Posted on 08/30/2006 10:14:17 AM PDT by jackv
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 "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.
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
Ben Stein Bump
This was the only point at which my life touched the life of Ben Stein. A personal episode in my own life that brought similar revelations. Thanks, Ben Stein, for putting my thoughts into words.
With that said, does anyone else read Ben Stein in his voice? ;-)
Dead On! Kudos to Ben Stein.
Here's what I like about Ben Stein. I e-mailed him when I first read this online. I told him that my father was a hero for his service with the USMC in Korea, and the USAF in Vietnam, and that my mother was a hero for supporting dad while he was in Korea and in Vietnam and for supporting me when I was in the first Gulf.
He e-mailed me back within about 30-45 minutes of my writing to him, telling me that I was a hero too for my service to my country, but that he understood that it wasn't something I was going to say for myself.
I was impressed by how quickly he responded, and by the fact that it wasn't a boilerplate autoresponder - but that it was by him.
Even if this is a retread, it caused me a blurry monitor and a big swell of pride in my heart for my husband, my hero. Thanks for posting.
Ben is a long time friend of mine and that is typical of him. We both had roles in the Nixon administration, and his was mopre important than mine. He is a great guy.
I think he still writes a column for American Spectator. His views remind one that the ideology of the Hollywood crowd is phoney, absurd, materialistic and really not worth portraying as character building. Stein realizes this as so many Americans do not!
Oh that is sooo nice. I don't care how "old" the article is. It is new to many of us.
What a good and decent man!
You are not alone.
Earlier this year I held my Mothers hand as she slipped from this world and into Paradise. Since this time I have learned exactly what Ben Stein so eloquently states here. Get involved make a difference in a person's life today without thinking about how it can benefit you. I will not tell you I Love you I will show you has been my guiding principal since her passing.
BTTT
Is it just me or should this thread have a "tissue alert"?
This was written several years ago. It's been on my home page for at least 2 years. Still, a great read.
One of if not the best from Ben. Reinforces my casual comment the other day that he is one of the 'famous' whom I would enjoy dining with for conversation and a peek into his soul ... and it is no doubt an heroic soul to boot.
We are witnessing the Decline and Fall of the Liberal Empire. Only by withholding our support can we destroy this monster. My wife misses much of the local news, but the local liberal rag is not allowed in our house.
If one's house is infested with cockroaches, then it is necessary to starve them out. It seems like the last survivors can live off the dead bodies of their fellow cockroaches, but eventually they will be gone. So it is with liberalism, socialism, and communism. They must be starved into extinction.
Those of you who continue to support liberal establishments are feeding your own enemies. Quit now.
Thank you for posting. I'd never read it. It is now bookmarked.
A worthy opus, by a man who has written many worthy works.
Blessings on your father, and may God comfort you as you help him in this last, difficult phase of his earthly life. He'll shine in heaven, I'm sure, and have a great reunion with his army buddies.
Thank you. I just talked to him on the phone (200 miles away) and he said that he's just hanging on to see us this weekend. Thank you for your prayers.
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