Posted on 01/29/2005 12:38:58 PM PST by dvan
Ben Stein's Last Column...
For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column for the online website 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... (read all of this or you will have missed the best). ============================================ 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 "eonlineFINAL," 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.
We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction; and when we turn over our lives to Him, He takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.
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
Just beautiful! I've become a HUGE fan!
Amen. Such a wonderful man. I'll sure miss him.
bttt
Thanks for the ping.
Years ago Ben Stein had a column in the old "L.A. Herald Examiner" and often wrote about California. He made it seem like the greatest place on earth, filled with surprise and promise and wonder, the end of the rainbow.
While California has sometimes disappointed, Stein never did.
Thanks for clearing that up. I couldn't imagine that he would stop writing! I usually caught him here and there on FreeRepublic postings or Fox News but will subscribe to American Spectator now.
Ben, do you Freep? We treasure you!
This is a very appropriate piece for a Sunday morning. Forget the Ward Churchills of the world, they are squirming insects on the ground. This man understands America.
Tears and more tears...
Bump!
Jan:
Stein is that MAN!
He certainly knows where the real heroes are, for sure!
A must read USF!
Ben Stein is so right on this.
Somehow, when we look at all the attention and celebrity lavished on movie stars, rock musicians, and athletes, it makes me wondere if we have gone mad.
Well, Mr Stein proves at least that not all of us have.
ping
I missed this somehow when it was posted earlier this year on FR and received it in an e-mail from a Marine vet friend. Great article and worth bringing up again.
Why you.........I was gonna say that! LOL! Ditto here. Ben is smart, funny and a Pub! Couldn't ask for more!
Reaching for kleenex. Ben Stein says what needs saying. American heroes are by and large ignored. God love them and keep them safe. (He will.)
You will enjoy this Ben Stein column, written last January for a Hollywood readership.
Commentators are remarking these days about the decline in movie theatre attendance. I think a lot of Americans are having similar feelings about the true meaning of "stars."
15 yrs ago my six yr old son brought me a handfull of wilted wild flowers he had picked for me for mothers day. This is one of the memories I will never forget because he gave with such love and pride that it touched a very special place in my heart. This little boy never expected anything in return. I had placed those flowers in a small vase on my table and enjoyed until every petal had fallen. Today my son still brings me flowers, not the kind you can put in a vase but every bit as wonderful. Today he serves in the US Airforce and will be training as a SERE instructor. This yr two of his high school friends died serving our country and Jimmy, my son decided to carry on where they could not placing more flowers in my heart than I could ever imagine and still no expectations of anything in return. Yes, this little boy...this wonderful young man is my hero. Those wilted flowers that have taken root in my heart have been nurtured and continue to bloom with a pride so strong, so visible that they embrace not only a mother's heart but also a nations. He is a hero as well as all the sons and daughters in this wonderful country of ours. God bless our children.
Lisa G
Oh no! I never heard of this! When did it happen?
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