| Ben Stein | |
|---|---|
Stein speaking at the 2006 National Summit on Retirement Savings |
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| Born | Benjamin Jeremy Stein November 25, 1944 Washington, D.C., United States |
| Residence | Beverly Hills, Malibu, Washington, D.C., Sandpoint |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Columbia College |
| Alma mater | Yale Law School |
| Occupation | Actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist |
| Years active | 1970–present |
| Home town | Washington, D.C. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Spouse | Alexandra Denman (1968-1974; 1977-present) |
| Children | Tom (adopted) |
| Parents | Herbert Stein, Mildred (nee Fishman) Stein |
Benjamin Jeremy "Ben" Stein (born November 25, 1944) is an American actor, writer, lawyer, and commentator on political and economic issues. He attained early success as a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Later, he entered the entertainment field and became an actor, comedian, and Emmy Award-winning game show host.
Stein has frequently written commentaries on economic, political, and social issues, along with financial advice to individual investors. He is the son of economist and writer Herbert Stein,[1] who worked at the White House under President Nixon. His sister, Rachel, is also a writer. While, as a character actor, he is well-known for his droning, monotone delivery, in real life he is a public speaker on a wide range of economic and social issues.
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Stein was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Mildred (née Fishman), a homemaker, and Herbert Stein, a writer, economist, and presidential adviser.[2] He is Jewish and grew up in the Woodside Forest neighborhood of Silver Spring, Maryland. Stein graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in 1961 along with classmate journalist Carl Bernstein; actress Goldie Hawn (class of 1963) was two years behind. Actor Sylvester Stallone was a schoolmate at Montgomery Hills Junior High School.[3] He went on to major in economics at Columbia University's Columbia College, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi society and the Philolexian Society. After graduating with honors from Columbia in 1966, Stein went to Yale Law School, graduating in June 1970. He says that he did not have the highest grades in his class at Yale, but was voted valedictorian by the students because he was most popular.[4]
He was first a poverty lawyer in New Haven, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. before becoming a trial lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission.[5]
Stein's first teaching stint was as an adjunct professor, teaching about the political and social content of mass culture at American University in Washington, D.C. He subsequently taught classes at University of California, Santa Cruz on political and civil rights under the United States Constitution. At Pepperdine University in Southern California, Stein taught libel law and United States securities law and its ethical aspects. He was a professor of law at Pepperdine University Law School, from about 1990 to 1997.[6]
Stein was the commencement speaker for the Liberty University 2009 graduation on Saturday, May 9, at Williams Stadium.[7] At this ceremony, the University awarded him an honorary degree. According to the school, Stein "delivered a message about intelligent design, patriotism, and value for humanity to graduates and their families."[8]
Stein writes frequently on a variety of topics, including politics, investing, and economics. He writes a regular column in the conservative magazines The American Spectator and Newsmax. He has also written for numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Penthouse, Los Angeles Magazine, and Barron's Magazine, where his discussion of the Michael Milken Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond situation, as well as the ethical dimensions of management buyouts, attracted heavy US national attention in the 1980s and 1990s. He wrote a regular biweekly column for Yahoo! Finance online, with his last article dated August 7, 2009.[9] His bestselling books (with investment advisor Phil DeMuth) include Yes, You Can Retire Comfortably, Can America Survive?, and Yes, You Can Time the Market. In 2009, he published a collection of essays, The Real Stars.
Stein was fired from his position as a Sunday Business columnist at The New York Times in August 2009, due to a policy forbidding writers from performing product endorsements or advertising. Stein had recently become an advertising spokesperson for credit information company FreeScore.com, and according to a Times statement, had assumed there would be no conflict provided that he did not discuss credit scoring in general or FreeScore.com itself in his column. However, the publication felt that it would be inappropriate for him to write for them while he was involved in advertising, and terminated his contract.[10] Writing in The Spectator, Stein states his belief that the real reasons for his firing were budget cuts at the Times, his criticism of President Obama, and pressure from those critical of Expelled, who "bamboozled some of the high pooh-bahs at the Times into thinking there was a conflict of interest".[11]
Stein began his political career as a speechwriter and lawyer for President Richard Nixon, and later for President Gerald Ford. On May 3, 1976, Time magazine speculated on the possibility of Stein having actually been Deep Throat. Stein responded over the years by not only denying he was Deep Throat, but by going further and accusing journalist Bob Woodward of falsifying the famous secret source. In the May 14–21, 1998 edition of the Philadelphia City Paper, Stein is quoted saying, "Oh, I don't think there was a Deep Throat. That was a fake. I think there were several different sources and some they just made up."[12] After Mark Felt's identity as Deep Throat was revealed, Stein stated that Richard Nixon would have prevented the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge if he had not been forced to resign. For his actions leading to that resignation, Stein said:
If there is such a thing as karma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life or the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide.[13]
In 2005, Stein said in the American Spectator:
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POWs, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad? Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded. That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying, conniving seducer like Clinton—a lying, conniving peacemaker.[14]
On June 24, 2008, Stein received the Freedom of Expression Award at the Entertainment Merchants Association’s Home Entertainment Awards for "his outspoken economic and political beliefs."[15]
Stein became a Hollywood consultant before he moved into acting. His film career was launched by his performance as the monotonous economics teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In one scene, he gives an unscripted economics lecture, relying on his own experience in economics. The topics covered in his lecture are the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 and the then-current debate over supply-side economics. The film's director John Hughes told him to speak about something he knew well.[16] The only scripted lines are those in which he calls attendance, repeating "Bueller?...Bueller?" in a monotone voice.
Stein played similarly bland and unemotional characters. He had a recurring role in the TV series The Wonder Years and played himself in Dave.
He also appeared in several television commercials, most notably for the product "Clear Eyes" throughout the 1990s and 2000s (decade) ("The difference is clear…Clear Eyes." "Clear Eyes, Wow!")—many ads spoof movies of the day, such as one where Stein is a painter (a play on The Da Vinci Code). Before this, he appeared for a Godfather's Pizza ad in 1987 and as a bland science teacher in a 1990 ad for Sprinkled Chips Ahoy Cookies.
In 1997, Stein was given his own game show by Comedy Central titled Win Ben Stein's Money along with co-host Jimmy Kimmel (replaced by Nancy Pimental and later by Sal Iacono). True to its name, the money that contestants won on the show was subtracted from the $5,000 Stein earned per episode (in addition to his salary). The show won five Daytime Emmy Awards before ending its run in 2003.
In 1999, during the height of Win Ben Stein's Money's popularity, Comedy Central gave Stein another show, a talk show with celebrity guests entitled Turn Ben Stein On. One of the mainstays of the show was Stein's dog, Puppy Wuppy, who had free run of the set.
Other movies and television shows in which Ben Stein has appeared include Charles in Charge; Seinfeld; Full House; Casper; Casper: A Spirited Beginning; Casper Meets Wendy; The Mask and its sequel, Son of the Mask as well as the TV show, The Mask: The Animated Series; Earthworm Jim; Star Search; MacGyver; Richie Rich; Game Show Moments Gone Bananas; Cavuto on Business; The O'Reilly Factor; CBS News Sunday Morning; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Family Guy; the Michael Berger-hosted version of Match Game; Fairly Odd Parents; Duckman; Married... with Children; The Emperor's New School; My Girl 2; and the intelligent design vs. evolution documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.[17]
In addition, Stein's voice roles include The Pixies, magical creatures on the animated series The Fairly OddParents; Mr. Purutu on the animated Series The Emperor's New School; Professor Wisenstein in Bruno the Kid; the birthday party clown, Mr. Giggles, on The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius; a bingo caller on Rugrats;and Pip on Animaniacs. Stein also voiced a psychiatrist, again named after himself, in the USA TV series Duckman; he once appeared in the sitcom Married with Children as a receptionist in the animal afterlife. He also made a cameo appearance in the comic book Young Justice, as Ali Ben Styn. Another cameo appearance was as Rabbi Goldberg in the Family Guy episodes "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" and "Family Goy". Stein also voiced the character Sam Schmaltz in the 1996 computer adventure game Toonstruck.
In addition, Stein has written for the television industry, including outlines for the TV movie Murder in Mississippi and for the lengthy ABC miniseries Amerika. He has also contributed to the creation of the well-liked TV comedy Fernwood 2 Night.
Ben Stein hosted a show on VH1 called America's Most Smartest Model.[18] The show aimed to find the smartest among fourteen models through a series of challenges.[19]
On May 14, 2006, during an appearance on the Fox News program Your World with Neil Cavuto, Stein called for a tax increase of 3.5% for wealthy Americans, to be earmarked for soldiers and military initiatives. Indeed, Stein wrote an editorial for The New York Times critical of those who would rather make money in the world of finance than fight terrorism.[20]
On December 28, 2009, Stein appeared on CNN's Larry King Live with Dr. Ron Paul to discuss the attempted bombing of an American plane on Christmas Day 2009. Stein said that Dr. Paul's stance that the United States were "occupiers" in Iraq and Afghanistan "is the same anti-Semitic argument we've heard over and over again."[21] The comment started a shouting match between the two men and prompted anger from Dr. Paul's supporters and those who believe Stein went too far in calling Paul's argument anti-Semitic.[22] Stein issued an apology on December 30, 2009.[23]
He is an occasional political and economics commentator on CNBC's Kudlow & Company.
In the period preceding the Late-2000s recession, Stein made frequent and vehement claims that the economy was not in recession, and that the issues in the housing market would not affect the broader economy. On March 18, 2007, in a column for CBS News' online version of CBS News Sunday Morning, Stein famously proclaimed in the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis that the foreclosure problem would "blow over and the people who buy now, in due time, will be glad they did," the economy was "still very strong," and the "smart money" was "now trying to buy — not sell — as much distressed merchandise" in mortgages as possible.[24]
In an August 12, 2007 column in the New York Times titled "Chicken Little’s Brethren, on the Trading Floor", Stein, while acknowledging "I don’t know where the bottom is on subprime. I don’t know how bad the problems are at Bear (Bear Stearns)" claimed that "subprime losses are wildly out of all proportion to the likely damage to the economy from the subprime problems," and "(t)his economy is extremely strong. Profits are superb. The world economy is exploding with growth. To be sure, terrible problems lurk in the future: a slow-motion dollar crisis, huge Medicare deficits and energy shortages. But for now, the sell-off seems extreme, not to say nutty. Some smart, brave people will make a fortune buying in these days, and then we’ll all wonder what the scare was about."[25]
On August 18, 2007, on Fox News Channel's Cavuto on Business, Stein appeared with other financial experts dismissing worries of a coming credit crunch.[26] Thirteen months later, in the Global Financial Crisis of September 2008, global stock markets crashed, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the US government, AIG was bailed out by the Federal Reserve, Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America Corporation, and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs confirmed that they would become traditional bank holding companies.
In a Yahoo! Finance article written on October 17, 2008, Stein explained that his understanding of the debt obligations based on real estate loans was less than the "staggeringly large" amount of obligations that were created through trade in derivatives of those, and so why it wasn't as similar to collapse of junk bond empire in early 1990s as he'd thought it would be: "Where I missed the boat was not realizing how large were the CDS [credit default swaps] based on the junk mortgage bonds."[27]
Business commentator Henry Blodget wrote a piece for Business Insider in January 2008 entitled "Ben Stein is an Idiot," stating that Stein's criticism of those with bearish views and positions on the market was either "delusional," or a deliberate and "shrewd" attempt to create false controversy and drive up web traffic.[28]
Stein is a pro-life activist and was given a Pro-Life Award in 2003 by the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund.[29]
In 2007, Stein chastised the police and the GOP leadership for their response to the Larry Craig scandal. Stein said that Craig's sexuality should not be an issue: "A party that believes in individual rights should be rallying to his defense, not making him walk the plank."[30]
Though often labeled as a political and economic conservative, Stein has criticized the U.S. tax code for being too lenient on the wealthy. He has repeated the observation made by Warren Buffett, one of the richest individuals in the world (who pays mostly capital gains tax), that Buffett pays a lower overall tax rate than his secretaries (who pay income taxes and payroll taxes). Stein has advocated increasing taxation on the wealthy.[31] However, in 2010, after Obama proposed not extending tax cuts for the highest earning taxpayers, Stein stated he was being punished, saying: "But for what? I don't own slaves. I employ a lot of people full- and part-time and they are all happy with their pay. When charity calls, I almost always write out a check. I don't have a yacht or ponies or a plane. My wife doesn't wear a tiara. I don't gamble."[32]
Ben Stein endorsed Democrat Al Franken in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, calling him an "impressive guy".[33] That year, he also stated that he would vote for Ralph Nader for President.[34]
Stein drew fire for a 2008 interview with Glenn Beck in which Stein compared U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign rally at Invesco Field to Adolf Hitler's Nazi rallies at Nuremberg. The Economist called Stein's invocation of Nazism an intentional use of Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy to distract from the campaign.[35]
Stein has denounced evolution, which he and other intelligent design advocates call "Darwinism", declaring it to be "a painful, bloody chapter in the history of ideologies," "the most compelling argument yet for Imperialism," and the inspiration for the Holocaust.[36][37] Stein does not say belief in evolution alone leads to genocide, but that scientific materialism is a necessary component.[38] He co-wrote and stars in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a film that aims to persuade viewers that evolution was instrumental to the rise of the eugenics movement, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, and portrays advocates of intelligent design as victims of intellectual discrimination by the scientific community, which has rejected intelligent design as creationist pseudoscience.[39][40][41]
The general media response to the film has been largely unfavorable. It received a 10% meta-score from Rotten Tomatoes. Multiple reviews, including those of USA Today and Scientific American, have described the film as propaganda.[39][40][41] Despite more recent works being listed on his personal website, Stein's own filmography page has not been updated yet to include Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (as of October 2011).[42]
Despite some critics' negative reviews, "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed" drew in the public. It is ranked at #18 to date on best grossing documentaries listed at Box Office Mojo.[43]
In a Trinity Broadcasting Network interview with Paul Crouch Jr. regarding Stein's movie,[44] Stein made the following statement about science and religion:
Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.
Crouch: That’s right.
Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
Crouch: Good word, good word.
At the University of Vermont, Stein was invited to receive an honorary degree and be the commencement speaker for the graduating class of 2009. The university president Dan Fogel received complaints about Stein's planned appearance, due to Stein's views on evolution. Due to the furor, Stein declined his commencement invitation.[45]
Stein is married to entertainment lawyer Alexandra Denman, with whom he has an adopted son.[1] Tommy was adopted as an infant in 1987. He lives with Denman in Beverly Hills and Malibu, California.[46][47] Stein also has a summer home in Sandpoint, Idaho.[48] Stein also owns an apartment in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., which he inherited from his parents.[49]
Stein's book titles to date (7 fiction, 21 nonfiction) include:
| Year | Title | Publisher | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1978 | |||
| On the Brink: A Novel (coauthor: Herbert Stein) | Ballantine Books | 0-345-27650-7 | |
| 1978 | Dreemz (hardcover: California Dreemz) | Ballantine Books | 0-345-28156-X |
| 1979 | The View from Sunset Boulevard: America as brought to you by the people who make television | Basic Books | 0-465-09032-X |
| 1982 | ′ Ludes | St. Martin's Press | 0-312-50012-2 |
| 1986 | Her Only Sin | St. Martin's Press | 0-312-90636-6 |
| 1988 | Hollywood Days, Hollywood Nights: the Diary of a Mad Screenwriter | Bantam Books | 0-553-34520-6 |
| 1992 | A License to Steal: the Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation | Simon & Schuster | 0-671-74272-8 |
| 2002 | How to Ruin Your Life | Hay House | 1-56170-974-3 |
| 2003 | How to Ruin Your Love Life | Hay House | 1-4019-0240-5 |
| 2004 | How to Ruin Your Financial Life | Hay House | 1-4019-0241-3 |
| Can America Survive? The Rage of the Left, the Truth, and What to Do About It | New Beginnings Press | 1-4019-0333-9 | |
| 2005 | Yes, You Can Be a Successful Income Investor: Reaching for Yield in Today's Market | New Beginnings Press | 1-4019-0319-3 |
| Yes, You Can Still Retire Comfortably: The Baby-Boom Retirement Crisis and how to Beat It | New Beginnings Press | 1-4019-0318-5 | |
| 2006 | How Successful People Win: Using "Bunkhouse Logic" to Get What You Want in Life | Hay House | 1-56170-975-1 |
| 2007 | The Real Stars: In Today's America, Who Are the True Heroes? | New Beginnings Press | 1-40191-144-7 |
| 2008 | How to Ruin the United States of America | New Beginnings Press | 1-40191-869-7 |
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Pat Sajak |
Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host 1999 with Jimmy Kimmel |
Succeeded by Bob Barker and Tom Bergeron |