Mother Jones: Ben Carson and the Tale of Redemption [View all]

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No one who's not an evangelical Christian would believe it for a second. But evangelicals hear testimonies like this all the time. They expect testimonies like this, and the more improbable the better. So Carson gives them one. It's clumsy because he's not very good at inventing this kind of thing, but that doesn't matter much.

By Kevin Drum


For those of you who may have missed it, the Wall Street Journal decided to check out another Ben Carson story yesterday. Here's the story as recounted in Gifted Hands, about Carson's time as a student at Yale:
◾Ben is broke. Finds ten-dollar bill on sidewalk. Thank you, Lord!
◾A year later, Ben is broke again. Looks for ten-dollar bill, doesn't find one.
◾Ben gets notice that all the final exams in Perceptions 301 were accidentally lit on fire. He goes in for the retest.
◾The new test is really, really hard. A girl near Ben tells her classmate they should leave. "We can say we didn't read the notice."
◾Everyone starts leaving. Ben is conflicted. "I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice, and I couldn't lie and say I hadn't."
◾Eventually Ben is the only one left. The professor comes back in with a Yale Daily News photographer. The whole thing was a hoax, she said. "We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class. And that's you."
◾Ben concludes the story: "The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill."
◾End scene.

Article continues: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/ben-carson-and-tale-redemption