Ben Stein: Scared at 60

The American Spectator ^ | 3/1/2005 | Ben Stein

[Former Military Chick]

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Scared at 60

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Published 3/1/2005 12:05:38 AM

THURSDAY Der Tag. It is my 60th birthday. It is also Thanksgiving. It is a beautiful, sunny, clear but cool day. The plan here is to have lunch at the California Yacht Club out at Marina del Rey. This will serve to celebrate my birthday as well as Thanksgiving. We are going in two cars: my 2001 Cadillac DeVille DTS and Tommy's powerful Subaru WRX. Wifey and I are in the Caddy and Tommy and his pals Boris and Vlad are in the WRX. You know how crazy I am, so the following little drama will probably come as no surprise to you. Tommy yelled at me that he wanted to race along Olympic Boulevard west of Barrington, where the road was wide and deserted. I said it was fine, and we peeled out. I won by the next block. I should say, to be accurate, that Tommy's car did not make a peeling noise because it has four-wheel drive. Mine made a peeling noise. My wife was telling me I was insane. Tommy wanted to race again. We did. Again, I peeled, and he didnÃ-t. This time he got way ahead of me. Alas, moments later a police cruiser appeared behind him with its lights flashing. The car pulled Tommy over and I followed them. But the police, staring at me intently, motioned to me to stay in my car. They then went over to Tommy. Then they came to me. "We're just giving him a warning, because we know who you are and we like you," said a policeman. "But you should talk to your son. He refuses to admit he did anything wrong." "Well, it's really my husband's fault," my wife said helpfully. "He's 60 years old and he should know better." The policeman shrugged and went off. Tommy was furious. He blamed me. He was sure I had somehow set it up. I tried to point out to him that it was because of me that he didn't get a ticket. He was furious anyway and very rude at dinner. Well, so much for my one and only 60th birthday dinner (or lunch). It was a sullen, anger-charged affair. I wish some drug company would invent a med that counters the effects of teenage years, just as they have drugs that counter manic depression or PMS feelings. Maybe that's in the offing. However, then Tommy went out with his pals and seemed a lot more cheerful later. I had a late supper with a friend from Fox News, and the day was not wrecked. But a pattern is developing with Tommy that is worrisome. More about it soon. In any event, I refuse to let Tommy occupy all of the space in my head. What's more, I try to work with systems and to learn lessons and here are a few I have learned as of my 60th birthday: 1. I am unbelievably lucky: a. To be an American; b. To have my wife, the world's finest human; c. To have never been severely or at least life-threateningly ill; d. To have never been in combat; e. To have had loving, caring, prosperous parents; f. To have an interesting, well-paid career; g. To have great friends, a great sister, nephew, niece, cousins, and above all, son; h. Above all, to have learned to love and worship a God of love and understanding. 2. Compared with the huge problems that most people face, I have almost no problems at all. 3. I am a supremely lucky person, but what happens to me is not terribly important, to put it mildly. 4. Almost any "problem" I have can be dealt with by rest, reflection, and conversation with someone who cares about me, usually my shrink, the genius Paul Hyman. 5. There is no medication on this earth as potent in curing my ills as the simple prayer, "Thy will be done." 6. There have probably been about 15 billion people on this earth since the dawn of man, and I am among the most fortunate few hundred thousand, and all of that is an unearned gift of God. 7. Modest application of self-discipline in the area of study, work, and saving yields stupendous returns over time. 8. The amount the government can do to affect my happiness in a free society is tiny. 9. I am blessed beyond measure to be protected by the brave men and women of this country's armed forces and nothing I can do can adequately repay them, but they have my total gratitude and what little acts I can do. 10. The whole purpose of my life on this earth is to do what I think God wants me to do, which is mainly to love and care for my fellow man and woman. 11. Dogs and cats are my best friends and they are a special gift from the Almighty. 12. I make a great many mistakes and always will, and to expect myself not to make them is pure folly. Anyway, that is a very short version of what I have learned. SATURDAY Notice I talk a good talk. And in many aspects of my life, I walk a halfway decent walk. But in my life with my son, I am a stone fool. Last night, Tommy very charmingly sidled up to me as I was reading the Wall Street Journal at our home in Beverly Hills. He said he wanted to know if he and a couple of his friends could drive out to the house in Malibu. "Will you be really, really neat and not do anything dangerous?" I asked him. "Of course," he said. "Will you swear to not start a fire or do anything that could endanger our house?" I asked him. "Of course," he said. "And will you leave the house as neat as you found it, recalling at all times that it's your house, too?" "Of course," he said. "I guess so," I answered. "But stay in touch with me by phone all through the night." Okay. By one a.m., I had gotten calls from three of his friends wanting to know how to meet him there. One of them was bringing a girl. I tried to reach Tommy to tell him to come home right away. No answer on the house phone. No answer on the cell. I was HYSTERICAL. But I also did not feel very well and did not want to make the one hour trek out there in the middle of the night. So, I tried to sleep and did sleep off and on through the night. I had visions of the house -- which I love like mad -- going up in a wild conflagration, lost to me forever. I could feel my blood pressure going into stroke and heart attack territory. But I finally fell asleep and next thing I knew, I could hear Tommy coming home. That was at about 11 in the morning. "Did you burn down the house?" "No, it's all fine," he said. "Did you make a mess?" "No, it's all fine," he said and then fell asleep. Obviously he had been up all night. Well, that is my own insanity, allowing him to go out there by himself. Anyway, no calls from the Fire Department so I guess it's cool. Later in the afternoon -- this afternoon -- I drove out to Malibu with a creepy ESP feeling. Sure enough, the house was a mess. Dirty dishes in the sink with uneaten food on them. Singed newspapers outside the fireplace. That's right. OUTSIDE the fireplace, proving that my fears of a fire were well founded. The beds all unmade and messy. Keys missing. Tons of food missing. Well, the food is fine. It's for eating after all. But as I, who make the family's living and whose health is never great, went about the house cleaning, I called Tommy to ask how he could have made such a mess. He was surly and refused even the slightest admission of responsibility or apology. Now, here's the point I was promising to get to. It is one of the basic building blocks of human development to admit one's mistakes and to clean up after oneself. This is something so fundamental that if it's missing, the human never progresses past childhood. Probably, most of the fault for the Malibu house incident lies with me or mostly me. It was idiotic to think that any 17 year old, and especially Tommy, would behave responsibly in a beach house without his father or mother there. (One adult was there, but he was a pal of Tommy's barely 20, and he obviously did little to help.) So, I claim the lion's share of the guilt. But how I wish Tommy could step up to the plate and admit some responsibility. I had a roommate in freshman and senior year of Columbia who simply could not ever clean up after himself or accept any responsibility. He's almost 60 now, and still a huge -- although likable -- baby. John Gregory Dunne, a true genius who died far too young this year, said in one of his great books, "Having kids is not a day at the beach." How right he was. (He also said, "You often see beautiful young women with much older men, but never with much older poor men." I live by these words of wisdom. John had a great deal of wisdom and he is missed desperately.) Wow, it is hard to be a parent. At least for me. TUESDAY A stunning lunch at Morton's with a beautiful, highly capable woman correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes. Her name is Lara Logan. She's a South African who started covering the apartheid struggle as a teenager and worked her way to being a CBS correspondent in Iraq and then for a year in Afghanistan. She is phenomenally smart and brave. Recently in Afghanistan her Humvee hit a mine and she was thrown into the air almost 20 feet. She landed on her face, bleeding like crazy, and nevertheless reported on TV very soon thereafter with blood coming out of her mouth. I met her last night when she and I were both guests on CBS's The Late, Late Show and invited her to lunch. Wifey and Phil DeMuth came along. Lara talked nonstop about how bad things are in Afghanistan, how disorganized the U.S. effort is, how undermanned we are there, and how Rumsfeld (according to her) has a plan to sell out Hamid Karzai and the whole democratic movement there. She also talked at length about how unreliable the Pakistanis are and how we can't trust anyone there. She regaled us with tales of the thousands of young Afghans and Pakistanis at the madrassas getting filled with hate and fiction about the U.S. She had nothing but the highest praise for the U.S. fighting man and woman, but she said the State Department endlessly betrays them. But that was positively upbeat compared to her assessment of the situation in Iraq, which she sees as basically hopeless. The terrorists are out of control and getting more so. "I'm passionate about fighting these people," she said (referring to the terrorists and "militants"), "because I don't want my kids growing up wearing burkhas." "You live in London," I said. "There's not much danger of that there, is there?" "There are millions of Moslems in Britain," she said. "They want to take over and impose sharia there." "But that's impossible," I said. "I don't know," she said. "You cannot believe the inroads the militants are making in South Africa. There are so many Moslem women in Durban now covered head to toe except for their eyes. All around the east coast of Africa there are forests of mosques. These people are on the move." It all terrified me. I want to be in Sandpoint. I want to be in Priest Lake. I want to be among the hearty, happy people of the great inland Northwest. I hope Mr. Bush takes this seriously. If we are fighting a global war to protect free society, it wonÃ-t be won by tax cuts. If it's war, we need to mobilize for war. It's a choice between a society based on love and a society based on fear and repression. We've got to get our act together. We need to take it all a lot more seriously. I am scared. Of course, I am always scared, but now I'm really scared. I don't want to be beheaded. I don't get it. How did all this bad stuff come along a few years after we were in "The Golden Age" under Clinton? What happened to "The End of History"? Mr. Bush, you are far more of a wartime president than you may realize. We finished our lunch (I had fresh tuna) and I got into my Cadillac and drove home to sit by my swimming pool in the sun under a palm tree with my dogs sniffing around the flagstone decking. How long can such a great life last? Is it later than I dare think? I'll say it again, I am scared. Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu. His Diary runs every month in the The American Spectator. These excerpts are taken from our February issue.

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[AnimalLover]

BUMP

[omniscient]

Ben, you need to ground your lout. The last thing he needs is your approval and participation in his illegal street racing where it "isn't busy." What he needs is boot camp for spoiled rich kids, not all this empathizing and understanding, which he will simply exploit to get his way.

And after the last 4 years, you are now wondering if GWB is serious about the WOT?

And you take a liberal journo's opinions as gospel?

Give yourself a slap on the head, man!

[jocon307]

"The last thing he needs is your approval and participation in his illegal street racing where it "isn't busy."

You are so right. The wife was right in what she said to the cop. And, let's face it, we were all teens, we all had parties we shouldn't've. Most of us had the brains to clean up the place before the parental units got home.

Obviously, Stein should have turned around, fetched the kid, and gone back to the house to make Tommy clean it up. Teenagers are the bear, but you can't get lazy and give in to them. There is no mention of any punishment meted out, he doesn't even say (possibly rhetorically): that's the last time he uses the beach house alone!

If Stein has told us the whole story he's made a serious parenting error. His son WILL grow up to be a conscienless creep if there are never any consequences for bad behaviour.

And as for the spread of Islamofacism, I hardly think George W. Bush can, or should, bomb all the Mosques in Africa. That is a cultural war too, not just a military one. Non muslim people need to build their own faith(s) and HAVE MORE CHILDREN. Oh yeah, and raise the little rug rats up right. The US Military can't really help in some aspects of this war.

[cricket]

God Bless Ben Stein. . .the perfect 'imperfect'.

As for his Tommy. . .maybe Ben should just share his own 'lessons learned as of his 60th Birthday. . .might help. . .

. . .also to Ben. . .as long as you blame yourself; and 'pick up Tommy's respsonsibility' for him. . .he will let you. . .and one more. . .NEVER drag race with your son!

In the meantime, I will both keep and share Ben's 'lesson's' . . .;^)

[lawgirl]

Hey there- I love your nick (I am a Hatfield- yes those Hatfields.)

I think Ben has some issues with his son and it sounds like he needs to kick some realism into his 17 year old butt. Why would you go clean a Mailbu beach house he had trashed while he is at home in bed giving you sass? Yeah right!

[GVnana]

How long can such a great life last? Is it later than I dare think? I'll say it again, I am scared.

It's only natural for an adult to worry about the world, but those thoughts are seldom shared.

[sevry]

drug company would invent a med that counters the effects of teenage years

Not that it will necessarily help, but it might - get him into HS sports, and keep him there even if the coach says - not interested. All kids can learn, can train, etc. Rule of life.

As for the 'new economy', and the 'great economy' which Eleanor Clift touted every week during Gore's run, well . . she's still around, and he's still around. But I don't pay either the attention I used to. Both were frauds, then. Gore's been acting even worse, since. Clift - who cares?

The dot-com crash was really a crash of investment capital. This, people need to be reminded constantly, is what is known as a capitalist system, and economy. Basically, that means large chunks of millions are needed to finance new ventures in the hopes that it will eventually generate millions more in profits (what some term, revenues) for those doing that financing, or buying in as shareholders in some manner. The dot-com bust marked the end, for a while, of active involvement of capitalists in this, a capitalist economy. Guess what? But things are looking up. The thing about those with capital - they want more. Call it the 'Midas' complex. Another rule of life.

[PGalt]

Good article. Thanks for posting it.

Buy one of those stylish "No Fear" hats Ben. Put it on your head. Fear. It's all in your head.

[Tax-chick]

I've been following his stuff in the American Spectator for some years now, and have watched little Tommy grow up into the spoiled brat that was inevitable from about age 6.

My oldest daughter is a couple of years younger than Tommy Stein. I remember reading those Spectator columns when she was little, and thinking, "I can't believe he's letting the kid do this stuff!" It was like "How NOT to Raise Your Kid" lessons.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

"4. Almost any "problem" I have can be dealt with by rest, reflection, and conversation with someone who cares about me, usually my shrink, the genius Paul Hyman."

Anybody who has a shrink has major problems.

[cubreporter]

my brother is soon to be 73 and we STILL call him Joey. :)
Sister is 70 and we still call her cookie. :)

Does age really matter when we call those we love by certain names?

[cricket]

" I've been following his stuff in the American Spectator for some years now, and have watched little Tommy grow up into the spoiled brat that was inevitable from about age 6."

Been doing the same. . .handwriting has been on the wall. . .in the Spectator (!) since Tommy began on the pages there.

Obviously, Ben is not the diciplinarian. . .in which case; usually the 'other ' parent gets the responsibility to insure some responsibility.

ITMT. . .maybe Ben could ask Tommy to write what HE is thankful for. . .and include Tommy thougtts in his next article - witih permision, of course. . .might help - couldn't hurt.

I mean Tommy is there anyway, whether he personally contributes or not.

Parenting can be a tough call. . .but really, compared to Ben's honest and often painful sharing. . . that 'call' is probably a whole lot easer. Ben just needs to try it.

[Choose Ye This Day]

I'd say in this Tommy kid's case, he definitely needs help maturing. "Tom" would be in order for him.

[krunkygirl]

save to savor later

[MinuteGal]

A lot of us have lived with Tommy's "growing up" from the time Ben started writing (and agonizing continually) about his son in the Spectator.

Some of us are not at all surprised about the brat's selfishness and loutishness. Hope he grows out of it before he hits the headlines.

But then, what can we expect when his two buds are named Boris and Vlad, lol.

Leni

[Carolinamom]

I do not understand Stein's feeling that HE is guilty for what Tommy and his friends did.

Tommy LIED and BETRAYED Stein's trust. Then Tommy went to bed and rest while Stein cleaned up the mess.

Memo to Stein: Get the liar out of bed and oversee him cleaning up the house HE messed up. Let HIM feel guilty.

[garyhope]

When I tell friends that I think the Islamofascists are going to nuke NY and DC, they don't believe me. When I tell them Islam is at war with Western civilization they don't believe me. "Liberals" are detached from reality. They're all naive and I think active traitors.

There's a major cultural war going on between the "liberals", leftists and America. They all want us dead. Simple as that.

[cubreporter]

Tom or Tommy isn't going to be the key. It's how he is being raised and what kinds of responsibilities he is being taught. I think Ben Stein is doing this tongue in cheek, dont you? I bet he has a loving relationship with his son Tom/Tommy and it's nothing like he jokes about.

[iconoclast]

Ben Stein **PING**

There's a Ben Stein ping list?

Sweet Jesus!

[Choose Ye This Day]

I think "Tommy" is perhaps indicative of "how he is being raised." He's being treated, still, as the baby, as the overly doted-upon only child. My concern is that he's not being taught many responsibilities. With a wealthy father, he may not have to work to earn any of his perqs. I don't know, and perhaps it's not my place to presume, but from this brief essay, at least, I get the impression that Tommy is spoiled rotten.

I do not think it is tongue in cheek. I believe Ben does have a loving relationship with Tommy, but perhaps not a parent-as-authority-deserving-of-respect-and-obedience relationship.