Win Ben Stein's Sympathy
Who are all these people being so mean to Stein’s friends? Could they be … Nazis???
By Andy Klein
Film critic confession #342: It is impossible to review an informational documentary without assessing (to some degree) the reliability of its information. This, of course, requires being an expert.
Film critic confession #343: It pains me to admit it, but I am not an expert in everything. In a perfect world, I would have an infinite corral of authorities on call, each hugely knowledgeable in a different subject, and none with an ax to grind.
Sigh.
In this imperfect world, when reviewing a documentary, I spend what time I can checking some facts, I keep my bullshit detector on Extra Sensitive, and I look for certain red flags – inadequate or misleading identification of interviewees, aggressively manipulative editing, extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence, and extreme leaps of logic … particularly suggesting guilt by association … and, more particularly, invoking – you know where this is going, right? – Nazis, Hitler, and/or the Holocaust. (Consider this a corollary to Godwin’s Law.)
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new documentary cowritten by and starring Ben Stein, the former Nixon speechwriter who has managed to parlay an effete drone into an onscreen career.
The gist of the film – the “plot outline,” if you will – is that sweet, naive Stein is shocked, shocked, to discover that the groves of academe have been overrun by a plague of Darwinists, serpents who have proclaimed that the mere mention of
Intelligent Design – let alone its less reputable sibling, Creationism – is enough to get one summarily banished from Eden. (Hey, I can mix a metaphor with the best of ’em.)
The case that opens Stein’s eyes is that of Rick Sternberg, who lost his job editing a journal at the Smithsonian after publishing a “peer-reviewed research paper describing the evidence for intelligence in the universe” (as the film’s production notes characterize it). The notes later tell us that “this attack on scientific freedom was so egregious that it prompted a Congressional investigation and report entitled Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian, spearheaded by Rep. Mark Souder ... .” (The notes don’t mention the participation of the more publicly ludicrous Rick Santorum.)
There is plenty of evidence on the Web suggesting that Sternberg was a victim of his own deceptive behavior rather than an “attack on scientific freedom.” (For instance: Was the only “peer” to review the paper Sternberg himself?)
Which forces us back to the notion of internal evidence of unreliability. The very first visuals in Expelled involve the Berlin Wall. (Actually there may have been some World War II images in there as well; even if not, the film returns to WWII later, in the worst way.) It takes a while before the message becomes clear: The enforcement of rigid Darwinism is akin to Stalin’s
repressive thought police tactics.
It’s only a few minutes before Sternberg’s account of his persecutors is intercut with images of Khrushchev banging his shoe at the U.N. and anonymous stock-footage bullies ganging up on someone.
One might accuse Michael Moore of similarly facile, manipulative techniques – and I have – but Moore has never gone to lengths nearly as outrageous as the makers of Expelled. (For what it’s worth, he’s also funnier.)
In the third act, Stein and company move beyond mere visual associations, when they build a case linking Darwinism to Nazism – which is not merely insultingly lame, but also ranks as one of the cheapest, most offensive exploitations of the horrors of the Holocaust I’ve ever witnessed (and I’ve witnessed plenty).
In its simplest terms, Expelled sees Hitler’s push for racial cleansing as a
natural result of Darwin’s ideas.
Whoa. Big Fucking Whoa.
I dare say that genocide and other forms of lethal tribal warfare existed before Darwin. In fact, you can find more justification – even approval – for wiping out entire tribes in the Old Testament than in On the Origin of Species, a point that the
devout audience the filmmakers have targeted might do well to remember. Hitler may have used some Darwinian language – though I’m not sure I trust the filmmakers on that one either – but his purpose was an ancient one.
The presence of this argument/suggestion should be enough to make one suspicious of the film’s trustworthiness, but the presentation of it is far worse. Stein uses his own Jewishness as a sanctimonious cudgel, heading to a concentration camp to remind us that the Holocaust was evil ... and to imply that some of that evil derives from Darwin’s studies. At one point, discussing his experience there on a park bench, he expresses grief by covering his face with his hands. The gesture has all the dramatic verisimilitude of a 30th take; Stein’s limited skill as an actor has never been more apparent.
Toward the end, one of the interviewees says, “The spirit of eugenics lives on in Planned Parenthood” – huh? – and then lumps together “abortion and euthanasia” in one breath. This is yet another tip-off as to Expelled’s true goal.
That is, the film claims not to be about atheism vs. religion or Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design, but rather about academic freedom. I’ll agree with the first half of that: Among the reasons this film was made – excluding (for the moment) the omnipresent profit motive – religion is second and science (at best) third.
But the No. 1 agenda has much less to do with academic freedom than with political ideology. Here’s an experiment: Look at the film’s defenders. What do they have in common? Ethnicity? Religion? Academic background? No. The only common element is that they are all far, far to the right.
Expelled is another expression of the right wing’s victim complex. It’s classic paranoid thinking: Since we’re pure and correct, any setbacks we suffer must be the result of an Evil Conspiracy. Communists are fluoridating our water. Purity of Essence. We couldn’t be doing substandard academic work. Our poor advancement must have to do with a blacklist! (Stein himself used this idea to bully Norman Lear into giving him a writing job.)
Maybe I’m not giving them enough credit. Maybe their behavior isn’t crazy at all. Maybe it’s just a tactic – crazy like a fox. Their constant whining about victimization by the mythical “liberal media” has effectively pushed much of the not-very-liberal-to-start-with media to bend over backwards to accommodate the right. It’s worked in that arena, and it’s worked in Congress to cow the Democrats. There’s nothing at all crazy about repeating a successful strategy.
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Directed by Nathan Frankowski. Written by Kevin Miller and Ben Stein. Hosted by Ben Stein. Opens Friday in selected theaters.
Published: 04/16/2008
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“The spirit of eugenics lives on in Planned Parenthood”. Andy Klein finds this hard to believe, but Planned Parenthood not only emerged from the eugenics movement and was a core part of it. Birth Control was intended to control who could give brith, hench the name. The fact that so many people, well educated people (who have watched lots of movies), are unaware of this proves Stein's point that there is a massive coverup. It is also a fact that many if not most college professors supported eugenics and in some cases Nazism in the 1930's, which completely contradicts the image formed by the media and the university system itself. The University of California was in particular a center for eugenics (see War Against the Weak). A major reason for the leftward shift on campus after WW2 is because of a revolt against the dominant group on campus before the war. It's also worth noting (and obvious) that the entire structure of the univesity is medieval, literally taken from the middle ages, but through great effort an impression exists that it is somehow "free", "democratic" and "open". I haven't seen the movie and maybe it's no good, but Stein is taking a bold move in undercutting some basic tenents of modern securlarism.
The Sternberg case is even phonier than you let on: Sternberg wasn't fired for improprieties that the film neglects to mention... he wasn't fired at all. Seriously. The film never really says he was fired, quite, but it sure seems that everyone who sees the film comes away with that impression. I guess it must be the viewers fault.
Most of the other cases of persecution are just as phony, if not worse.
The film also confuses freedom of speech and inquiry with other people paying for your speech and your inquiry. The film's basic push, then, is not freedom of speech but rather affirmative action for ideas that have time and time again failed to win arguments, provide evidence, and convince their peers that they have merit. Worse, since the film basically equates criticism with oppression, it basically is advocating that critics stop criticizing!