Anyone? Beuller? Bueller?

I read some of the articles in the American Spectator to get my blood boiling enough to post once in a while. Ben Stein and Jay D. Homnick have done the job. In an article posted 10/20/06, Mr. Homnick exposes Hillary Clinton for lying. Something that no politician on either side of the aisle has ever done. Obviously the Clintons have the lying thing down much better than Bush family.

The basis for his article is that Hillary Clinton just found out that she was not named for Sir Edmund Hillary, who climbed Mt. Everest in 1953. This obviously can’t be true since Hillary was born in 1947. The story goes that Hillary’s mother told her this when she was young and Hillary did not bother to fact check her Mom.

In the article he uses this as a basis for convicting Hillary for everything she ever lied about ever, without supporting those other lies with real examples. The only one he manages to give is when Bill Clinton lied about tax cuts for the middle-class. Of course the Monica Lewinsky fiasco. What this has to do with Hillary Clinton’s mother telling her she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary to inspire her to great things, I have no idea.

In the end Mr. Homnick draws a direct line between this event (Hillary’s political office saying that Hillary understands why her mother told her this untruth as a young woman) and Hillary’s covert run at the 2008 Presidential Democratic ticket.

The final straw is that he took a great Bob Dylan song (Lay, Lady, Lay) and repurposed it for the article’s title (lie, Lady, Lie). That is an unforgivable offense.

Ben Stein is best known by people of my generation for his wonderful role in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. He played a boring teacher whose famous line is, “Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?” or his speech describing, “Voodoo economics.” Classic. Stein is also known as the former speechwriter for Nixon, among other things. No doubt he’s smart. He writes economics articles, he is a lawyer and he’s rather funny.

But I do not like his political ideology. Stein was at one time suspected of being the famous “Deep Throat,” Bob Woodward’s informant. He deflected this accusation by in fact, turning the accusations against Bob Woodward and stating quite often that he believed there was no “Deep Throat” and that Mr. Woodward made the informant up.

When W. Mark Felt outed himself ads the Woodward informant, Stein reacted angrily against Mr. Felt. He believes that given the opportunity, Nixon may have helped stem the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. (This was taken directly from Wikipedia’s article on Ben Stein) Stein has been a staunch defender of Nixon over the years. Although he recognizes Nixon was a lying, coniving, sham of a politician, he did so with peaceful intentions, while JFK and Clinton were liars and conivers but were also immoral so they deserve everything they got. (Aparantly he doesn’t dig too deep into the record.)

An article I stumbled across in the Spectator got me riled up.

Yes, it’s old and it is almost forgotten but I do not understand the basis for his arguments. I remember back during the 2004 election campaign. The Dems really screwed that one up by reacting and bending and basically being flipilty-flopity all over the place. But the Republicans sorta just eeked that one out. They may have gotten the electorate but the popular vote just tells me that they were better at mobilizing their base. (I blame myself.)

Mr. Stein’s position is that the Democrats thought that Bush was not fit to lead because he didn’t fight in Vietnam and that Kerry was better because he did. He even goes further saying that Dems also are trying to say that Kerry is better than Bush because he killed someone in Vietanam!

Was he watching the same election or one that Hollywood made up. I think the line the Dems were trying to put out there is that Bush lied (back to lying) about getting us into the war in Iraq and he lied about his service record (or at the very least tried to avoid the issue). The point of Kerry’s record and subsiquent protest of the War was that this guy puts his money where his mouth is. He is a stand-up guy who went to war because he believed in America and when he came back, didn’t like what he saw despite doing his duty and by the way winning a few metals along the way. He protested because he had a moral concious and stood up for what he believed in.

The problem with that election campaign was that the Republicans were too good at back spinning even the good stories about Kerry and the Democrats found themselves with a poor return. (Why they didn’t ask me is beying comprehension.)

Mr. Stein ends his article with an obtuse pronouncement that the Democrats—the anti-war, anti-military party—thinks that only a cold-blooded warrior can lead the country, implying that the Democrats don’t know what they’re talking about. I thinkt he Democrats knew what they wanted to say—and it made a lot of sense—it’s that they didn’t have the organization and dare I say balls to say it.

Someone as smart as Ben Stein should know better than to engage in the type of mud-slinging found in this article. Let’s hope he has clearer vision in 2008.

L.S.C.

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