Ben Stein's Diary / Two Steps Forward
Stein, Benjamin J.
I see America dancing, and it's a Texas two-step. Let me tell you some more about The Borderline. Near my house in Trancas, at the North End of Malibu, there was for years a tumbledown restaurant...
...Get hip: the laws that apply to the ordinary working stiff or pig Babbitt businessman do not apply to the Yale Law student...
...Maybe they really have some solutions, just the way Jimmy Carter did...
...Oh, happy day that Tommy's mother chose life for him, Mommy, and me...
...Baby boomers are too lazy to even learn the steps to the neon moon...
...There was the restaurateur who loved her so much that he fell off a cliff with grief when she went out with the sunglasses magnate again...
...The whole point about Critical Legal Studies is not that the law protects the Du Ponts...
...That's it...
...Let's make a wish...
...Take my wife...
...That little controlled grimace which always plays at the corners of Bill's mouth no matter what he's saying...
...Just for myself, I have never heard Bill Clinton say one completely off-the-wall remark about public policy...
...w hat kind of woman did you think Billary would name to be A.G...
...The kid is a maniac for cold-blooded animals...
...That's how he won...
...Is that really, Daddy...
...Not because of experience or achievements, but because he's a baby boomer, and by, total chance, younger than Bush...
...That's about a third of the time...
...There's more exploiters and moguls than you can shake a stick at...
...Jubilee was surprisingly spacious and pleasant...
...Sunday LT ere is when it's great to be me, in 1 1.February of 1993: • When Tommy's back, and has been riding with me out to the beach and turns to me and says, "I missed you, Daddy, on the boat...
...There are no two ways about it: a saint...
...Of course, by then, the Donna Shalala Anti-Sex League may not allow consensual straight hetero relationships...
...There was the pots-andpans king who was so jealous of her that he hired detectives to watch her...
...Today, when I picked him up and hugged him, he said, "Daddy, do you have a surprise for me...
...We strolled around, and then I left the ship and headed for my car...
...But most of the' time, there are the hand-holding, look-your-partner-in-the-eye and lookseriously-romantic dances, particularly the two-step and the "cowboy cha-cha...
...No," he said, "I mean a real surprise...
...two deep at the bar, and the place is humming...
...Actually, I have had many idealized women in my life: Mom, who taught me how to skip, back in 1950...
...She works with retarded and autistic children at a state home near Camarillo, and she just lost her own three-year-old son, and her life has not been easy...
...There's Albert Brooks, the great comedian...
...There's a woman dancing near me whom I know from another life...
...Alas, the strict hand of the mortgage holders of my many dwellings will not accept promises...
...A few tables away, there's billionaire Ronald Perelman, owner of Revlon and many other companies...
...he asked...
...Really...
...Doesn't anyone get it...
...Speaking of which, I've been watching TV all morning and all afternoon, watching Zoe Baird, listening for rumors about tax increases on everyone, watching the trial balloons go up and down, hearing about the military, gays, and justice, and I keep thinking a simple thought: What else did you, my fellow Americans, think Bill was going to do...
...By the way, how can we possibly have had two presidents who are grown men who ask us to call them by little boys' names...
...If they dress like little kids . . .) Anyway, good luck to you both...
...It was swell...
...Several Mommies from the shul, Temple P.C., and their kiddies, will be going with them...
...Can you carry me...
...Not the draft laws, not the tax laws, not the laws of gravity or sexual relationships, not laws about bribes, not laws about drugs, nothing...
...When I get awakened in the morning by boxing bunny punching my foot and saying, "Daddy, did that hurt...
...Never mind...
...He's got four birds, two onyx lizards (Spike and Spikey), two turtles (Tiny Tim and Tiny Tim II), and more fish, shrimp, and crayfish than Ican count...
...For about an hour, she tells me about various men in her life, always a bad sign...
...How can we possibly have had two presidents who dress like little boys, with sweaters and baseball caps...
...About two weeks ago I took a dance lesson—an almost unbelievably expensive private session—so I wouldn't beembarrassed and look like a big nerdy teacher on the floor with my pal Jane, and now I know the two-step pretty well, and the neon moon haltingly...
...She's been with me, off and on, since 1966...
...You're going to be anointed King of the Universe...
...That's how it is out here during the recession...
...But check out the face on Inauguration morning...
...Please...
...t's Friday night tonight, and Jane and / I are eating dinner here, and between courses and afterwards, we've been dancing the two-step, with many twirls, "sweetheart positions," and an occasional dip, in the midst of the happy other dancers...
...She moves me not only because she's from Queens, and is trying so hard to do the Texas two-step right...
...There's Barry Diller, ace communications executive...
...But today, I have him...
...Talk about a deck stacked in favor of dead European males...
...But—and this is a huge, NOW–sized but—what are the common characteristics of baby boomers, comrade...
...You're going on a cruise, which Daddy has never been privileged to go on," I said...
...She's tall and young and gorgeous, but she's clearly trouble...
...The Borderline is packed almost every night, not with drunk ranch hands, but with men and women of all ages from their twenties to their seventies with dancing on their minds...
...This is America dancing...
...How's that...
...There's Peter Morton himself...
...When Tommy jumps up and down next to the bed, punching me, and saying, "Daddy, I'm boxing bunny, and I have to punch you...
...Anyway, I hate it when she's gone...
...We don't burn our draft cards at the Court House, 'Cause we like living right and being free...
...The sullen look...
...If I could get away with it, the way William Jefferson Snopes Gantry Clinton does, I still would be one...
...What I keep thinking is how miserable and crazy it would make those Nazis if they could see how not only Jane's mother survived, but how happy Jane is dancing the two-step in the land of the free and the home of the brave...
...Seriously...
...I really hate it when Alex is gone...
...I loved The Borderline from the moment I walked in the door...
...Monday D inner at Morton's, the warm cen- ter of the universe...
...What else...
...The surprise is that I'm not working at the Federal Trade Commission...
...He actually laughed...
...At one table there's billionaire Marvin Davis, who seemingly never goes out without his family, which is nice...
...Saturday T ommy, sent to foment revolution like Lenin to the Finland Station, is playing with his new turtles and lizards...
...We're not talking the Virginia Reel here, but complex "line dances" in which men and women line up and kick in all different—highly coordinated ways, turn and re-turn, generally like a Broadway chorus line but vastly more complicated...
...She was furious on Inauguration Day that it was Bill, not she, who was getting sworn in...
...For one thing, it usually has a number of pretty girls, and I love to watch pretty girls dancing...
...Can I sleep in bed with you...
...Can you come next time...
...Instead, like Billary at the Inaugural, they do some made-up, free-form (oh, wow) dance to "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," which, Bill and Hillary, you were never supposed to dance to...
...I want my Tommy...
...That's his greatest accomplishment in life: he's younger than people who are older than he is...
...There was the sunglasses heir who fell so in love with her that when she went out with another man, he became a cocaine addict...
...Not in 1970 or 1972, not now, not ever...
...Then workmen came with their hammers and saws, and on New Year's Eve the Borderline—a combined restaurant, bar, and dance floor for country music—was opened...
...Perfect and Mommy's stateroom was like a room in a Holiday Inn, but it had a huge window, deeply in need of a washing, and two beds and plenty of room...
...I'm with an almost unbelievably beautiful girl whom I met at The Borderline...
...Check it out, pals...
...And Alex, shimmering Alex, who never gave up, who, in 1968, slapped me because I had voted for RN, and by 1992 was the only human I know brave enough to tell the women of Temple Inclusive that Maya Angelou was a fraud and a no-talent fool...
...I hope I'm wrong...
...As far as I can tell from my prime barometer of economic research, the crowd at Morton's, the recession is over...
...It's a trip organized by Temple No Gender to allow the Mommies to escape the humdrum of life while the Daddies stay and work and earn their bread by the sweat of their brow...
...There are two black couples out on the floor, looking relaxed and at home in the midst of the country-comforts crowd...
...When it comes to doing, there are taxes on Social Security, Reichian bureaucracies to "guide" investment, anti-sex league laws to protect human beings from emotion, feminist laws to protect women from being women...
...I'm trying to wean him off of expecting a present frorn me every morning...
...My pal Steve tells me that I am theonly man he knows who has an idealized woman in his life still...
...He's getting better looking minute by minute...
...Okay, fair is fair, and Bush would have used that trick if he could have...
...Here she had the ideas, the control, the focus, the guts, and Bill was getting the gig...
...As I listened, thinking about the dance floor at The Borderline and watching the lights of the ships out to sea, I felt as if I were tripping, literally tripping on being an American...
...Unlike revolting rap dancing, or "hip hop" or whatever moron word describes it, country dancing has men and women holding each other, staring into each other's eyes, dancing in rhythm with one another, looking happy, talking to each other, and generally acting as if they meant each other well...
...Tommy looked somewhat overwhelmed...
...Mary J., who taught me that I was worth loving, and that was in 1965...
...That's a wife, even an erstwhile wife...
...But talking ain't doing...
...About a year ago, the place was vandalized and closed...
...My sister, who taught me that you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose, and that would have been in about 1950 also...
...Get used to it...
...In a couple of weeks, you're going to Washington, D.C., with Daddy, to see your braino Grandma and Grandpa...
...Then there's Jane, dancing with me, concentrating mightily, looking as if she really means to learn how to country dance with the best of them...
...Take it from me...
...For every "neon moon," "electric slide," and "tush push," there are five hand-holders...
...No, I'm joking you," I said...
...They talk as if they were really reasonable, really well informed, the models of what a Jeffersonian citizen of the commonwealth should be...
...It's just so wonderful to be in this country, so different from the sordid rest of the history of mankind that it's like we've all taken a pill that makes life move to a different, better dimension...
...There are a few stars here from Malibu's firmament, notably my former neighbor Martin Sheen, and a major league record producer named Susan Hamilton...
...Of course it would be someone rich, because the Clintons only hang out with people who are rich...
...More to the point, it's because she looks so happy when she gets a step right, so happy on this wooden dance floor next to the beach at Zuma listening to Hank Williams, Jr...
...I really pity the girls who get in his sights when he grows a little older...
...I went to school with a lot of them...
...and Aaron Tippin...
...Figure it out: He's a self-described baby boomer...
...This one is really important, and Billary, Duncan Kennedy, and I all learned it at the same fount: if you're slick enough and make enough, the laws don't apply to you...
...Through a lot of torture inflicted on her by a person of gender (me), a great many years of having me tell her we were about to go broke, many years of hearing me talk about Milken until she was sick to her stomach...
...What I wonder is, can't viewers see it all on Billary's face...
...Check out the whole electric purple, sunglasses, "Hi...
...There's a wait to get a table, a mob Sunday Up at the crack of dawn to drive Mommy and Tommy to San Pedro to board a huge cruise ship, the Jubilee, which will take them to Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta...
...She worked in a beauty parlor in Queens most of her adult life, with her number on her forearm...
...Can't they see just how worried and controlled and on stage Billary is all of the time...
...For most of my life I was one of them...
...What else...
...I've just gotten out of the treatment center and I'm on my way to the big city to have a ball" outfit...
...No, the point is that the law is available to protect and/or be avoided by anyone who is cool enough, loaded enough with money or glibness, to rise above it...
...It stood empty for months...
...Hillary is obviously an intelligent woman...
...Tommy was particularly restless, but also particularly cute...
...Tomorrow, he's going on a cruise to Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan with Mommy...
...Wahh...
...My guess is that he's trying to figure out a way -to send them out into the house to torture me...
...The other passengers looked happy and eager to go...
...That small-town con-man's hair...
...Pat K., who taught me that dogs were the best creatures on earth, and that was in about 1972...
...Stone over...
...He's dancing with a Korean woman who owns one of the best two-steps I've ever seen...
...When Tommy says, after dinner at The Borderline, "Daddy, I'm tired...
...I wish them well...
...That fake smile, even when discussing federal highway projects...
...Yes," I told him...
...The S.S...
...When I'm holding Tommy and he opens his huge blue eyes and looks up at an absolutely clear night sky above Zuma Beach and says, "Daddy, look, I can see the wishing star...
...She's a saint...
...Jeff Berg, head of ICM...
...They're all just like Billary...
...Thank you, God, for country dancing in America...
...But mostly it's just ordinary folks, who turn up in Nissans and Jeeps and Oldsmobiles and really know their stuff...
...By night, there would be a few ranch hands guzzling beer, and an occasional, mostly terrible, rock band on the stage...
...Of course it would be someone who would fudge on taxes and immigration laws, because baby boomers don't believe laws apply to them...
...Bill Block, high official of ICM...
...My dance partner and pal, Jane, keeps getting passed by a Vietnamese mart in a cowboy outfit complete with red bandanna coming out of his back pocket...
...B ack at my house above Trancas Bluffs, I listened to Merle Haggard singing about being proud to be an Okie from Muskogee: We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, And we don't take our trips on LSD...
...They require specie...
...That shaking of the head when he talks, as if he were trying to convince himself—an obviously cagey self—that he was telling the truth...
...I'm telling you, I know these people...
...That hair...
...For another, the people who are dancing look like they're fond of one another...
...It is as if Lazarus had been raised from the dead...
...Near my house in Trancas, at the North End of Malibu, there was for years a tumbledown restaurant and bar at the edge of a grocery store parking lot...
...Jane's mother was in Auschwitz for five years and survived...
...When Tommy says, "Daddy, I'm scared of the Gremlins...
...What distinguishes baby boomers from other generations is their ability to turn self-obsession into a virtue, to take their lives of unique privilege handed on to them through the blood and sacrifice of their elders and call it suffering and peonage (as in "The Student as Nigger"), to promise much and deliver little, to allow their smugness and con jobs to pass for actual hard work...
...We'd better be ready to move to Singapore...
...That's country dancing, where people of every kind belong, America on its toes, open and friendly and forgiving of even the clumsiest beginner, as long as he or she is trying to learn the steps...
...But she's dancing and looking brave and even happy, in between waiting tables so that she can subsidize the state of California for her work on behalf of its least fortunate citizens...
...They come from Van Nuys and Encino, from Manhattan Beach and Torrance, from Ventura and Oxnard, from Beverly Hills, and most of all from Malibu and Santa Monica, and can they dance...
Vol. 26 • April 1993 • No. 4
