Ben Stein

[Island_Lullaby]

I know this is a bit lengthy, but I think it is well worth the read...forgive me if this is not as current as I believe...I just received it for the first time today...If this takes up too much space, I will not be offended if it is removed...



For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "e online FINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.


Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilate's and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

[OceanCityGirl]

Wow I am impressed. It actually could bring a tear to my eyes. Is this Ben Stein who had the game show? Otherwise I don't know who he is. But I would like him to be my friend.

[tikitatas]

Well said, Ben. I can STILL win your money, though!

[CatLover]

I'm very impressed, too. Hear, hear, Ben Stein!

He read an editorial on CBS Sunday morning, so I think giving up his column was to devote more time to write for a wider audience. It was kind of weird listening to the opinions of the strange actor who had that stupid game show and was Jim Carey's psychiatrist on Mask.

[Coconuts]

He was also one of Nixon's speechwriters, not just some monitone-voiced actor.

[bravedave]

...and voice of the Pixies on Fairly OddParents (Nickelodeon)

I respect his integrity, scholasticism, and rhetoric, if not his politics.

(Mebbe he was trained by Jesuits?)

[DonnaKayDunbar]

Is it sad that I read this in the monotone which is Visine Commercials?

[Elrod]

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty...

Well said.

[Sidew13]

...and voice of the Pixies on Fairly OddParents (Nickelodeon)

Trust me, I know

[jonesbeach10]

...and voice of the Pixies on Fairly OddParents (Nickelodeon)

I respect his integrity, scholasticism, and rhetoric, if not his politics.

(Mebbe he was trained by Jesuits?)

Gotta love those rapping pixies.

I think I puked about the 3rd time I saw it.

[Ilph]

Well said, Ben. I can STILL win your money, though!

I am very impressed with what I just read. But I would get my ass handed to me on that show. It's hard.

[sonofabeach]

Is it sad that I read this in the monotone which is Visine Commercials?

"dry eyes, red eyes"

[magnus]

Is it sad that I read this in the monotone which is Visine Commercials?

'sok by me. I kept waiting for "Bueller? Bueller?"

[LIPH]

Anyone?

[PHBeerman]

Y'all know that Larry is in fact Ben Stein right??

[LIPH]

Y'all know that Larry is in fact Ben Stein right??

No I'm not. I'm much better looking and not as rich.

[PHBeerman]

Y'all know that Larry is in fact Ben Stein right??

No I'm not. I'm much better looking and not as rich.

Quit trying to hide it. You are at least his doppelganger.

[CatLover]

Is it sad that I read this in the monotone which is Visine Commercials?

'sok by me. I kept waiting for "Bueller? Bueller?"

Cracks me up! Just saw that (A LOT) recently on TV. I wonder if that was his first role. The kids all with their eyes rolling back in their heads, drool coming out of their mouths as he was droning on and on!