Ben Stein's Diary: Ping-Pong Diplomacy
Stein, Benjamin J.
"Ben Stein's Diary: Ping-Pong Diplomacy" by Benjamin J. Stein Ping-Pong Diplomacy Monday Rush, rush, rush over to Disney for a meeting to pitch a show. I met a startlingly alert young fellow named Rick and told him my...
...Then back to pick up Tommy at school...
...It was Peter Feirabend, my pal from Sandpoint...
...That's all...
...Not at all," I said...
...Plus, it would teach them that they definitely want to get as much education as they possibly can so they spend their days doing what law professors do instead of what hotel maids do...
...It's outdoors," he used to say...
...It has something to do with taking off your vest without taking off your jacket," I said to little Perry Mason...
...I got to sleep late, and now I am about to appear as an expert witness...
...How does anyone know what's acceptable behavior...
...I hurtled back to the Oakland Airport in my mighty Buick and waited for two hours for the plane...
...What does that mean...
...I hear them talking among themselves and with social workers...
...Daddy, what's the easiest job I can possibly get that pays me enough to have at least four dogs like Susie...
...The hardest one I ever took was probably Microeconomics in graduate school," I said, "but the most advanced I ever took was probably Calculus II...
...Right...
...I wish I could adopt them both, but they have a perfectly fine mother...
...How a man can father a child and then fail to do everything in his power to support and protect the child is totally beyond my understanding...
...You're famous," she said...
...God put me on earth...
...Plus, I feel extremely lassitudinous and pretty damned dizzy when I bother to get up...
...They don't know he was the savior of Israel...
...She cursed...
...I'm twenty-two," she said without missing a beat...
...You know that guy I was dating...
...Red eyes...
...The girl of the two approached me and asked if I were the guy from the Clear Eyes commercial...
...To celebrate, I walked across the street to McDonald's and had a cheeseburger...
...Right," I said...
...Always good to know that my books are unavailable...
...It was too smoky, so I strolled outside to get some air...
...Maybe someday I'll have my own equipment and people will work for me...
...And it's good work, honest work...
...Kids get big damages for that—and they should...
...Management let the firm's uniquely valuable franchise go to hell, did little to preserve its power, and now they're awarding themselves huge golden parachutes if someone else takes over the firm...
...Don't I have interesting neighbors...
...But we have our own rural ways to die...
...Here, it seems to me, is the second biggest crusade that's necessary in America...
...As far as I could tell, he's idle rich, or fairly idle...
...I never could understand why men would work so hard at it for so little money...
...Then he ran after the ball when it went past him...
...He's now engaged— engaged, mind you, to the girl he met through the Budapest dating service or something...
...Maybe it's United, too...
...This is something that needs no government program...
...What is it...
...0 ff to Morton's to meet a lawyer who might hire me to be an expert witness in a case...
...Hmmm," I said...
...Daddy, tell me how a supercharger works...
...The best test of whether or not to do something: would you want it done to you...
...I gave a very few moments of testimony...
...We played for an hour, with yours truly beating him, but with him getting better each game...
...Nice touch...
...My parents at the Watergate get to have Bob Dole and Alan Greenspan...
...Daddy, since there was a P-38, was there ever a P-39...
...Then suddenly, bang, I was summoned to court...
...Daddy, how fast could a motorcycle go with a supercharger...
...Daddy, what's the hardest math class you ever took...
...God's Will Be Done" is the only answer to unanswerable losses and sorrows, and it explains them all...
...I met a startlingly alert young fellow named Rick and told him my thoughts for shows...
...It's really strange to me that lawyers for the little guys are bad, but lawyers for management are good...
...Tonight, the absolutely smartest thing I can do, smarter than discovering relativity, is to surrender to God's will and go to sleep, so I can be rested to help people tomorrow...
...are not really that interested in sex," she said...
...I feel really, really lucky...
...Daddy, tell me everything about the SR-71 Blackbird," he said...
...What does that mean...
...A sad parade of women with small children has been trooping in and out of here for an hour...
...Daddy, what was Nixon like in elementary school...
...Wednesday Here I am sitting in the lobby of an old courthouse in Martinez, California, hometown of Joe DiMaggio...
...At the Fidelity office, women in curlers, towing screaming babies, are plunking down theirhard-earned money...
...Daddy, what's the most advanced kind of self-propelled gun in the world...
...Is that where both sides have experts come in and talk about damages from loss of consortium and loss of wages...
...I suddenly realized that I don't really care that much about who wins the election (as long as it's a Republican...
...She's described as owning a "sweet face" and "an angelic face...
...Worrying about money can really wear you out in a hurry...
...Management would not want to be lied to, would not want to have insider trading going on against them—so why are they surprised when they get sued about it when they do it...
...We have the chance to teach them...
...I'd love to get some of your books...
...It's how to measure the area of a kidney-shaped swimming pool...
...I asked...
...She of the angelic face...
...She listed a long string of clubs I had never heard of...
...How did that happen...
...Hmmm...
...I forgot...
...I just lost a big bet to that guy," she said...
...I took her for a walk on the dark streets of West Hollywood...
...Or maybe that's an act...
...The best one," said I, "is about what people do all day...
...Second, full responsibility by fathers to their kids—right to love...
...Yes," she said...
...The jurors recognized me as an actor and giggled as I got off the stand...
...Well, I put up three dollars," said the boy...
...Spy that I am, as soon as I got back to my apartment, I looked her up on Nexis...
...With what agency...
...My broker told me about other clients who are much richer than I am, which I do not like...
...Not only that, but my skill at the game—which I used to play every day for hours in junior high and had not played for decades—returned swiftly...
...Alas, there are a lot of them...
...The other young man turned out to be the owner of the club...
...I put him to sleep by reading to him from a biography of Richard M. Nixon...
...Well, I guess that would be topology," I ventured...
...Rick nodded enthusiastically and said he thought it was a good idea...
...It would be aimed at kids and young adults...
...He smiled, laughed, looked cunning, pretended various feints with the racket...
...What kind of writer are you...
...He's this big liberal in Hollywood, like one of the top business managers in town, always going to fund-raisers for the United Negro College Fund and stuff like that—but he has to be married to a pure Magyar...
...The lawyer smiled...
...He grabbed my arms and tried to twist them behind my back, and we wrestled for a few minutes, and then I carried him away to the car...
...I just sing them anywhere," she said...
...Alex is sick and moaning, too...
...They would be ashamed of themselves for ever having felt any other way...
...Everyone talks about his profits...
...They're talking about back child support, about husbands and fathers who completely neglect their kids...
...He was a stocky, muscular man who had done physical labor most of his life...
...I sing at those clubs," she said, "and I also waitress at them sometimes...
...I went back to my little condo at the Mighty Shoreham Towers with Ginger, my trusty dog consort, at my side...
...He was often around when Tommy came over to play with Burdette and Peter's children...
...That's what people here do...
...This fellow turns out to be 26 years old...
...I write for TV," he said...
...Perfect...
...I work on cases where some guy drove off a cliff and said it was because our signs weren't right or crashed into oncoming traffic because we had the lanes coned off wrong...
...I flew up to Oakland and drove the rest of the way last night...
...It needs a full description by those of us who know the joy that kids bring and just what a good thing kids are —and fathers are...
...Funny, they don't say that about the lawyers who write up their lavish stock-option deals...
...Never mind...
...The stock market boom is on in earnest 1929 style...
...In Hollywood, pitching a story or a show is like getting nibbled to death by ducks, or so someone once said...
...I just love the fact that management is constantly preaching about how evil lawyers are...
...He had children and a former wife in Clark Fork...
...I really do not know much about these subjects, but I tell him what I know and he seems perfectly happy...
...He's also really interested in Richard Nixon and asks me about Richard Nixon more or less every hour...
...Then off to a rock club in Hollywood called Gem...
...That Greek guy...
...People think it's so peaceful in the countryside...
...This is a famous young woman...
...And people fall into sawmill equipment and die on the highway...
...Every bit of virus left my body...
...The two bouncers, huge,scary-looking men with beards, were also smoking...
...What's that...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...What's the total loss to the society from twenty-five million kids growing up without fathers...
...I walked in past the jurors...
...The men in L.A...
...I ain't saying," she said...
...If the loss to a kid is a million dollars, let's say, from losing his father in a crash on the Hollywood Freeway, then what's the loss to the kid from his father disappearing, creating him and then not showing up to teach him how to walk, not showing up to help him for The American Spectator • May 1996 53 twelve years with his homework, not showing him by precept and example how a young person is supposed to behave in his classroom, not showing him how to be a friend or a child or a support to his mother or a responsible member of the labor force...
...Of course she will," he said...
...As I pondered my reply, two well-dressed young men emerged from the club and talked to me...
...They are redheads, blondes, brunettes, gray-haired, but the common denominator is how tired they look...
...The case 52 May 1996 • The American Spectator is a deep dark secret, but it has to do with top management at a very, very big computer firm...
...I sing the blues," she said tonelessly...
...Tommy is a phenomenally good player for his age, with a lightning serve...
...Why do the kids in my class hate Nixon...
...It turned out that the gent was a trial lawyer for CalTrans, the folks who run the highways here in sunny Cal...
...How do I teach my son to behave around his classmates...
...How do we approach the jury with this behavior...
...First, right to life and an appreciation that abortion is murder...
...She was one of Heidi Fleiss's main girls...
...Rocky was killed in a logging accident yesterday morning...
...BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Ping-Pong Diplomacy Monday Rush, rush, rush over to Disney for a meeting to pitch a show...
...She told me it very hesitantly and then went on her way into the night...
...It looks as if the idea of how bad smoking is for you has somehow skipped a generation," I said...
...Tonight, instead of thinking about what my whole future will be, I will think about where to take Tommy for a snack after school tomorrow...
...Plus, the jury deadlocked on two pandering charges...
...I asked cheerfully...
...Most of them have no idea of what adults do all day long on the job...
...He did this right after we broke up...
...The whole city is filled with viruses...
...When you hit the toggle switch on the dashboard to make its supercharger start, that car could fly...
...Maybe start with, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you...
...Or the Sahara Desert...
...Total strangers tout you on issues with strange names...
...She told me, and I said, "And where are you from...
...The American Spectator • May 1996 55...
...And true to his word, he fell asleep within seconds...
...What do you do for a living...
...They don't understand," I always tell him...
...You must be a professor," I said...
...I asked...
...His laugh, his groans when he lost a point, his scampering little runs after the ball —this is life...
...I have a great return and the wily craft of age...
...He's 26...
...I asked...
...That's a small part of it," he said...
...He was the close friend of Peter's wife of long ago, Burdette...
...When I was a child, the father of my pal, David Scull, had a supercharged Studebaker Golden Hawk...
...It all screams of some kind of frothy peak...
...The young woman next to me leaned against me...
...Right now, she's a little upset about the man situation...
...Daddy, I think I'll go to sleep now...
...And what do you think...
...I am sure that most of them recognized me as a character actor because they started to smile as I passed...
...On a summer day when we get there at dawn, it's incredibly beautiful...
...I have news of a tragedy," he said...
...What show...
...I just told you that I don't know what it is...
...I ain't saying what I put up," said the girl...
...So he started going to some Hungarian-only dating service...
...Are they stupid, Daddy...
...Daddy," he says, "tell me about what's the hardest math subject there is...
...This would show them what work actually is like...
...They buy the classic liberal lies about him...
...Well, he suddenly decided that, because he had one grandfather who was from Finland, he was of pure Magyar stock...
...Ihad a phone call when I got back to my apartment...
...A tiny little bit famous...
...He was sitting at his new computer drawing with some function I don't know about...
...Well, I will just keep on trucking...
...You mean, how is management to know what's ethical behavior...
...My tummy hurts...
...I still remember the whoosh it made when it started up...
...How do we get them to understand that management should have known better...
...I get to have one of Heidi's main girls just down the street...
...Daddy, how fast could my bicycle go if it had a supercharger attached to it...
...asked my potential employer, a jolly, curly headed fellow...
...It definitely is not American, the best airline by far...
...I can't find them at stores...
...Millions sometimes, because it means a lot to a kid to lose a father...
...God bless his soul...
...How big...
...Do you sing them here...
...This is bliss, and I hope that the lords of Wall Street are as happy with their billions as I am with this golden child of mine...
...Then I clapped on my Discman and listened to Mozart's Requiem...
...So according to Peter, who knows this outdoor world, a tree fell over on Rocky at 7:30 in the morning...
...Well, you have to know or else you wouldn't know how hard it is...
...one of the bouncers asked angrily...
...The two counter attendants, a boy and a girl, looked at me and giggled, then huddled,then giggled more...
...Then the defendants' lawyer introduced himself very cheerfully, and asked me just one question...
...I was on the Lampoon...
...If I had known, back in high school, lo those decades ago, that if I got into Harvard I could then get into the Lampoon and then get to be a writer in Hollywood...wait a minute...
...The courtroom where we are talking about investment banking is right next to some rooms where there are hearings about child support...
...Daddy, tell me everything you know about the F-14 Tomcat...
...This is what it's all about...
...I have been an expert witness in more than a dozen cases...
...We would have one person per half-hour...
...She's resisted my entreaties to go to law school so far and has instead made herself into a successful freelance writer...
...She was a young woman with a, well, an angelic face...
...Rural ways to die...
...to which I replied, "No, it's definitely not good to lie...
...Just for one night, I will take a vacation from fear...
...The real issue in some of these cases is loss of a father's guidance, his absence and the fact that he can't be there to tell the kids what's right and what's wrong, tell them what's appropriate behavior, show them by example and by precept what's right and wrong to do to be a person in society...
...He's a writer and story editor for "Seinfeld...
...After lunch I went over to Fidelity in Century City to buy some stock...
...The wife and kids sue us, and it's all a very difficult matter about damages...
...Sunday Idon't feel good...
...Exactly," said my companion at Morton's...
...But I really wonder if he will be able to push my idea through the various levels above him to get it done...
...There's a great ping-pong table in the law school cafeteria...
...How did you get such a great gig...
...Daddy, tell me everything about the tanks that were used in the First World War," he said...
...I recall it as, "Is it good to lie...
...I started...
...Then off to lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe with my brilliant friend Kayle, the world's premier researcher, a woman destined for greatness...
...He wanted me to put him to bed, so I did...
...This works better than we could have dreamed possible...
...With that, I had what I can only call a blinding insight...
...That's how I would begin, too," he said...
...Dry eyes...
...They asked me for autographs, and we had a nice discussion about how the husband came to be incapacitated by inhaling paint thinner...
...He used to sit and play Mortal Kombat with him and Peter's son Alex for hours on end...
...Now I am playing with Tommy, and I pray that Tommy will do it with his son...
...Viruses are on the attack...
...To me, this is so easily understood—although it's hard to act upon...
...Seinfeld...
...Best not to know...
...I just plugged into the Lampoon network and got a job here as soon as I came out, and it's been great...
...So you came here twelve years ago when you were twelve and now how old are you...
...I know there was a P-51 Mustang, and it was a high performance fighter with a supercharger...
...Plus, of the board of directors, only two held any stock in the company—and those two sold most of their stake while assuring the public that everything was copacetic at the company...
...Yes, I too have succumbed to stock market mania...
...Why, yes indeed...
...It must be really, really horrible to be broke and have kids to support...
...Tommy, I have no idea at all, but we'll ask your grandfather...
...Daddy, what makes the A-io warthog such an effective air to ground attack plane...
...I didn't like it very much...
...Well, it's about changing shapes and measuring and manipulating them...
...I'm a big fan," said one of them...
...I found a spot at the bar and had a soda...
...The afternoon session of the trial has resumed, but I am waiting until it's my turn to testify...
...As I did, I remembered a few more of my Malibu Serenity Sayings: • All of my problems are based on fear...
...I fell into conversation with a couple named Pacheco who were waiting to go into domestic relations court...
...So how bad can she be...
...I said I was...
...Daddy, do cars ever have superchargers...
...What was Nixon like when you worked for him...
...I graduated from Harvard," he said...
...What will it be like for his kids...
...He also explained to me a million times how the logging business worked...
...It's really hard on a woman who wants to get married and have a family...
...Did I mention that he's 26...
...Uh-huh...
...I was too polite to ask them why...
...For me, picking him up is like picking up your date for the Senior Prom when you have the best looking date in town and everyone knows it...
...I have no problem at all talking to strangers...
...Misinformed, but not stupid...
...He was a good friend to Tommy...
...They're like agents or producers arranging a deal more than the usual man on the make...
...You should feel that way," I said...
...I guess she will bear up, I told Peter...
...Daddy, how fast could a P-51 Mustang fly...
...Still, I drove into town with my little angel at my side...
...I've been doing it for a long time," she said...
...They're more interested in some kind of sick control game...
...I was looking forward to riding on the lake with him this summer...
...They're definitely not interested in love...
...Men with scraggly beards, soiled sweat shirts, and dirty feet in sandals are standing right behind them...
...Then I was done...
...I see...
...We started to play, and my malaise disappeared...
...Shegot, so she claims, up to $10,000 per date (this sounds like one of my "dates" with the California State Franchise Tax Board), of which she kicked back 40 percent to Heidi...
...Hmmm...
...Tommy asked...
...He drowned or maybe froze...
...No, I'm a trial lawyer," he said...
...Just two days ago, another friend got drunk and went for a ride on the ice on the lake and fell through...
...Management doesn't complain about the lawyers who write up incredibly duplicitous disclosure statements and then defend management in court with stockholder money...
...On the way down through mid-Malibu, Tommy asked if we could stop at Pepperdine and play table tennis...
...They want to be able to have you in their power more than they want to have sex with you...
...It had a huge Packard engine (Packards were big old cars as luxurious as Cadillacs and maybe more so) and it was in a light Studebaker body (they don't make Studebakers any more, my boy, but they were good looking cars...
...As I did, I saw a stunning young woman walking her Afghan Hound...
...He demanded a Cactus 54 May 1996 • The American Spectator Cooler to cool off, and then we played more...
...It's a day off...
...I sat on the plane next to a middle-aged man wearing corduroy trousers and a sweater...
...I suppose so...
...He could not possibly have been more polite...
...That means I have a place here and do not have to apologize for being me...
...The women look deeply tired...
...I liked Rockyparticularly because he was so good with two-stroke motors, and helped Tommy and me start our little motorboat many a time...
...Then we would have some videotape of what they do...
...I already was a sitcom writer...
...I said...
...Rocky was about my age...
...Are you an actress...
...Well, actually, I want to be an actress, but all I am right now is a model...
...I feel terrible about these women and their kids...
...Daddy, what is titanium alloy...
...Now I know how to put him to sleep for the rest of his life: read to him from the biographies of famous men (and women, of course...
...Like me, he went to Columbia for college...
...Tommy's smile burned off the symptoms...
...Now you know...
...Well, I guess it's also hard on people who want to be yachtsmen and live in Omaha," I said...
...Maybe it's not only Alaska that's permanently late...
...None of them would have ever been brought if management had hewn to the simple rule of not doing to the stockholders what they would not want the stockholders to do to them if their positions were reversed...
...I hate clubs because they are too loud and too smoky, but I am a loyal friend, and so off I go...
...I came here twelve years ago to live by myself when I was twelve, and it's been twelve years, and now I'm thinking of moving to Atlanta to get close to the source of the blues...
...If they knew what he had done for Israel, they, in a Jewish school, would love and worship Nixon...
...I looked over at his grin on the other side of the green table and felt as if I were immortal...
...Just as I expected, it is incredibly loud, with a horrible, thumping, bumping bass that makes my teeth rattle and gives me a headache...
...I prayed for Rocky and his family...
...If the loss is a million-to-one kid, what's the loss for tens of millions of kids whose fathers ignore them...
...I don't really care that much about tax rates...
...My beautiful assistant, the lovely Kailani, is having her singing debut at the club tonight along with some other artists...
...I just want to play ping-pong with my boy forever...
...Daddy, tell me everything you know about the P-51 Mustang...
...I asked...
...she went on...
...Clear Eyes...
...I'll send a messenger if that would be helpful...
...I asked...
...She was a witness against Heidi in at least two trials, and she's got some nice drug and DUI driving items on her record...
...But I don't really know what that is...
...When I got back, I rushed over to see Little Mr...
...She mentioned a city in the Rocky Mountains and I told her it was nice to have her nearby and asked her to tell me her name...
...Tommy has an awful cough...
...I'm a writer, too...
...Forty years ago, my father played with me every night, using his guile learned in long hours of playing while he was in the Navy, to beat my great service...
...It would have various people like magazine editors, mergers and acquisitions dealers, short-order cooks, car salesmen, emergency room nurses, policemen in southwest Florida, and I would ask them about what they do all day...
...He can't make much less than a half a million a year...
Vol. 29 • May 1996 • No. 5
