Ben Stein!
Okay so after a week of anticipation I did my gay little one-person protest of Ben Stein.
I would call it a minor success. Yes, I made an ass of myself, and embarrassed a friend, but it turned out well.

After work I hurried to the copyshop and made way too many copies of my ugly flier. I got to the Ira Allen chaple and starting passing them out to people. It was a bit easier than I expected. I only got one handed back with a "no thanks." I did feel a bit goofy but oh well. Then, the talk. It seemed kind of short. Too much economics. I don't understand money and I'm sure Stein is qualified to speak about hedge funds. What he is NOT qualified to speak about is science, and he proved that wonderfully.

But yeah he was admittedly amusing at times. Creepy at others. He mentioned Expelled only briefly, but I figured since he brought it up at all I was free to ask a question about it. And time for questions came, and I got the first one in! Oh jeez. I'm way in the back, and I have to yell. I sounded pretty snotty. "I saw your movie last friday... and I want to know how you can say with a straight face that the scientific theory of evolution leads to eugenics." Or something like that. I might have said "the holocaust." This pissed him off and he went into a rant... mentioned Margaret Sanger (what she has to do with evolution I'm not sure) and went on to rattle off some *classic* creationist talking points. Such as: the microevolution/macroevolution lie. And muddled bullshit about darwinism not having anything to do with the creation of the universe (uh, duh? It also doesn't have anything to do with moral issues like eugenics.) And that darwinism can't explain everything and there's a theory that a designer was involved. This was the best possible response I could have gotten. I got him to open his mouth and dig his own grave.
There was a question about hedge funds.
And then somebody asked something about Expelled. And Ben Stein lied again- claiming that speciation has never been observed.
This is a lie.
And I blew my cool and shouted "THAT'S A LIE!" from the back.
Oops.

Anyway I hightailed it to the reception. But I got "museum" confused with "library" and got lost. I'd given up and was about to head home when I learned from my friend (whom I had avoided after my outburst so as not to incriminate) that it was still going on. So I found it and started to hand out fliers to people trickling out early. And I will say: people were defiantly more receptive after hearing him speak.
But I didn't get many handed out... because I was EXPELLED.
A UVM cop came out of the museum and nicely informed me that I couldn't solicit. I didn't argue, because he was nice about it. But as people came out, some approached me and asked for a flier. One really cool guy actually kind of argued with the cop on my behalf. He caught up with me a few minutes later and introduced himself and asked if there were any other protests or such going on... I said no, sorry, I'm the only loser doing this.
And then guess who approached me? A bigwig from the college who was once Ben Stein's roomate. I was like oh shit. I won't go into details but he was defiantly supportive and showed me a pamphlet (it was professional!) a retired teacher had been passing out. So I felt somewhat redeemed knowing I was not *completely* alone.

All in all, making a fool of myself was totally worth it.

This is from a news article on the talk:

Stein has made headlines recently for his role in a new movie that challenges Darwin's theory of evolution. He said there are gaps in the theory, and it is worthwhile to explore other theories, such as intelligent design.

That's a paraphrase from his answer to my question. Jesus christ, gaps in evolution, creationist talking point #33. What an idiot.


ETA: Okay I'm quoted in the free press.

Stein took questions after the talk, and the first one was about his new movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The film, playing at the Roxy, is a provocative exploration of the debate -- or its stifling, in Stein's view -- between evolution and intelligent design.

A woman asked Stein how he could say with a straight face that Darwinism can lead to eugenics, which is an assertion made in the movie.

He responded that he can say it "with an extremely straight face." Just as he can say that two plus two is four.

lol.