Posted on 12/12/2005 5:46:23 PM PST by Chairman_December_19th_Society
Over 100
Security officials say that another terror attack on London, involving a cell of four Britons, was thwarted within the past two weeks.
Forgiveness, please if it has been posted already...
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 Pilates 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
Geez, I hope he's okay.
That's another great article by Stein; his book The Dark Side of Liberalism is well worth reading too.
Back at ya... Merry Christmas! Hey, political incorrectness [to some], I love it!
Thanks, will check our local library online listings! Hope it's there!
My husband told me that he went through the ads in the paper Sunday and couldn't find ONE use of the word "Christmas." Not one!
Boy, I hate it when that happens! ;)
No mention of Christmas? Sad. Let us hope as the mainstream media is beginning to jump off the bandwagon of Anti-Americanism, they will be equally quick to jump off the anti-Christmas one as well. Think backlash, I reckon... As well as marginialization, did I spell that one right? Just had grilled ham and swiss on rye with tater tots dipped in A-1 sauce, not bad, someone told me onion rings were excellent in A-1 but am not yet brave enough for that one, reference JRF and I musing on flatulence the other day, Har!
As I followed political races, it occurred to me that "The Polls all get more accurate at Voting time." is true as well. My practical experience told me campaigns were a lot more about getting the vote out.. than about changing minds from one candidate to another.
It also has occurred to me that "The news always gets less biased at results time."
Perhaps the second and third phrases say the same thing. When events prevent liars from getting away with lying, liars tell the truth.
I would suggest that the media be it ABC, NBC, CNN or FOR, have all decided to take a more positive approach to the war in Iraq. They get accurate when it gets close to an election. When elections are down the road they may infer that candidate B is doing well even when Candidate A is doing better. But when the election is nigh they tend to tell us A is doing well because we are soon enough going to know that A has won the election.
I am wondering if the sudden shift in the news focus is based on the fact that they know that soon enough the results of the war in Iraq will be apparent and the insurgents are going to be in deep trouble.
There is some reason the media complexion has turned from furrowed brow to a fair and smooth skin. It will be interesting to watch the coming weeks.
But I think that the democrats don't really understand how voter's minds work. Democrats strategists will tell you that they have no fear of turning from pro to con and back to pro again. They will tell you voters have very short memories.
That is true. For example voters can not tell you what positions the Democrats have taken on defense and foreign policy. They do not know. But they have a strong feeling that Democrats will not protect the nation.
What the Democrats don't understand is voters draw conclusions and remember the conclusions but not the facts the conclusions were based upon. In voters minds. impressions become opinions and opinions determine votes. The fact that voter can't remember the events that created the impressions is not a factor. But to Democrats that is the big factor.
What makes that doubly bad for Democrats is there is no way to refute the conclusion once the impressions upon which the conclusions were drawn are forgotten.
Democrats think that when they have been found to have a bad policy all they have to do is reverse positions and the public will accept it. They believe that the public's bad memory is their protection. It is no such thing.
But if the voters think the Democrats are weak on defense and the democrats start talking tough on defense the public draws the conclusion they are lying or worse yet, that Democrats will change their minds on a whim.
What the democrats have done over the years is lose the publics trust as has the media.
What the Democrats and the media fail to understand is a large majority of Americans now feel safe. Nearly as safe as they felt before 9/11. The other factor is a large and growing majority Americans feel the economy is good. In that scenario voters do not want change. The voters will not want change.. change may screw up the economy or cost them their safety. In the current situation they will not vote for change.
And the problem with saying that every thing is Bush's fault, is there is no escaping the voters concluding the safety and prosperity are Bush's doing.
Under that situation the voters will not want change. Voters are very into ... if it ain't broke .. don't fix it.
The Democrats in 2006 and again in 2008 will be very anti Bush. The Voters will interpret that as Democrats proposing to undo what Bush has wrought. That means undo safety and prosperity.
That is not a winning hand, no matter how hard the media tries to tell us it is.
Some places around here have come up w/HAPPY CHRISTMAS instead of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.
hello. I'm just passing through. I have some major reading to do tonite, but thought I'd get caught up with today's thread before I start.
Tomorrow night at this hour I will have this nasty project completed (or die of shame!)
I doubt if we'll be reading your eulogy. I bet the project will be finished.
Hi, and welcome back, knew ya were gone but haven't caught back up till now. Hope the trip was good!
Please let me know what time you will be arriving to windex my screen.
I'm really leaving this time.
On the way home tonight I heard an interview with the Indiana Secretary of State, Todd Rokita. His main discussion was on election reform in Indiana.
Indiana requires a picture ID in the new law which was just passed. If you don't have a drivers' license you can get an ID from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. If you are poor, you can get an ID for free. Without this ID you will not be able to vote.
In addition, the voter roles will be purged of dead people, because Indiana has figured out a way to link voter records with death records. And also, when you move and register in a new precinct, your old precinct will be flagged by computer so that you are purged from the voter rolls of yoour old precinct. Rokita says that he thinks we will lose at least 20% of the registered voters due to the elimination of duplicate registrations and dead people.
He also said that Indiana has been updating their voting machines, and the State has insisted on improving them even in areas where the local officials said they were satisfied with theier current set up (and may I say I bet those were democrat areas!).
Rokita said that he has had federal officials coming to Indiana for briefings, and that he has been to Washington several times to discuss Indiana's plan.
I thought this was very interesting, and seems to indicate an under the radar approach to vote reform.
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