Last night’s O’Reilly Factor began with a question near and dear to the heart of anyone trying to follow the 2012 race for the White House: “is the presidential election a joke?” Bill O’Reilly did not mean it in a colloquial way, however, but in the sense that comedians and pop culture had just as much of an effect on voting than substantive issues. To that end, O’Reilly asked, how would the overwhelmingly liberal swing of the media affect the way people perceive 2012 candidates?

Ben Stein, he of multi hyphenates and mono tones, appeared on The Early Show this morning to talk all of the big stories of the day. He spent a lot of time discussing Herman Cain’s many problems right now and ended up defending the candidate. Perhaps coming from experience as someone who worked with a president who may not have been a great guy personally (Stein was a speechwriter for Richard Nixon), Stein stressed the importance of looking at a candidate’s policies rather than gossip. “If you concentrate on economic policy that will give a man or a woman a job, that means something,” he argued. “To concentrate on a person’s gossipy love life, that doesn’t mean a darn thing.”

On CBS’s The Early Show Tuesday, economist and former Nixon advisor Ben Stein lashed out against the Occupy Wall Street protesters, calling them doobie-smoking “bums.” “They’re a bunch of bums, as far as i’m concerned,” Stein observed. “If they had some specific ideas, if they had some specific proposals, if they were doing anything whatsoever besides sleeping in their tents and banging drums, I would say great, God bless them. I spent a large part of my life crusading against fraud on Wall Street — but to just bang a drum and light up a big doobie and go back into your tent, that does not do anything whatsoever to advance the cause of justice.”

Early morning weekend television is tough. There’s probably a lot of sleeplessness and caffeine involved, and looking lively is a must. That must have been what Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell was striving for this morning on Fox News’ morning panel with Neil Cavuto, when she called Vice President Joe Biden “numb nuts” and accused him of “talking out of his backside.” Have to keep things spicy, right?

Bill O’Reilly came back from vacation just as President Obama began his– and the inevitable criticism over going on vacation followed. But O’Reilly didn’t mind it; in fact, he argued that getting the President away from the stock market could only help. His panel, however– economist Ben Stein and businessman Wayne Rogers– differed strongly, the former arguing the President was a positive influence on the economy, and the latter denying the President had much influence at all.

In the days that followed the arrest and inevitable incarceration of (now former) IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of sexual assault, a handful of media personalities of a certain age came to his defense. French philosopher Bernard Henri Lévy openly wondered why the alleged rape victim entered the room alone, while former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein asked how many economists “have been convicted of violent sex crimes?” This brought ridicule from Jon Stewart.

Charles Rangel‘s recent conviction for ethics violations has inspired celebrities like Jon Stewart and the cast of Saturday Night Live to express their opinions of the beleaguered House representative. Yesterday, another unlikely voice entered the fray: Ben Stein, best known for expertly taking attendance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and hosting a game show on Comedy Central from 1997 to 2003.

Will the Tea Party movement would help or hurt the GOP in the coming midterm elections? This was the discussion on Larry King Live last night, particularly in light of the a Tea Party billboard that recently showed up in Iowa that likened President Obama to Vladimir Lenin and Adolph Hitler. Predictably, the discussion was less of an enlightening exchange of ideas, but rather a maddeningly — and entertaining — meltdown of soundbite accusations and jabs between two obstinate sides in the debate.

A discussion of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and terrorism in general, turned into a heated debate between two Republicans on Larry King Live last night.

Ben Stein and Rep. Ron Paul displayed their very different takes on foreign policy – until Stein called Paul’s argument “anti-Semitic” and the segment took a turn.

Yesterday the New York Times fired Sunday business columnist Ben Stein freeing up some of the most valuable real estate in media. When the Times replaced Bill Kristol with Ross Douthat earlier this year they appeared to be not only aiming to attract a younger audience (he was 29 at the time of his hiring), but also an online one. Will they do something similar this time? One can only hope! Here’s some suggestions.

The New York Times has ended its relationship with Ben Stein, a sporadic contributor since the early ’80s and lately a Sunday Business columnist, after his appearance in advertisments for the credit-report service FreeScore.com violated Times ethics policy.