Joel Stein

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Joel Stein at Beverly Hills High School for "Career Day", May 16, 2006.

Joel Stein (born 23 July 1971) is an American journalist. He is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a regular contributor to TIME. He is married to Cassandra Barry and lives in Los Angeles.

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[edit] Early life

Stein grew up in Edison, New Jersey and attended J. P. Stevens High School, where he wrote for and was an entertainment editor for Hawkeye, the student paper. He majored in English at Stanford and wrote a weekly column for The Stanford Daily. He graduated in 1993 with a BA and an MA and moved to New York.

[edit] Career

Stein's career began as a writer and researcher for Martha Stewart Living. He worked a year for Stewart and would later quip that she had fired him twice in the same day. He did fact-checking at various publications before becoming sports editor and columnist for Time Out New York, where he stayed for two years. While working at Time Out New York, he was a contestant on MTV's short-lived game show Idiot Savants, where he ended up in the Dunce Corner three days in a row, before coming back on Day 4 to go all the way to the Grand Savant Round and win in his chosen Savant category, Taxi. Stein joined TIME in August 1997. He gained notice for his arch celebrity Q&As and for his anecdotal columns. His 1998 cover story on Michael Jordan was a bestseller. In 2000 he contacted musician Joel Stein and covered their phone conversation in a TIME article.

He can sometimes be seen as a talking head on television programs such as I Love the '80s. He also co-produced three TV pilots, an animated series for VH-1, and two for ABC. The animated show, titled Hey Joel, aired only in Canada (and later in South Africa) while the other two were never picked up. He was a writer/producer for the sitcom "Crumbs", created by Marco Pennette, and according to his website, says that he "hoped to expand into failed pilots at other networks." His website also features his chosen theme song, "Hey Joel" by The Fountains of Wayne.

Stein taught a class on humor writing Princeton before moving to Los Angeles in early 2005 to write for the Los Angeles Times.

[edit] Notable Columns

On January 24, 2006, the Los Angeles Times published a column by Stein under the headline "Warriors and Wusses" in which he wrote that it is a cop-out to oppose a war and yet claim to support the soldiers fighting it. "I don’t support our troops....When you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism..." He prefaced his argument by stating that he does not support the troops in Iraq, in keeping with his views on the war.[1] Stein states he did three interviews about the column on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, with Tony Snow and with a "liberal" in Oregon.[2][3]

On December 19, 2008, in a Los Angeles Times "tongue-in-cheek" column titled "How Jewish is Hollywood?"[4] Stein expressed "mock outrage" at a recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) poll showing that only 22% of Americans believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," which was down from nearly 50% in 1964. Stein wrote that the poll "just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood." He went on to list the eight Jewish studio chiefs who had taken out a full-page advertisement in the LA Times. He also interviewed ADL head Abe Foxman who told him that instead of "control" Foxman would prefer people say that many executives in the industry "happen to be Jewish." Stein ends by writing: "But I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them." Lisa Marks, writing from Los Angeles for The Guardian, agreed that being Jewish "appears to be one of the best calling cards in town."[5] Rachel Levitt wrote in Utne Reader Stein did have "a good point" when he wrote: “As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment.”[6]

On October 8, 2009, Stein was so inspired by Sarah Palin's quickie memoir turnaround that he wrote one of his own — in a day. "When I heard that Sarah Palin wrote her upcoming 400-page autobiography, Going Rogue: An American Life, in four months, I thought, What took her so long? To prove that introspection doesn't need to be time-consuming, I decided to try to write my memoir in one day." Because Palin wrote hers with Lynn Vincent, Stein chose Neil Strauss — who co-wrote memoirs with Marilyn Manson, Mötley Crüe, Dave Navarro and Jenna Jameson — to assist him in writing Rogue Journalist: An Even More American Life.[7]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Joel Stein, Warriors and wusses, Los Angeles Times, January 24, 2006.
  2. ^ Joel Stein chat transcript, Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2007.
  3. ^ Dave Pierre, LA Times Columnist Joel "I Don't Support Our Troops" Stein Grilled by Hugh Hewitt, NewsBusters, January 24, 2006.
  4. ^ Joel Stein, How Jewish is Hollywood? A poll finds more Americans disagree with the statement that 'Jews control Hollywood.' But here's one Jew who doesn't., Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2008.
  5. ^ Lisa Marks, Why it's still great to be Jewish in Hollywood, The Guardian, December 24, 2008.
  6. ^ Rachel Levitt, Hollywood: Still Jewish (and Proud of It), Utne Reader, December 28, 2008.
  7. ^ Danny Shea, [1], October 8, 2009.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Stein"
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