Ben Stein's Last Column

NA | NA | By Ben Stein

[ntnychik]

Fine opus ping.

[roaddog727]

Made me misty.......

[unsycophant]

Very moving tribute to those unnamed heroes who lead by example in making our world a better place.

[Hebrews 11:6]

We can know God will only once we believe (1) He exists and (2) He is good. That is Hebrews 11:6 in a nutshell.

[willyboyishere]

Beautiful final line--the most piercing thoughts are the simplest.

[ninenot]

Ping for a good read.

[Nita Nupress]

As I have told you freepers I am 81,...

That is so cool. I hope I'm still reading Freep if I live to be 81. My Dad is nearing that age and surfs the web every day. My luck, if & when I reach my 80s, I'll spend half the day looking for the "On" button and the other half looking for the C:/ prompt. :-)

[sauropod]

Great column!

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[EternalVigilance]

Takes alot to make me tear up. But this one did.

Great piece.

Only one thing in it I disagree with.

Ben IS a great writer.

[rabidralph]

Good gracious, what hasn't he done?

[Cold Heat]

The best column ever.

Very touching and real.

[Happy2BMe]

WHAT IT TAKES THESE DAYS TO BE A *STAR* - ping.

(If you've ever wanted to put something into words about the worms in Hollywood - HERE IT IS!)

======================================================

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.

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.

[sheik yerbouty]

What does it have to do with Rosie o'Donnell?

[ErnBatavia]

Excellent...and it's just been shared with an addressbook of about fifty non-FReepers.

[Old Professer]

For the past 30 years I have stood witness to the silver spoon melting in Stein's syrupy salubriousness as he licks the hand that feeds him, alloying privilege the way an artisan might gild a treasured glove with trembling hand after a lifetime spent tending the garden of an unrealized youth; old age has finally overtaken him and his tongue is sore from the tribute.

[zahal724]

i liked it until the end

[hershey]

Wonderful piece, and how true. God is real, heroes are real, and they're ordinary people who give of themselves each and every day.

[hershey]

Ben Stein is wonderful.