A couple months ago, when Ben Stein's documentary Expelled stunned industry and cultural observers alike by selling $7.6 million worth of intelligent-design hokum to its conservative Christian base, you might remember he found an unlikely foe in aggrieved widow Yoko Ono. Disapproving of Expelled's inclusion (and criticism) of the John Lennon classic, "Imagine," Ono and Lennon's publishers at EMI filed an injunction temporarliy preventing the producers from including the disputed scene in their DVD release. The courts ultimately tossed it, but today we're learning that Stein's persuasive copyright-law revisionism was too little, too late to vanquish a nemesis as crafty as Yoko:

We think the conventional wisdom, now, is that Sarah Palin is a cynical appeal not to Hillary voters but to the Republican "base," which means religious white people. It's a last-ditch effort to win just one more with George W. Bush's coalition, not to bring in those moderates John McCain supposedly appeals to most. But here's the risk: the old, conservative Jewish vote McCain's had in the bag since day one? They might not like this lady so much. As you can see in this clip (attached below), even Ben Stein—the Nixon speechwriter so happy to pretend to be something other than an educated East Coast elitist that he'll hop in bed with creationists—is insulted and shocked by the Palin pick. This is just the beginning. The New York Sun, that probably doomed organ of intellectual Zionist conservatism, seemingly also can't quite believe this selection. Allow them to tell you about Sarah Palin's grand plans for The Jews!

Years ago—before the age of blogs—a young Will Leitch appeared on Comedy Central's Win Ben Stein's Money. You may know Will as the blogger who brought Deadspin into the world, wrote some books, and who is now leaving the internet to be a columnist at New York. In 1997, though, he was a dude who just got dumped by his fiance and was now on television for some reason attempting a Woody Allen impression. Will wrote about the experience for the Black Table many moons ago, and now we see that the video is actually online. Amazing.

Expelled, the wacky new intelligent design movie produced by "Bueller"-droning actor and financial clod Ben Stein, has won the right to use the John Lennon song "Imagine," triumphing over Yoko Ono in court yesterday. "Nothing to kill or die for/ And no religion too." Well, Lennon appreciated irony. [WSJ]

Viewers of Expelled, the creationist propaganda documentary in the first week of its cinematic release, should not be surprised by the journalistic methods of its producer and narrator, Ben Stein. Expelled's fervently religious maker-better known as a TV host, monotone actor and columnist-goes for shock value with the contention (by a Jew, no less!) that the genocide of the Holocaust had its origins in Darwinism's elevation of the survival of the fittest; but Stein's made outrageous charges before, labeling comedienne Joan Rivers a lesbian and accusing financier Michael Milken of running an "alternative government". Richard Dawkins, defender of Darwin in the movie, said that Stein took quotes out of context or pretended that the interview was for a fair-and-balanced exposition entitled, innocently, Crossroads. Well, duh. Stein has long made up the truth, much as God conjured up Ben Stein as part of some twisted plan for life on Earth. Read on for one of the disturbed journalist's greatest acts of journalistic creation, when he pretended he sat shiva with Rivers when he'd never even met her, and then defended hearsay as a practice sanctified by the Watergate investigators. (By the way, could somebody please explain how Stein still has his column in the New York Times' Sunday Business section?)

This just in! Swaggering $3 million man and new Yoko Ono lawsuit target Ben Stein responds to his latest nemesis via press release: "So Yoko Ono is suing over the brief Constitutionally protected use of a song that wants us to 'Imagine no possessions'? Maybe instead of wasting everyone's time trying to silence a documentary she should give the song to the world for free? After all, 'imagine all the people sharing all the world...You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the World can live as one.'" No doubt a fitting rejoinder from a man who once provided legal counsel to Richard Nixon. Good luck, Ben! [Movie City Indie]

As one might have expected following the opening-weekend success of his anti-Darwinism documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Required, everybody in town wants a piece of Ben Stein. Among them: Yoko Ono, a huuuuuge Stein fan from back in his Nixon speechwriting days who nevertheless bristled at the part of the film that featured "Imagine" without the John Lennon estate's permission:

On a Monday when Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Jason Segel's penis duked it out for biggest story at the weekend box office, another argument was taking place among indie followers who witnessed a different star performance altogether: Ben Stein, whose anti-Darwinist screed Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed finished in the week's ninth-place spot with $3.1 million. Its $2,997 per-screen average — no great shakes for most mainstream openers — is nevertheless more than double the $1,401 average of Morgan Spurlock's Where In the World is Osama Bin Laden? To hear at least one documentary observer tell it after the jump, love Stein or hate him, this is pretty big:

Ben Stein's big movie about how evolution haters are ruthlessly marginalized is working its way toward release, and in the meantime the loopy New York Times columnist is having fun marginalizing real scientists who want to see the film, including two who appeared in the movie and were thanked in the credits. One evolutionary biologist, PZ Myers of the University of Minnesota, signed up on the Web for a free screening of Stein's film, Expelled, then got tossed out of line because he wasn't sympathetic to the cause. But his buddy, Darwinist Richard Dawkins of Oxford, got in - this is what happens when you try and hold a creationist pep rally while an atheism conference is in town - and filed a review of the film (shocker: thought it sucked), including this summary of how Stein twisted his words:

Deadpan actor and much-derided financial commentator Ben Stein has a long article in Best Life Magazine this week in which he speculates about why there are so many attractive women on TV business news channels these days. You can practically see Stein's drool spattered about the pages of the article, and he's drawn some (justified) mockery for the leering tone of the story. But he does raise an interesting question about the profusion of "Money Honeys" on TV. Compare that to the situation in sports broadcasting; it's full of ex-jocks and men's men, not Fox-branded eye candy. Why the discrepancy between the two traditionally male provinces of business and sports TV? You have come to the correct place to hear a theory.

A while back, we learned of popular right wing hack and '80s relic Ben Stein's upcoming documentary, Expelled. It's about how all the secular Darwinist scientists persecute those people brave enough to speak made-up truths to power. Stein, whose training and expertise in the sciences is limited to a career of unrepentant bullshitting, wishes to give creationists, intelligent design advocates, and other various nutjobs their rightful place in the sun of academia. If you see his movie, though, don't review it.

Popular character actor and mendacious old fool Ben Stein has a little movie coming out about how "BIG SCIENCE" doesn't want you to know the truth about evolution. Stein salutes the scientists who are bad enough to question Darwinism in his upcoming documentary Expelled, about an unscrupulous Nixonite hack who parlays his unlikely pop cultural fame into an inexplicable career as an entertainer/propaganist. Rex Sorgatz asks, "do you remember when Ben Stein wasn't bat shit crazy?" Actually, uh, not really. Trailer after the jump! [Fimoculous]

Actor/writer/onetime TV quizmaster Ben Stein laments the imminent shuttering of his favorite L.A. power eatery, where he went to observe the restaurant's A-list patrons, become entangled in feuds with Joan Rivers, and get ignored by a new generation of celebrity trainwrecks: "At its peak, however, Morton's was the ultimate. In 1994, it moved across the street, and it was better than ever, with more space between tables, more light and, best of all, it was open for lunch. In fact, it was at lunch there that I saw and fell hopelessly in love with Britney Spears. (She ignored me.) BUT times change. I have no idea where the beautiful people went, but fewer of them were going to Morton's. (Many big players now have their own chefs.) It still drew a rich crowd, but not the famous crowd it used to have, and the gorgeous girls who used to be at the bar were gone. [NY Times]