Joel Stein

Joel Stein (born July 23, 1971) is an American journalist who wrote for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote a column and occasional articles for Time for 19 years until 2017.

Stein grew up in Edison, New Jersey, the son of a salesman. He is Jewish. Stein attended J.P. Stevens High School, where he was a writer and entertainment editor for Hawkeye, the student newspaper. He majored in English at Stanford University and wrote a weekly column for the school's student newspaper The Stanford Daily. He graduated in 1993 with a BA and an MA and moved to New York City, and then to Los Angeles in 2005.

Stein's career began as a writer and researcher for Martha Stewart Living. He worked a year for Stewart and later quipped that she had fired him twice in the same day. Stein did fact-checking at various publications before becoming a 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. Stein joined Time in August 1997 and his last column for the magazine appeared on November 16, 2017. In signing off, he began, "Since my first column, 19 years ago, readers and co-workers have clamored to have me fired." He concluded, "There are times when society needs a punk who doesn’t care. There are far fewer times when society needs a 46-year-old punk who doesn’t care. I’ve always been guilty of hanging on too long out of fear of graduating college, ending relationships and transitioning from democracy to authoritarianism. I look forward to a future columnist who makes me laugh about that."

Stein sometimes appears as a commentator on television programs such as I Love the '80s. He also co-produced three TV pilots: an animated series for VH1 and two for ABC. The animated show, titled Hey Joel, aired in Canada and later in South Africa, while the other two were never picked up. He was a writer and producer for the sitcom Crumbs.

Stein taught a class on humor writing at Princeton University before moving to Los Angeles in early 2005 to write for the Los Angeles Times. In 2012, he published a book, Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity (ISBN 978-0446573122).

In 2019, Stein published In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm better than you and you're better than someone who didn't buy this book. In the book, Stein explores several subjects related to the elitism in politics and culture, defending the role of experts and dividing the elites in two groups: Intellectual Elites and Boat Elites. He interviews cartoonist Scott Adams, Disinfomedia founder Jestin Coler, and political commentator Tucker Carlson, among others.

On January 24, 2006, the Los Angeles Times published an anti-war and anti-military 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 despite supporting the troops being "a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on." Stein states he did three interviews about the column on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, with Tony Snow, and with a "liberal" in Oregon. Mark Steyn wrote in a New York Sun opinion piece that Stein was to be congratulated for the consistency of his position: "Stein is a hawkish chicken, disdaining the weasel formulation too many anti-war folks take refuge in." Warrant Officer Michael D. Fay wrote in The New York Times that Stein's comments made him feel "sad because they're so mistaken, sad because their voices are granted a modicum of credence in the public forum, and sad because they leave me feeling a little less at home."

In 2008, Stein wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times titled "Who runs Hollywood? C'mon", which mocked the canard of Jews controlling Hollywood by feigning outrage over declining acceptance of the stereotype.