Angry in the Great White North
Wickedly funny Ben Stein
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at 08:14 AM

Read other posts by Steve Janke published by the National Post
Leader

Ben Stein is an icon in American conservatism. But most people know him from his work in entertainment where his monotone delivery is guaranteed to evoke a laugh.

Interestingly, it's where the two aspects of Stein intersect that gives me the giggles.

Stein is also the spokesman for Clear Eyes, a brand of eye drop to relieve bloodshot eyes. A pciture of Stein appears at the top of the Clear Eyes web site. In a new commercial that has just started airing, Stein is shown wearing a beret and neck scarf while extolling the virtues of the eye drops. Behind him on the wall is a drawing of a bloodshot eye. He turns and throws a bucket of water onto the drawing, and the red lines are washed away.

His getup and the water gag evoke for me the image of Jackson Pollack, also known as Jack the Dripper. Jackson was a famous American artist from the 40s and 50s who is best known for dripping and splashing paint on a canvas and calling it art. Maybe it was art -- I admit to being somewhat art-blind.

What is less well known is that Pollack was a radical and a communist during the 30s.

What is even less well known is his membership in the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist advocacy group that formed in 1950 as a response to the urging of many leftists and pacifists to make peace with Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union. The ACCF was hardly a nest of right-wing Republicans -- politically, their only disagreement with the pro-Stalin group was whether radicalism in art and politics could thrive in a bourgeois democracy, or whether that freedom required embracing communism, specifically Stalin's. In 1967, eleven years after Pollack's death in a drunk-driving accident, it was revealed that the CIA had covertly provided much of the funding for the organization (as well as other non-communist leftist groups), much to the embarrassment of both the CIA (embarrassed that the secret had gotten out) and the artists (embarrassed by their association with the CIA, even it was unintended).

I'm certain Stein knows all this, being one of the smartest guys around. So I wonder if he is having a bit of fun with the radical artistes of today, aping the style and manners of one of the founders of the art-doesn't-require-skill school, amused that radical Pollack is yet again being used by conservatives. Not for politics, but by corporate interests to schlep eye drops.

I'm sure the commercial was developed by an advertising agency, but I'd like to think Stein had a hand in it. If so, maybe Stein is saying something about the long-term influence of people like Pollack and their radical politics and their avant-garde tastes. That is, not much influence at all, as their innate silliness dooms them to become subjects of parody. I'd love to ask him one day.

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