BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Heaven Can Wait
Stein, Benjamin J .
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Heaven Can Wait by Benjamin J. Stein TUESDAY OMETHING SICKENING IS HAPPENING in California and in the nation. If we had a stricter set of laws about such things, what is...
...Now we have made earthly life into a paradise and we fear death...
...But Al Gore explicitly attempts to stir up racism in our glorious California, most welcoming of all places on the planet, a place where no one in any authority gives racism anything but the cold shoulder-and the media does not say, "boo...
...Malibu by night from my deck, with the coyotes screaming and the stars twinkling by the billions overhead, and the waves crashing...
...As I said: sickening...
...Now we have made earthly life into a paradise and we fear death...
...In fact, he is the lowest BENJAMIN .1 . STEIN form of demagogue, the kind who sets race against race for personal and political gain...
...A staggeringly perfect pool on top of a hill overlooking the boundless ocean...
...The Capitol by night...
...It must be clear to everyone who is not brain dead by now that Stalinist Russia was the most acute of dangers to human decency, was the most evil regime in history except maybe for Hitler's, and had no real redeeming features...
...MONDAY I am a great fan of Elia Kazan...
...He is trying to make the blacks, who have seen the most thorough revolution in human advancement in the history of blacks in America in the past 50 years (since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision desegregating schools) feel as if nothing has been accomplished and they are still back in the days of the Klan...
...Hill's Resort in Priest Lake, Idaho...
...Perfection at a bargain price...
...For these people to lay claim to leadership of a nation they would tear apart for votes is nothing less, and maybe something worse...
...There is something intensely uplifting about that in terms of the appeal of intensity and intelligence for women (and I guess for men, too), just as there is something depressing about Marilyn Monroe's approach to life in that story...
...He had obviously lost it by the time he made Splendor in the Grass, which is as elegiacal about America as Gentleman's Agreement is downbeat...
...And because I love my readers, I am going to tell you my favorite places on this earth, and then maybe you 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 can list yours and feel gratitude that you have them in your life: • My apartment at the Watergate late at night when I am not tortured by the noisy construction nearby and can feel the breeze coming off the Potomac, look at my parents' mementos, and feel as if they are dancing around me, saying, "Life is short, Benjy...
...Second, on a more personal note, I was stunned to read that Kazan, a Greek, apparently, and not a Jewish man as I had thought, went to Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the mid-twenties and worked his way through washing dishes and bartending at fraternities that would not admit him...
...The media would scream the house down...
...The truth is that in fact there is almost no institutional racism, and certainly no official racism left in California, and relations among the races are cordial at every level one sees...
...Its depictions of Yale, and how the only warmth to be found there was at the pizza parlor, was especially poignant for me, a graduate of Yale Law School (who eventually came to love the place...
...When this comes from Jesse Jackson, we don't really feel it is surprising...
...But I cannot help think that my father had it right, and was enabled to go on his way with far less of a burden of anger and resentment than Elia Kazan carried, to his detriment (since carrying rage is always a detriment) for a large part of his life...
...But as I read his long obituaries, I was struck by several facts of his life: For one, it astounds me that 50 years down the road, he is still being criticized for being a friendly witness before a congressional committee investigating the penetration of Soviet Communism into America...
...He also worked as a dishwasher at a fraternity, Sigma Chi, that would not even remotely have considered him as a member...
...BEN STEIN'S DIARY I was impressed that Kazan, a diminutive fellow of no great looks, had apparently been the love interest of some of the great beauties of the silver screen, including the peerless Marilyn Monroe...
...Enjoy every minute, no matter what we said when we were alive...
...And then down to the Georgetown waterfront near the Sequoia Restaurant with its many lights...
...It has made him rich...
...He was a giant in his vision, and maybe Marilyn saw that in him...
...The Democratic candidates for President appeal for black votes to a wholly fictitious "fact" of Republican "discrimination" against blacks and it is taken for granted that it's not worth mentioning, despite its obvious nation-splitting effect...
...Again, all of this is being done to get votes for a fellow Democrat who is a thug in a different way, Gray Davis, and to continue gathering data on race so racism can still be put into practice in California...
...NOVEMBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49 It must be clear to everyone who is not brain dead by now that Stalinist Russia was the most acute of dangers to human decency...
...Simply the most beautiful spot with the best food in America, plus the kindest people—if you dare, go up to Upper Priest Lake...
...The truth is that Al Gore is doing what he did with almost lethal effect in the 2000 election...
...We used to think earthly life was horrible and paradise awaited us when we died...
...What an achievement for a nation to make a life so great that mortals think we are in heaven day by day...
...If I can paraphrase the former V.P., he said to his audience, "Now, you will hear the Republicans say there is no racism left in California...
...and Yankees...
...In fact, as he related it, the night she announced her engagement to Joe DiMaggio she spent in bed with Kazan...
...He is trying to whip up paranoia and ill feelings between and among races to get votes...
...The majesty of the Republic in all its visual glory...
...Now we are immortal and know better...
...Anywhere my son is laughing and smiling...
...It can't possibly be as good as life as we know it in America...
...But Al Gore was in high national office...
...But there is still plenty all around you whether it is obvious or not, even if it's hidden, and it is oppressing 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 you and the only way to avoid it is to vote Democratic...
...Life here is truly great...
...Fictitious talk about racism is a business for Jesse Jackson...
...Also anywhere I have friends...
...This, he said, filled him with rage and made him feel a permanent antipathy towards establishment life in America...
...Bush spoke to a white audience and tried to whip them up into a frenzy about blacks and Hispanics...
...Basically what is happening is partly that Al Gore is traveling around the state on behalf of that extortionist in a gray flannel suit, Gray Davis, and he is trying to save Davis's sorry self by appealing to the Democratic Party's most reliable base, the black voter...
...I know Wlady is a devout follower of the Church of Rome so he is kidding about the last part...
...Hollywood, and life generally, offers far more opportunity than one would suppose if one based one's life exclusively on what happens in high school...
...It is unchanged for millennia and is perfection itself...
...Miss it at your peril...
...Come to think of it, she had a yen for giants...
...This is a deep embarrassment to this nation and to the entertainment world generally...
...The health club pool at the Fairmont Princess in Bermuda, simply the most magnificent pool I have ever been in on the most magnificent island...
...He has claims to moral leadership...
...His movies were among the waking dreams that have informed my life...
...If we had a stricter set of laws about such things, what is happening might well be called "sedition," but since we have a First Amendment that allows free speech except for corporations and pro-life advocates, let's just call it what it is: sickening...
...Anywhere I feel peace, the greatest gift...
...He was a Jew and not rich, and was not allowed to join any of the fraternities on the beautiful campus...
...And what I am thinking, pure and simple, is what Wlady has just said...
...SATURDAY So, here I am eating Vietnamese food in Georgetown with Wlady and Mike Long, and savoring the delicious crispy rolls, and then off onto M Street to walk along and get stared at by young men and women and give them autographs...
...But he makes a good point...
...Anywhere my wife is smiling and holding my hand...
...I guess that this is the difference between a powerful, smoldering actor/director who works his way up to the top of the most competitive business on earth, show business, and an extremely mild-mannered economist...
...Again, this is a paraphrase...
...The most beautiful beach I have ever seen stretches outside your window and then an endless lake and mountains beyond that...
...It is great...
...The fascinating part for me is that my father, Herbert Stein, the late economist and public policy commentator, entered Williams in 1931...
...Yet to have "outed" the agents of this evil entity is still controversial in Hollywood and New York...
...What wicked lies...
...I cannot even imagine what the outcry would be if Mr...
...I look at them in their college yearbooks, look at my Christmas lights that I keep burning all year, and am in bliss...
...We used to think earthly life was horrible and paradise awaited us when we died...
...Enjoy it while you can...
...I actually heard a long excerpt from a Gore speech at a California community college or other school in a mostly black area of Los Angeles played not once but twice on the local news radio station...
...When I asked him thirty years after that if the experience had made him bitter about the time and place, he said that far from feeling bitter, he was grateful for the fine meals he had at the Sigma Chi house kitchen and for the opportunity to pay for his schooling at such a great school in the midst of the Great Depression...
...That somehow, in some way that cannot be measured or seen, the black voter in California is the victim of racism just by the fact of the recall being called and a ballot measure being proposed to not (yes, not) collect data on race in California...
...And what is Al Gore saying...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, and economist in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...We have modest standards for him...
...But mainly, good-bye to a man who was too smart and too independent to be a Communist stooge, smart enough to see what was good as well as what was bad in the society that had once filled him with rage...
...I saw a lot of the same in the most recent debate of the Democratic candidates for President in Baltimore a couple of weeks ago, and while it was positively subtle compared with what Gore was doing, it had the same ugliness about it: it was an explicit attempt to tear the nation apart based on meretricious appeals to racism and paranoia...
...The Edgewater Hotel in Sandpoint, Idaho...
...Bermuda is as good as it gets...
...His Splendor in the Grass in particular was probably the best movie on growing up in America, and on wealth and the loss of it that I have ever seen...
Vol. 36 • November 2003 • No. 6
