How low can Ben Stein get? Well, we know he’ll sell himself to sleazy rip-off merchants if the price is right. But now he’s penned an anti-Obama column for The American Spectator which is so despicable that it fairly takes one’s breath away.

Stein calls Obama an “anti-white” “ultra-leftist”; he says that the magna cum laude editor of the Harvard Law Review and University of Chicago professor has “total zero of an academic record” and a “complete lack of scholarship”; he claims Obama “has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons” and wants “active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future”. Oh, and Obama “urgently” wants to “take away our freedoms”, because he “knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all”.

This is the kind of stuff which, if it was written by a left-wing commentator about a Republican president, would have Stein screaming about “treason”. It’s also the kind of thing which should automatically disqualify Stein from writing for the New York Times — as if his creationist propaganda and insane conspiracy-mongering weren’t reason enough. But I’ve given up hope at this point. I don’t know what Stein did to make himself untouchable at the NYT, but it was surely extremely effective. What’s sure is that the Sulzbergers and all other NYT stakeholders should be desperately ashamed at this point that they have anything to do with the man.

(HT: Gross)