After the Democrats’ Horror Show

The American Spectator ^ | 1 Aug 2016 | Ben Stein

[Rummyfan]

It is hot. Too hot. I awakened feeling happy, though. Maybe because the conventions are over and I can go back to watching my TCM classic movies and my World War One documentaries. I also just finished watching the greatest western of all time, High Noon.

There is a movie about heroism. About manliness. That movie, starring the incomparable Gary Cooper, came out in 1952. It was the first and only movie my father ever took me to by myself, that is, just us two men. I was seven. I saw it on a double bill with the British movie, Breaking The Sound Barrier.

I was so happy to be at that movie with my father I didn’t even mind that they didn’t have popcorn at the theater. I think it was “The Playhouse” near 13th and K, maybe a block from McPherson Square. That was a giddy night. Fathers, spend time with your sons. It means a world to them, as far as I could tell.

We were up in Sandpoint for about ten days. Wlady was kind enough to post some pictures. It’s more beautiful than ever and the view from my living room — our living room — is more spectacular than ever. Early in the morning the lake looks like an immense iceberg, blue and gray and then alive with fire. Like fire on ice. I never tire of it.

Of course, we went up to Hills Resort on Priest Lake. That’s about a ninety-minute drive and every time I make that trip I swear it’s too long and I will never do it again, even if it is by the wide Pendoreille River and through the endless forests north of the town of Priest River.

[Buckeye McFrog]

My not-terribly-political twenty-something daughter, after watching some of Day One of the Dem Convention, announced to her dear ol’ dad that “Trump is going to win....because these people are INSANE!”

[husky ed]

I suspect Ben does not know the Spokane area as well as he says he does. Or he would not have misspelled names and got the distances between places so wrong.

Or he's just a tourist and makes this shite up for his gullible readers.

Ed

[Madame Dufarge]

We used to subscribe to the Spectator years ago.

After a while, we would routinely skip his whiny column.

[bluejean]

I enjoy reading Ben Stein - his thoughtful, descriptive writing style is interesting. He enjoys crafting sentences. Yes, I suppose he is whiny sometimes, but God knows there’s a lot to feel whiny about and I have those moments myself.

[avenir]

“I was so happy to be at that movie with my father I didn’t even mind that they didn’t have popcorn at the theater.”

Love that. I had a dream a few years ago that my Dad (long deceased) and I were in a movie house. It was as if I was a little boy, and my head was leaning over on my Dad’s chest. In the dream I felt so safe and loved that I can feel it now as I remember it.

Dads are truly important, and I despise this era for minimizing them.

[Billthedrill]

Huh. My house is just south of Sandpoint. I wouldn't call us Ozzie and Harriet at all, although to a Southern Californian it probably looks that way. I may have just missed Stein at Ivano's, not that I or any of the other locals would have known him from Adam. He should try Hydra or 41 South.

He clearly still doesn't understand Trump and I'm not sure he's trying. If he wants to, though, he could get a little deeper insight by simply asking around next time he's in Sandpoint. We're a lot more like the rest of Flyover Country than New York or LA.