Ben Stein has filed a lawsuit after being booted from a gig because of his views on issues including global warming. Reuters has the story:

The conservative pundit and actor — and former Nixon speechwriter — alleges that his position on climate change had him kicked off a $300,000 acting gig, only to be replaced by a lookalike.
Stein filed a discrimination suit against Japanese company Kyocera Corporation and New York ad agency Seiter & Miller Advertising, in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday.

But note that the company’s message to him indicated that he was dropped for various unnamed policy positions they found him identified with on the Internet. Stein is at least as well known for his controversial opinions on evolution and intelligent design as he is for anything he’s said about the climate. Indeed, if you Google the two you get 2.2 million hits for Ben Stein and “intelligent design” compared to 2.16 million for Stein and “global warming.” The text of the filing itself begins by noting:

Ben Stein is especially well known in recent years for his advocacy of free speech and free inquiry on complex public issues such as environmentalism and evolution. He has hosted a documentary on the subject and written about it frequently over the last several years.

The documentary in question is Expelled, which documents cases of Darwin-doubting scientists persecuted for their views in the mainstream academic world. A sad irony, but not unexpected, if an economist and showman like Stein has now suffered a similar fate.