Ben Stein's last Column

[apothanein kerdos]

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.

As so many of you know, I am an avid Bush fan and a Republican. But I

think the best guidance I ever got was from the inauguration speech of

Democrat John F. Kennedy in January of 1961.

On a very cold and bright day in D.C., he said, "With a good

conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our

deeds, let us go forth...asking His blessing and His help but knowing

that here on Earth, God's work must surely be our own."

And then to paraphrase my favorite president, my boss and friend

Richard Nixon, when he left the White House in August 1974, with me

standing a few feet away, "This is not goodbye. The French have a word

for it--au revoir. We'll see you again."

Au revoir, and thank you for reading me for so long. God bless every

one of you. We'll see you again.

Source

[Keith]

I must say, I'm impressed. I know who Ben Stein is but I didn't know anything about him. I hope his article hits home with the Hollywood crowd and those who are obsessed with them. Well done, Ben Stein, well done.

[Guest shiloh357]

good article.

[RGR]

So I wonder if Ben would let me win some of his money?