Ben Stein Likes Indoor Plumbing, Dislikes Poor People

Visine pitchman, former Comedy Central gameshow host, and ex-presidential speechwriter Ben Stein really wouldn't hack me off, what, a couple times every five-six years or so? If he just wasn't a pious hypocritical ivory tower word-weaseling douche canoe.

It isn't the highest standard in the world. Many people have avoided being a hypocritical ivory tower word-weaseling douche canoe. He just isn't living up to that standard, and I despair of his regular attempts at self-sabotage. 

So, I point to an interview, which kind of turns on a thin dime so subtly that you might have to think a minute to realize that Stein is weaseling.

“Yes, the government designates many tens of millions as poor, but they almost always have indoor plumbing (which my mother did not have in her small town in the Catskills) and they are super nourished as opposed to mal-nourished,” he said. “They get food stamps. They get free medical care. They get vouchers for many of the needs of life.” 

While he pities their plight, Stein pointed out that poverty was greatly reduced in scope and severity in the past century. 

“In olden times, poverty was the common human condition,” Stein said. “In the USA, as recently as the Great Depression, poverty was commonplace. FDR might have exaggerated when he described one-third of the nation as ‘ill housed, ill fed and ill clad…’ But surely he was not far off.”

And his mother would be how old?  I bet nobody had color tv's in her day either. And his solution is?

 “Maybe, just maybe, if we let God back into the public forum it would help. I have seen spiritual solutions work miracles.”

And in his mother's day, way back when, when the poor folks were really poor, and not the kind of fake-ass poor we have today--is he saying things were less religious then? Because, unless I'm really mistaken, most conservatives envision the past as being a little less secularized and hippieficated , and way more squared-away, God-fearing, and role-knowing. And yet the really poor folks were back in the day, he says. And his momma did not have indoor plumbing, he also adds.

Thinking about that: Are you saying your momma was godless and self-sabotaging, then, Ben? Because I do not think that proves your point, and you shouldn't even be talking that smack about your momma. That isn't decent.