Ben Stein's Diary / Crying Games
Stein, Benjamin J.
Thursday ew Year's Eve at Morton's. I'm N there with my new b.f. Maxine, visiting from Portland, Oregon. Tonight, the place is jammed with young rich people and a few middle-aged poor people, or...
...A middle-aged woman in cowboy clothes came over to flirt with me...
...Right," he said tonelessly, "politically correct...
...She wanted to go to Friday night Jewish services to say prayers...
...There's yours truly, the nerd, sitting on the sidelines watching the pretty girls dance...
...Wednesday A hh, but then there is Pepperdine...
...Suddenly, a blinding thought came through my head...
...He was about to go to South America, he said, to see how countries of many different races were getting along...
...What am I saying...
...I paused and thought for a moment...
...Why can we not stop at McDonald's...
...Behind me, there's my co-star from Honeymoon in Vegas, Sarah Jessica Parker...
...He reminded us that it was New Year's Day, shabbat, then he told us that governments wanted people to stay in their place, and be slaves forever, but that as Jews, we wanted people to change and grow...
...They're not demonstrating in favor of murdering their own children, whining about being exploited, or demanding preferential treatment...
...What...
...It all reminds me of sock hops at the Silver Spring Armory, circa 1959...
...He picked out several child's tapes and we went on our way...
...Why not...
...Maybe it's just me...
...I already told you you can't have it tonight...
...To my right, there's the staggeringly good-looking girlfriend of Steve Tisch with someone I gather is her hairdresser...
...Oh, Lionel, how true it is that the good die young...
...He must have assumed that as a human he was heir to all that was best about human intelligence, and that all knowledge was his to explore and learn...
...As I ate my fresh tuna fillet and listened to the overpoweringly loud mariachi band, I thought about how I probably should have stayed in bed or at least at my tiny dining table, instead of being here in all of the noise...
...We got out to Malibu and stopped at the videotape store...
...He quotes Wilhelm Reich and Sigmund Freud...
...He was loaded for bear...
...I like it...
...I'll have to go over this with Irving Kristol...
...This is what it's all about—the media's hatred of authority, the media's hatred of the countryside, the media's rage at powerful business...
...I don't know...
...The recession...
...I soon found out...
...The commissars at the networks no longer even make any bones about it...
...At best that's what I am...
...I read once that you started that mini-series, 'Amerika,' to show what life in America would be like if the Soviets took over, and why we needed a strong defense program," he said to me, or words to that effect...
...My favorite part, though, was the small sermon that the rabbi preached...
...It's noisy at Morton's tonight, but there's an edge...
...We talked about my plan for a show about a race war, and he liked my pitch a lot...
...My neighbor at the Shoreham Towers, the lovely D., who had been extremely sick With what was thought to be an irreversible disease, and has now seemingly completely recovered, went away for Christmas and left me her tree...
...Smoking is definitely making a comeback among the young in this town...
...Ireland in Southern California...
...Lionel and I became fast friends...
...That's what's going on here...
...That's the way it is...
...As I watched, I fell into a deep and serious fear about providing for my retirement...
...Especially when I think about how much money I've lost in real estate...
...I am a lowly day player...
...I saw another woman who's a big-time record producer...
...The service has also changed...
...My class is in an underground room with no windows, which is a shame, since Pepperdine Law School offers the best views of any law school in the world, from a small mountain overlooking the Santa Monica Bay in Malibu...
...No...
...He's a likable, intelligent man of about 40, I'd say, with many kids and many ideas...
...Various columns of ants marched through the house en route to God knows what...
...He was deeply interested in social issues, particularly in how America was ever going to cope with the huge racial problems we faced...
...There has to be a way for people to learn to live together," he said...
...He was one of the best...
...It seems only yesterday that I was wondering how I could stretch my allowance to the end of the month in college...
...Political correctness has reached far into the guts of shul...
...The new line, straight from the Ministry of Truth, is that we are chosen to be witness to the equal feeling that God has for all of his people, and certainly not singled out for special favors...
...0 ff to my new favorite hangout, The Borderline Cafe, near my home in Malibu...
...Day of Political Correctness...
...Does that answer your question...
...He's right, and it scares me...
...Lionel Linder, another one who cannot be replaced...
...I have only about twenty students, each one a jewel...
...No one," I said...
...It's all the working out of the fears that arose in the Russian Jewish people over centuries of terror at the hands of the Tsar, the Cossacks, the nobility, the Russian Orthodox Church, the peasants who drowned Jews in wells...
...That's gone, too, even in the prayer book...
...The goal of a lifetime...
...Day of Political Correctness...
...He quotes Aristotle...
...Day of Reckoning...
...A sort of Rhodesia/Yugoslavia in America, with actual warfare between and among the races, as the whole dream falls apart and the glue of tolerance and shared beliefs dissolves...
...I can remember Lionel nodding vigorously...
...My fourth clue was that the shared love object of the IRA man and the Jamaican was a male transvestite...
...I feel edgy, too...
...Right, Daddy...
...0 ff in the deluge to a meeting with a producer...
...She told me she designed plant "environments" by "re-creating gardens indoors...
...Is that what you're saying...
...I slept on my couch in my living room...
...Daddy, can we stop at McDonald's on the way to the beach...
...It was having services, so in we went...
...My aunt Pearl once told me that when my grandfather lost his job during the Great Depression and couldn't get another one, a quiet settled over the house for years...
...Now it's time for you to do something about what's going to happen to us if we can't get along as different races...
...This change crops up over and over, deleting the politically questionable idea, passed on by those well-known sexist pigs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David, that the Almighty should be thought of in the male, ptooey, gender...
...At least we know where we are...
...What...
...I bought colored lights for the tree and watched them flicker all night long...
...Nicholas I's...
...He is five and he has his own Nanny who allows him to do anything, his own mother who is his total personality captive, teacherswho fall all over him to earn a smile...
...Smoking is definitely making a comeback among the young in this town...
...She's with a huge table of young, rich-looking kids, all smoking cigarettes as if there were no tomorrow...
...Maybe it's just me...
...I asked in shock...
...All that's lacking is the IRA...
...That's the way it is...
...And now we know why the critics loved it so much...
...No, the next stop is a little trailer by a lake in Idaho...
...The Crying Game is the first politically perfect movie of the Clinton era...
...All right," he said...
...We (or some of us) equate Nixon with the tsar, equate the Army with the Cossacks, the executives of Du Pont with the Streltsy...
...The fear is so deep that it bubbles out as anger even after we've been in America—a totally different animal from Tsarist Russia—for over a century...
...He does not claim to be a descendant of Ramses H. No, he quotes Shakespeare: "Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds...
...So that's how it is now, Comrade...
...thought a movie was perfect, and I wanted to know why...
...Somewhere nearby is Marty Starger...
...As I watched, I fell into a deep and serious fear about providing for my retirement...
...Tommy asked with a huge smile, as he burst into the living room...
...I have too much to do to watch the Clintons...
...To my right, there's the staggeringly good-looking girlfriend of Steve Tisch with someone I gather is her hairdresser...
...No...
...My third clue was that the heavy early action in this spy-IRA-twistsand-turns movie had to do with an IRA man fondling a British Jamaican soldier's private parts and then sharing a cigarette with him...
...I feel edgy, too...
...I listened to my messages and went through my mail...
...That paper publishes my work frequently...
...Anyway, lunch at Solly's Deli to discuss a project with the producer...
...More important, there are the girls, dancing and smiling...
...That's what we say at funerals, and sometimes it's even true...
...No dead rats, though, and that's a blessing...
...Through Malibu Canyon, through sheets of water, past a scary rock slide, through a flooded interpass, and then into the San Fernando Valley...
...Lionel and I became fast friends...
...Day of Reckoning...
...A lowly day player...
...That's got to change...
...As I ate my fresh tuna fillet and listened to the overpoweringly loud mariachi band, I thought about how I probably should have stayed in bed or at least at my tiny dining table, instead of being here in all of the noise...
...Still, after he fell asleep watching TV, I thought about Lionel Linder...
...Thence to sleep, as my TV shows photos of the Clintons...
...People in this country aren't even slightly oppressed by any group...
...The homosexuals are all great, compassionate, fun-loving guys...
...If we don't, we're in big trouble...
...It makes my skin crawl...
...Alert, polite, thoughtful, they even do their assignments...
...My first clue was that the theater was extremely heavily occupied by gay men and women...
...Behind me, there's my co-star from Honeymoon in Vegas, Sarah Jessica Parker...
...So it did...
...Then, after much chewing by me on a rubbery sandwich, he asked me who, in the race war story, would be the "oppressors...
...You can see the sunlight offthe waves on most days, and even today, when it's raining, you see a magical haze over the water...
...It's New Year's Day...
...Dies Irae...
...It was like, for the first time, every critic in New York and L.A...
...It makes my skin crawl...
...Are you saying you're going to get my lizard...
...Everyone had raved about it, and I wondered what was going on...
...What government...
...The people around me look happy, slender, rich, proud, but edgy...
...Dies Irae...
...You're working awfully hard," I said...
...Somewhere nearby is Marty Starger...
...The people around me look happy, slender, rich, proud, but edgy...
...Yet another is a mortgage loan officer...
...Scary...
...Then on home to listen to my Martin Luther King disc...
...If anyone would like for me to teach anything like Securities Law or Hollywood Culture, just say so...
...I'm impressed...
...I got to be friends with the editor, a fabulously thoughtful guy named Lionel Linder, at a banquet honoring my father when he won the Seidman Prize in Memphis about three years ago...
...That's got to change...
...I listen to it every day, and always learn something...
...Then there's the prayer that commands us to "respect the environment...
...I was awakened by a call from a secretary at the Commercial Appeal In Memphis...
...People are sometimes bad, sometimes good...
...That paper publishes my work frequently...
...It's the first cross-over homosexual love story to find its way to the big screen...
...A fter I lay in bed in shock for a few hours, I got up, and with my new best friend Maxine at my side went off to see a movie...
...Lionel Linder, an editor who sweated and bled over the sorrow he reported, dead at 60 because some fool just had to drive after he was loaded...
...My neighbor at the Shoreham Towers, the lovely D., who had been extremely sick With what was thought to be an irreversible disease, and has now seemingly completely recovered, went away for Christmas and left me her tree...
...You're a movie star...
...How can he ever be expected to do any work if no one ever expects him to do anything but be waited upon...
...There's still an underlying fear...
...Well, well, well...
...Yes," he said, "I agree, but it makes it better at the network if it's clear who the oppressors are, and preferably the white people...
...I love this job...
...Why not...
...But remember it's got to be correct...
...It's noisy at Morton's tonight, but there's an edge...
...I want it tonight and that's that...
...The womenwoman—is a murderous, square-shouldered, cold-hearted witch...
...A sort of Christmas Carol, a man's nightmare of what life in America's going to be if we don't learn to get along...
...No," I said...
...One of the best...
...I slept on my couch in my living room...
...They're just having a good time...
...The last time I saw Lionel, in March, in Memphis, we had lunch at the Peabody and talked about race...
...And that's that...
...I rarely see movies, but I thought this would distract me...
...Worry is the constant...
...The last time I saw Lionel, in March, in Memphis, we had lunch at the Peabody and talked about race...
...It seems only yesterday that I was wondering how I could stretch my allowance to the end of the month in college...
...Tonight, the place is jammed with young rich people and a few middle-aged poor people, or at least one of us...
...A project has to be politically correct...
...Out at my house, it was drizzling...
...Anyway, I have been working on that movie, and it's New Year's Day, and there's a secreThursday ew Year's Eve at Morton's...
...The network will take that...
...He was deeply interested in social issues, particularly in how America was ever going to cope with the huge racial problems we faced...
...People look edgy...
...No, as I told myself, I will stand up to him...
...Well, I want my lizard...
...Is that your question...
...Luckily, on our way out to the beach, we passed a synagogue in the San Fernando Valley...
...Worry is the constant...
...No...
...Then there's that old ethnocentric baloney about us Jews being "God's chosen people...
...It's Electric Slide Night, and I get to look at the men and women (especially the women) going through their elaborate country routines on the dance floor...
...The women are generally the better dancers...
...The congregants were almost all ancient Russian Jewish immigrants, who looked as tormented as people can be...
...She's with a huge table of young, rich-looking kids, all smoking cigarettes as if there were no tomorrow...
...Tommy asked...
...A gloomy quiet...
...Tonight, the place is jammed with young rich people and a few middle-aged poor people, or at least one of us...
...I have some bad news," she said...
...Not that it's wrong, of course...
...If we don't, we're in big trouble...
...Daddy," he demanded, "I want a lizard...
...How, I wondered, can Tommy ever be expected to be anything but little Caligula if everyone is always catering to him...
...A drunken driver crashed into him a few blocks from the paper...
...For example, I notice that Dr...
...I was awakened by a call from a secretary at the Commercial Appeal In Memphis...
...These three are pretty enough to make Clinton sign a tax cut for millionaires...
...We drove through the night...
...A gloomy quiet...
...Gay is in, straight is out...
...Friday N ew Year's Day...
...I was touched by their clinging to the synagogue after all they probably went through in Russia...
...How can he ever be expected to show any self-discipline if he's endlessly praised, never criticized, and never expected to do anything but smile...
...The goal of a lifetime...
...In fact, a great, great deal...
...Daddy," Tommy called from the bedroom, "I want my lizard...
...People look edgy...
...Behind me, there's my co-star from Honeymoon in Vegas, Sarah Jessica Parker...
...Los Angeles has taken on a green, emerald quality that's unusual...
...Well, then because I said so...
...Where the prayer book has something like, "We thank God for all of His blessings on us," the Thought Police have altered it toread, "We thank God for all of God's blessings on us...
...No, I'm not a movie star," I said...
...I started teaching my class in Advanced Securities Law there two days ago, and I love it...
...Make them open it up," he said...
...Somehow I don't recall that one from my youth, either...
...It's part of the mosaic of America...
...That's all right...
...A sort of Christmas Carol, a man's nightmare of what life in America's going to be if we don't learn to get along...
...The pet shop will be closed...
...We talked about leveraged buyouts, about 14-11.9 and 10-be5, about fiduciary duty, about everything, and then, gar nichts, back outside, into the pouring rain...
...The recession...
...I got to be friends with the editor, a fabulously thoughtful guy named Lionel Linder, at a banquet honoring my father when he won the Seidman Prize in Memphis about three years ago...
...Yes, just a little trailer where I can read Barron's and TAS, occasionally stroll into town to play checkers with the boys at the barber shop, and prepare for the High Chaparral...
...Someday, my TV is going...
...Heterosexual love is sick and twisted—abarely ambulatory British judge with a prostitute, the murderous Miranda Richardson with the hero even as someone is being tortured nearby...
...It was pouring there, too...
...I disagreed...
...There has to be a way for people to learn to live together," he said...
...King in his speeches does not quote African princes of some long-ago imaginary era...
...That used to be implicit, and now it's explicit...
...It's also clear that I soon won't be able to afford this lavish way of life with houses everywhere I turn...
...Skidded on a wet street, and now we're having a memorial for Lionel .. ." In my own 48-year-old way, I faded out for a while, and could only see Lionel nodding enthusiastically in that restaurant at the Peabody...
...The straight men are bloodless and also murderous...
...Now it's time for you to do something about what's going to happen to us if we can't get along as different races...
...T oday happens to be the first anniversary of the death of Maxine's parents...
...Especially when I think about how much money I've lost in real estate...
...Maybe a movie about a race war in America," I replied...
...I can remember Lionel nodding vigorously...
...Friday N ew Year's Day...
...My second clue was that the first few scenes were of Miranda Richardson looking like Madonna, or a gay man's idea of what a woman is...
...There's still an underlying fear...
...Anyway, I have been working on that movie, and it's New Year's Day, and there's a secreThursday ew Year's Eve at Morton's...
...His was a big view of man...
...Maybe a movie about a race war in America," I replied...
...One of my students followed me to my car anyway, talking about Metromedia and Delaware law...
...John Coyne says that we are making a lot of changes to accommodate people who will never be satisfied, and when we're through with the changes, we won't like what we have, but won't be able to go back...
...Lionel Linder was killed yesterday...
...I read once that you started that mini-series, 'Amerika,' to show what life in America would be like if the Soviets took over, and why we needed a strong defense program," he said to me, or words to that effect...
...Then over in the corner are two Pepperdine students, both good friends, and then a beautiful former model, now a waitress...
...She's with a huge table of young, rich-looking kids, all smoking cigarettes as itary from the Commercial Appeal on the line...
...Prepare for a lot more of this in the Clinton Nineties...
...This is what makes little dictators...
...I bought colored lights for the tree and watched them flicker all night long...
...Hmmm...
...Is that your question...
...This kid...
...My aunt Pearl once told me that when my grandfather lost his job during the Great Depression and couldn't get another one, a quiet settled over the house for years...
...At the Beverly Gonnection (sort of like a Connection), we bought tickets for The Crying Game...
...They strut their stuff in tight jeans and cowgirl boots, and try to look seductive and often succeed...
...He was about to go to South America, he said, to see how countries of many different races were getting along...
...A sort of Rhodesia/Yugoslavia in America, with actual warfare between and among the races, as the whole dream falls apart and the glue of tolerance and shared beliefs dissolves...
...Lionel laughing next to me at the dais at the Memphis Country Club...
...Because I said so," I answered...
...It's become pretty clear that most of my callers are women...
...Tonight, the place is jammed with young rich people and a few middle-aged poor people, or at least one of us...
...Does that mean 'politically correct...
...I don't know...
...That's what's going on here...
...In a car accident...
...Because the last time we did that, and the ten times before, you ordered food, got a miserable toy of some kind, and then wouldn't eat your food...
...0 ff to Hollywood to pick up The Imperial Child, his highness, Master Tommy Stein...
Vol. 26 • March 1993 • No. 3
