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Blogs by SHERRY G HEIM
Ben Stein's Last Column
10/8/2005 7:02:37 AM
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.
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
"The soldier above all other people prays for peace,
for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds of war."
--General Douglas MacArthur
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More Blogs by SHERRY G HEIM
• Dude, where's my Civil War? - Wednesday, May 3, 2006
• Easter Traditions - Sunday, April 16, 2006
• I Was Once A Sailor - Friday, March 17, 2006
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Love and Hate - Wednesday, December 28, 2005
• It's Time to Pin a Few Medals ... - Sunday, December 18, 2005
• An inspiring message - Monday, December 5, 2005
• Ben Stein's Last Column - Saturday, October 8, 2005
• In Katrina I Didnt See Racism, I Saw Brotherhood - Thursday, September 22, 2005
• What's really behind the chaos in New Orleans? - Tuesday, September 20, 2005
• It was not the Federal Government's Responsibility - Monday, September 5, 2005
• Positive Report From Iraq - Friday, September 2, 2005
• Survival:Ultimately Our Own Responsibility - Friday, September 2, 2005
• Europe, Thy Name Is Cowardice - Sunday, August 7, 2005
• Getting Grandma - Sunday, August 7, 2005
• The Terrorists Motivation: Islam - Wednesday, July 27, 2005
• Peace If Possible, War If Necessary - Sunday, July 24, 2005
• Terrorism's Root Causes - Sunday, July 17, 2005
• A Shreveport Judge's Report on Iraq - Saturday, July 16, 2005
• The Last Full Measure - Wednesday, June 15, 2005
• Accept Yourself - Monday, May 9, 2005
• Finally They Have Come Home - Sunday, May 8, 2005
• Political Correctness and Incompetence - Sunday, March 20, 2005
• Three Letters - Friday, March 11, 2005
• The Iraqi Elections - Sunday, January 30, 2005
• Sites to Support U.S. Troops and Vets - Saturday, January 29, 2005
• Inaugural - Tuesday, January 18, 2005
• A Carrot, An Egg, And a Cup of Coffee - Saturday, January 15, 2005
• Supplies needed in Iraq - Friday, December 10, 2004
• Out of the Loop, Thankfully - Sunday, November 14, 2004
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