Ben Stein's Diarylrears and Cheers
Stein, Benjamin J.
"Ben Stein's Diarylrears and Cheers" Wednesday Here I am again in Heber Springs, Arkansas, visiting my hero father-in-law. It's a warm, dry day, and time for little me to visit the local school. I'm interested in education, plus I'm...
...Life with those you love, even life in a community formed by reading, is a gift, no matter what else happens...
...At most he's got a few million...
...He sang in a loud voice...
...It was clear from the get-go that if Bush lost Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Colorado by big margins¡ªas he did¡ªit was good-bye White House...
...There are no Miss Carters standing in front of the room saying "Two times two is four...
...And the books take a few months to grind out...
...It's so filled with books, newspapers, and assorted papers that it should really be an exhibit at the Smithsonian...
...He looked as if he was just itching to call the police...
...What a mess...
...Suddenly the whole bus looked sad and frightened...
...You do not learn how to get along with your fellow humans...
...The hours I spend telling about my life are hours spent among friends, an amber preserve of shared feelings and affection...
...Here's what it is...
...I'm up to a million two-fifty per book," he said...
...Spencer from CBS and near that of Brit Hume from ABC...
...Plus, George wasn't really that keenon winning himself," the woman added...
...None of us...
...We ate at a place called the Saloon...
...My kids would love it...
...Still, the notion bore down on me that there's a lot of enthusiasm for that old-time religion out there in America...
...For years now, I've been working on a general theory of faces, which basically holds that the farther inland from New York or Los Angeles one travels, the sweeter and more intelligent the faces...
...How smart Reagan was to have been endlessly friendly and one-of-the-boys to the press...
...As if the media didn't even bother to make presidential speeches to the nation for four years...
...Anyway, I'm lying here and nodding off, my father is sitting a few feet away looking at the silent TV, and my mother is looking through one of her many piles of newspapers...
...Pretty soon, I'll be at two million, and then who knows...
...At the sprawling campus of the Heber Springs combined elementary school, junior high school, and high school, my father-in-law Col...
...Luckily for me, as soon as they notice I'm from Ferris Bueller, they all love me...
...Ninety feet sounds exactly right...
...Not a little cabin cruiser...
...I worked for Nixon and loved him and still do...
...My self-help group, Journey into Self-Obsession, has a few applicable slogans: ?When someone criticizes you, maybe he's tight...
...But I wonder what the effect on kids is of interacting, if that's the right word, with a TV screen instead of with a flesh-and-blood adult...
...But the hostility toward the press is fantastic...
...This moment...
...has no money at all," the publisher said...
...They're smart...
...It's the last night of the campaign, and even though Bush is far behind in the polls, there's a mob scene here...
...After-dinner drinks with my pal D., a wealthy writer...
...In the years since I've been scribbling for The American Spectator, I have come to believe that the magazine and its readers are my family...
...I can't think of a time when a presidential candidate's party shouted a slogan of hating anyone...
...I like Iranians...
...You need learn no skills of social accommodation when you learn from a computer...
...Oh...
...She's glad he didn't win from what I hear...
...Time to rethink our lives...
...Tuesday E lection day here in Houston and everywhere else...
...No...
...Bush's speeches embarrass me...
...I fell in love many times and wound up taking girls to emergency rooms for drug overdoses and feeling I was the scum of the earth...
...His face was mottled and wet with perspiration...
...The third thing of note is that the Bush guests at this thing are really stoked at the media...
...Off to the Bush Victory Rally at the Astrodome...
...I cried every day for six months after he resigned...
...There was Bob Hope, God love him, still in there pitching...
...Easy come, easy go...
...I loved the school at Heber, and I loved the faces, but I kept thinking that having an adult teach you what is correct and incorrect is better than having a machine do it...
...Life does not change...
...I've never seen such enthusiastic human beings at a political gathering...
...Bush finally appeared and gave his usual rambling, shambling talk...
...On another trip I met two beautiful girls from the University of Texas named Michaelynn and Christie...
...The readers of the Spectator have become like a large meshpuchah, like kinfolk, all over America, sharing their lives with me as I share mine with them...
...I meekly went back to my press area, but the thought occurred to me that this hostility to the press and by the press had to be a two-way street...
...This is what the whole hope of a Republican party that stood for the ordinary man's dreams of what America should be has come to: blame it on the media...
...Why not...
...Maybe have a crew of five or six young women...
...Something like "Apartment of Old Washington Hands, 1937-1999...
...Because 1 have to support my family," I said...
...I'm interested in education, plus I'm interested in faces...
...Computers in neat rows, computers donated by the local grocery store, computers via the taxpayers of Arkansas and Cleburne County...
...But there is also an arsenal of thoughts that make me feel good and keep me able to act decently toward men, women, children, and above all dogs...
...I'm not...
...I took a bus across town to talk to another magazine guy, a wealthy man who owns a small, hip newspaper...
...Not just enthusiastic, enthralled, wildly devoted to Bush...
...Then again, what do I know...
...Then, at about 60th Street, a young African-American got on with dark glasses...
...Reagan knew he could tap into it by ? appealing to the dream of what America is spoze to be...
...We barely got in, and when we did, we had to edge forward slowly to get a glimpse of the entertainment before Bush's speech...
...Kelly," I asked on camera, after Bush was clearly gone, "do you ever like to go out with older men...
...As if showing hostility would somehow shame reporters and pundits into being nice...
...well...
...How about men who have houses in Malibu, paid for or not, with great connections in Hollywood...
...Arkansas has about the best-looking faces I've ever seen, and I say this even though it also has been known to produce some very cagey, slick faces...
...Plus just about the only substantial presence is us media folk...
...Wednesday H ere I am again in Heber Springs, Arkansas, visiting my hero father-in-law...
...My stand-up slot is right next to Susan...
...I can't even turn on a computer...
...It was a cheery Fifth Avenue bus, and the New Yorkers on it looked surprisingly cozy and relaxed...
...Reagan's speeches used to bring tears to my eyes...
...Thursday A meeting in New York with a magazine editor...
...The last refuge of losers...
...You can't...
...They would crawl on ground glass for Bush...
...I see," I said...
...The young Texas bucks in their ill-fitting suits and their girlfriends are eying us as if they'd like to kill us...
...Do you know what kind of college graduates we get...
...American urban life in a nutshell...
...It's always going to have fear and envy and ambition and low self-esteem lurking out there behind every bush...
...I want a real yacht, though...
...That's for now...
...Women are leaning forward with misty, damp looks in their eyes...
...A thought keeps going through my mind...
...Yes," she said...
...Makes sense to me...
...All of those things are going to conspire to make me feel bad...
...It also consists of treasuring those whom I love and who love me, and of worshipping the moments of serene companionship with those I love, those perfect gifts from God...
...Something that I can take friends on and not be ashamed...
...You can "talk" to it while you pick your nose...
...A very wealthy Houstonian whom I knew slightly talked to me under the watchful eye of a Bush Kommando...
...Several times during the evening, as I went off to buy drink tickets from a beautiful young blond woman named Kelly, the Bush goons shouted at me, "Media back to your slots...
...I felt really sad for the party...
...Being on TV is a drug...
...People are saved by knowing what good is, and happiness is falling in love with what you already have...
...I see...
...How idiotic to treat the press with mean ingless hostility...
...he asked me...
...This cozy scene...
...Ted Williams, great baseball player and fisherman...
...O000h, I really like smart men," she said...
...We ate at an Italian restaurant on the West Side...
...I took a bus downtown to buy shoes...
...A computer is unforgiving and mechanical...
...When you have a disagreement with someone, maybe he's right...
...I want a yacht my kids won't be ashamed of, Benito," he said...
...Elementary school as I knew it years ago¡ªlong before there were any computers besides the refrigerator-like things at the Strategic Air Command¡ªhas apparently vanished from Heber Springs...
...They were being brave and level-headed...
...I can't really show my thanks except maybe by taking all of you to Morton's and by saying what I've just said: when you're in a room with your elderly parents and it's all quiet, and the sun is setting over the Potomac, and you know you're safe for an hour or two, you're in a good place...
...I felt fear about money every day for more than a decade...
...Something substantial, yet fun...
...Really...
...This father who ignores his angina to work out complex calculations and look up obscure quotes for me...
...I would rather have children grow up thinking that their elders were the source of wisdom than thinking that a machine they can turn on and off is their only master...
...The kids had extremely sweet faces, and the teachers looked like my dream of what teachers should be: focused, kindly, patient, and eager to teach...
...Monday E lection eve in Houston...
...I tried to tell him that I couldn't really get a feel for the crowd's enthusiasm from the press pen, but he wouldn't listen...
...Of course, their stand-up slots are a lot bigger, but at any rate I'm in damned good company...
...No," I said...
...Charlton Heston, God really love him, tireless for the cause...
...There are lines of cars stretching for miles to get in and cheer for Bush...
...He started playing drums on a seat next to an elderly woman...
...CI...
...The party was not happening...
...These people are enthusiastic...
...They were lovely young rich women who seemed genuinely heartsick that Bush was going to lose...
...He really was ready to retire and get out of public service...
...He gave a short, rambling but polite concession speech, and the crowd of his pals shouted, "WE HATE THE PRESS," over and over again...
...We registered our humble selves with the powersthat-be in the principal's office, and then were shown around the pleasant school...
...Computers, computers everywhere...
...some wonderful country singers...
...The truth is," she said, "that Barbara Bush hated being First Lady and didn't want George to even run again...
...Not "like" family, but family...
...He's broke...
...It's a complex thought, but sort of important, so let me explain: ¡¡Someday, none of this is going to be here...
...This warm intellectuals' apartment of University of Chicago grads who have seen Presidents come and go...
...We had one from Brown, who didn't know what a dateline was...
...The people who run the Spectator¡ªBob Tyrrell, Wlady Pleszczynski, Chris Caldwell, Ron Burr, and before them, long ago, Adam Meyerson¡ªhave never flagged in their solidarity with me...
...Denman and I strolled into the elementary school...
...Not sweet, but smart...
...Happy birthday, Bob and Wlady and Ron and Chris and everyone else, and thanks for my family...
...and a fabulously good choir from the First Baptist Church...
...Oh, well...
...Sunday ere I am in Washington, D.C...
...In the past few years, I have come to a better understanding of things...
...Good lessons...
...I used to wonder where all of the Iranians who aren't in either Iran or Los Angeles have been hanging out, and now I know...
...When someone tells you that you made a mistake, maybe you did...
...What future does this country have when journalism interns don't know what a dateline is...
...As I looked at Bush fumbling as the multitudes hoped for more, I kept thinking of an heir tossing away his principal, a spendthrift who had no idea of the legacy he'd been left...
...Almost twenty years ago, Bob Tyrrell called me out of the blue to ask me to be a movie critic for his magazine...
...The sums he was mentioning so dwarfed my own royalties that it was like comparing a beetle to an elephant...
...The spell had been broken...
...He started talking dirty to himself...
...I would have to be as good a writer as Bob and Wlady and my hero-writers Aram Bakshian and John Coyne to really say how moved I am to have had this family...
...Bush hasn't much of a clue...
...Arnold Palmer...
...We talked about stories, and then he said, "Can we get you to write a column for us really cheap...
...He said he wanted me to share my "wisdom" with readers...
...It sounds like a shrewd move in these times...
...It's not "like" a drug...
...The son who cries far more than a middle-aged man should cry and laughs inappropriately...
...Men are flushed and breathing heavily...
...Let me tell you...
...You do not learn how to think and memorize and reason while you learn to follow some general rules of human conduct...
...How about older, intellectual type men...
...It was a scary sight...
...My whole life was based on fear and trying to fight it by eating too much, showing off, and acting as if I knew what wisdom was...
...The masks came down and the weary, resigned looks appeared...
...Accept what's inevitable, and work with it...
...I still remember the phrase, because when he and I talked I lived in a miserably small hovel in Washington, was unhappy and frustrated much of the time, was so filled with self-hate that I used to hit my dog when she misbehaved, and maybe didn't even know how to spell "wisdom...
...They're the best of all," she said...
...Time has passed...
...Kids sitting at computers learning reading, spelling, math, vocabulary, geography, history...
...Well, T. writes for us really cheap," he said...
...This mother who at her age lugs huge cartons of fresh orange juice for blocks for me, her 47-year-old boychik...
...I want something with at least ninety feet of length...
...The first thing I noticed about the Bush-Quayle Victory Party is that the name has subtly been changed, more or less overnight, to the Bush-Quayle Election Party...
...I felt sad, but then I flirted with the girl selling the drink tickets, brought her on TV to flirt with her on TV, and then I felt still better...
...He said he would call the police if the press did not return to its area...
...At H this moment, so to speak, I'm lying on an ancient couch in my parent's amazing Watergate apartment...
...It is a drug...
...They look as if awaiting the One True Messiah...
...It's a small apartment, but seems to have every book ever written...
...I guess that's all done by software designed somewhere far away...
...Four times four is sixteen...
...is already rich...
...What's the point...
...As if the media tossed away Nixon's innovation and brilliance in foreign affairs, his compassion for the poor, as if the media trashed Ronald Reagan's flawed but still historic vision of an America of opportu, nity for everyone, not just for Wall Street...
...I had to do something to amuse myself...
...Blame it on the media...
...The second odd thing is that the party is in a smaller room than the room where dentists' daughters have their wedding receptions...
...At about 9:30 local time, Bush appeared on stage...
...A forest of computers...
...Not only is it small, but it's extremely unfestive...
...I'm thinking of buying a yacht...
...Even he could not really come up with any good reasons why we should re-elect him...
...The arsenal consists of feeling gratitude instead of envy, of, surrendering to what's inevitable instead of fighting it, of trusting in God instead of money or movie stars or cars, of realizing my own insignificance except in a comic sense...
...Benjamin J. Stein, author most recently of A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation (Simon & Schuster), is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...Now will you do it really cheap...
...They're driving taxis in Houston, working as desk clerks at Houston hotels, waiting tables at Bennigan's at the Galleria...
...On one of my forays to get a drink I met Bob Mosbacher and on another Imet his son...
...In the background, teachers hover and help, often talking to little knots of children who do not happen to be at computers...
...I'm here at the behest of Comedy Central to broadcast to the nation from the Bush-Quayle Victory Party at the Galleria Westin in Houston...
...As I made a mental note of this religious revival, a young Bush storm trooper approached me and my producer for Comedy Central and shouted at us, "Press, back to your area...
...He's a fabulous guy, the true salt of the earth, a literary, sensitive, wonderful man...
...T...
Vol. 26 • January 1993 • No. 1
