The American Spectator

p> WHAT WAS TO BE DONE? br> Re: Ben Stein’s Get Off His Back : /p> p>THANK YOU BEN STEIN! It is time for a little common sense. Anyone notice how things started getting done once Bush went in to see for himself? Anyone going to comment on it? Yea, right. br> — S.J. Reidhead br> Ruidoso, New Mexico /p>

I’m glad to see humorist Ben Stein has returned to writing satire. His “Twelve Truths Refuting Media Lies about Bush,” or “Get Off His Back,” was hysterical. I think it might be poor taste to start writing humor while the catastrophe is still playing out, but Mr. Stein has really hit the mark with his barbs about “It’s not George Bush’s fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars” and pointing out his callous disregard for them is treason by the media, a media that dares to show him picking and grinning at a fundraiser while New Orleans’ reckless sick and old and carless were washed away.

Oh, Mr. Stein say it so much more cleverly than I can. His piece is so wry that I think partisans might take him seriously. Better squirt some Visine at them, clean their eyes, to get the truths out. Mr. Stein writes it with the wickedness of an insider who’s seen Nixonian mendacity up close, and can mock with unique accuracy the meanness and pettiness with which such over-the-top lies (or “truths”) are dispatched.

I hope to see more of this refreshingly “clear-sighted” Mr. Stein as he deconstructs the hollow truths of the Bush administration.

p>Get the red out, Ben!