to do better in the future.
Audrey
@The Pale Scot:
You can grant him a little slack as he’s been dead for over 120 years :)
Brantl
@zifnab25: THAT should be a rotating tag line!
Brantl
@Ruckus: SFB as an acronym for Shit For Brains has been around “since god was a boy”.
J R in WV
@AlaskaReader:
They are vaccinated — they are being exposed because they aren’t sheltering in their homes in TX, they’re in DC eating in restaurants and living in hotel rooms.
In an area with a pretty high vaccination rate, also too!
Where did you get the spurious idea that these Texas Democratic Patriots are not all vaccinated? Why are you attempting to spread false, misleading, mis-information right here in Balloon-juice?
That starts with B, which rhymes with T which doesn’t stand for TFG, SFB.
You are the problem right here and now, thanks to all the software guys who invented the Pie Filter which can solve the problem of your existence right here and now.
Ruckus
@Brantl:
I know.
In 7 decades, I’ve invented nothing.
Oh well, another day, another day
I really wasn’t dissing you here, please understand. It’s just another day in blogland.
Oh damn I made up another word. What will I do…….
The Truffle
Ben Stein’s whining appears alongside headlines about Hunter Biden and the dangers of immigration.
Can we safely say his article is one big self-own? I mean, Stein and his ilk seem more pissed that their ravings are confined to wingnut-welfare outlets.
Richard
@bbleh: Yes. It is FUBAR, the way go on crying about their conspiracies and stupid pseudointellectual justifications.
They called people who disagree with them “snowflakes”. They informed the world that they “drink liberal tears “. Now the shoe is on the other foot. They are not happy.
I don’t even know who Ben Stein was. Sounds like he will not be missed.
Not to even mention that golden calf they have been worshipping all these years. And they dare to call it religion? Eff them.