Ben Stein's Diary / Tough Love
Stein, Benjamin J.
tiations, he will appear less pro-Palestinian than nearly half the Israeli cabinet—hardly a comfortable position for the aging terrorist. But if Rabin reneges on his pledge to Shas and forcibly...
...Law and Economics is a shell game designed to keep the money right where it is now, in the hands of the lawyers...
...This is a lively, friendly bunch...
...I called in for my messages...
...I don't want him growing up with toxic shame...
...A delightful dinner with my angel child, Mr...
...mistake, though by now he must surely think so...
...I play a nerdy astronomer...
...Then candy on the Universal City Walk, while we watched the Olympics on a huge screen above an immense plaza...
...How infinite in faculty...
...Truth to tell, they can take all night...
...Then a few months ago, she began calling with a series of chilling messages—like the one I mentioned a few paragraphs back...
...I was in my glorious 1962 Corvette...
...Did I mention that the dancer has the longest legs in the world...
...3, CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE KTVN, CHANNEL 2, RENO, NEVADA WITS, 92.3 BLOOMINGTON,INDIANA WGCL, '1370 AM, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA WADI, 95.1 FM, FORT WAYNE...
...I was thin...
...Sometimes they ask me really smart questions...
...Click, click, click...
...All he can do is play for time, pray for a miracle, and ponder the wisdom of Sir Walter Scott: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...
...There's about to be some major law enforcement around the telemarketing I've been doing...
...He was smart, but not as smart as he thought he was...
...Up at seven to go to a commercial...
...I'm talking to some lawyers for the RTC who are supposedly prosecuting a lawsuit against some accountants who didn't give a straight count of the assets of a major Drexelweb S&L...
...A call from L.A...
...They get points for new business, not for turning down new business...
...Plus, they're obviously scared to death of the lawyers for the defendants...
...The police were encouraging, but as always, they were understaffed and overwhelmed...
...Norman Lear, my old boss, used to say that at Tandem, his wildly successful production company, nothing was certain except death and toilets...
...Then, something happened that the writers of TV movies might not have anticipated: W. worked as an editor at a very successful TV production company named Witt-Thomas...
...Come out here and schmact, people...
...I read and listened to Mozart's Requiem over and over again...
...No, not really, Tommy," I said...
...Then I rushed out to Pepperdine to teach my Law and Economics class...
...W. felt she was part of a team working day and night to catch the stalker...
...This woman, a paradigm of self-discipline in many areas of her life, a maniac athlete along the beach in Santa Monica,and a devout vegetarian, started to lose her mind...
...The executive producers are Joel Shukovsky and Diane English, who also own "Murphy Brown...
...No problem...
...Route 66 was slippery and foggy...
...Thanks...
...We're "schmacting" as our director, Bob Berlinger, says...
...We're not acting...
...Still, it was a nice image...
...Why not put everyone in boot camps...
...Good...
...I'm trying to explain to them that it's all indeterminate and impossible to figure out in any scientific way...
...Alas, there had been a scheduling contretemps, and I had nothing to do there...
...Frankly, I'm not sure they do," he said...
...My neighbor was soon asleep...
...It's not...
...For once in a blue moon, I have a really pleasing neighbor...
...I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner...
...Keep staring...
...We read our lines around a table and then began to rehearse...
...It's like acting only it's for situation comedy...
...Silly me...
...I stopped in the coffee shop on the lot to have a great cheeseburger...
...I love being on the set...
...Perfect...
...She hasn't spoken to me for almost twenty years, and I have to give her credit for constancy...
...All through the day I had to call in to various magazines for whom I am writing pieces...
...Hi, Benito, it is I, Gartho...
...Slowly but surely, then, Rabin is running out of options...
...They have such sweet young faces...
...I waited until the last possible moment, when the workmen were already taking down the planetarium, already stripping the paint from the walls, to leave...
...Sometimes, when I think of all that's happened, and how it's all past, I know I'm going to die...
...I don't want to go to school anymore...
...Did I mention that Q. is middle-aged and has always had too much responsibility...
...It's a sitcom about people who work in a bar and are always bickering...
...He's, a partner at Price Waterhouse, a big fan of Ferris Bueller, and a lively guy...
...I just know it, and I plan to channel and psycho-cyberneticize myself right into that job...
...Q. signed off with no hint at all that • he took me seriously...
...I'm responding to your idea of putting neurotic people in boot camps...
...Oh boy, I thought...
...It's magic here on the set, and I hate to go back to the real world of hatemongers and psycho lunatics and audits...
...It's in the mail...
...And, it's the third time that the ground crew has de-iced the wings...
...I'll make this really simple," I said to Q. "You'll regret it if you leave your family...
...Yeah...
...Other times, not...
...I can tell,, even though I'm blind, that you're very handsome...
...We might get lucky...
...Click, click, click...
...I've been channeling and meditating and praying that I get that job at Hasbro...
...How I wish I could wave a wand and make all of these people into the kind Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu, California...
...The chief writer, Mark Flanagan, went to Yale Drama School while I was at the law school, and we know a number of people in common...
...I was crawling along and still slipping...
...It was frantic...
...Click, click, click...
...So, what happened...
...and I'm really getting scared...
...He's also been telling me about the ethics of the accounting business (at firms other than his, of course), and it's not encouraging...
...We played for a couple of hours...
...He did not fire her...
...It's a long, narrow room with no windows to the outside world...
...Then, off to KCOP, L.A.'s Channel 13, for my guest commentary...
...W. had to leave her apartment not once but twice to escape the stalker, whose notes were becoming steadily more terrifying and specific...
...Click, click, click...
...58 The American Spectator April/May 1994 SARKES TARZIAN INC IIIIMMINIMINION•1111111 WRCB, CHANNEL...
...If -it's those people I met in Washington on this trip, heaven help us...
...He did not yell at her for missing work...
...The guys who are writing up new business don't really want to stop and take a close look at whether the client is strictly heads-up," he says...
...Our flight took almost seven hours...
...I haven't seen him, but I'm sure he's doing great work...
...She couldn't concentrate at work, couldn't sleep, and began to live in a state of constant terror and agitation...
...Friday T aping day...
...CI The American Spectator April/May 1994 59...
...I made four hundred dollars last night, and I had a really good time dancing...
...One of the extras keeps staring at me...
...Now, this is great, because if the accountants are not paying attention to whether or not the client is telling the truth about his financial statements, how is anyone else going to know about it...
...There's a lot still to be done, to be sure...
...She has such a sense of adventure...
...But by then, Tommy had fallen asleep...
...I think I'm going to throw away my TV...
...He arrived in a huge black limousine, and has been bustling around the set...
...he cannot hope to contain mounting West Bank violence indefinitely and prevent it from spilling over into Israel proper...
...Gartho is a multi-millionaire psychiatrist who mostly sails his yacht off the coast of Hawaii, the big island, I think...
...After class I headed for the faculty lounge to take a nap...
...We've been out on the runway for—count 'em—three hours...
...Back to Studio City to read my lines about the planet Uranus and the various ways it's pronounced, and then back to the space age studio to read the copy, this time on the right schedule...
...He has to be sent to jail for a long time...
...Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies...
...I read my lines, smiled broadly, and then went to a studio to pitcha script...
...And not that different from my role this week as an astronomer pronouncing Uranus in a provocative way...
...I'm at Dulles Airport, barely alive after leaving Foggy Bottom in a huge snowstorm...
...This last from a beautiful woman in my condo who is chronically unemployed, even when she's working...
...Well," I said, "once upon a time there was a big evil man named Bill, and he was president, and he wanted to keep you and me from seeing our doctors...
...I thought it was this ex-con in my building, but now I think it's probably the body builder I met who's also maybe an ex-con...
...I became friends with her and we spent many an afternoon together talking about self-help programs...
...He's been telling me about his job, which sounds very tiring, flying around examining oil rigs...
...Fine with me," I said...
...Her life began to disintegrate...
...The airplane finally took off, and away we went...
...It's totally disgraceful, and I wouldn'twant my kids to watch it...
...We had a tiny coach meal, and then saw an almost unbelievably bad movie about football...
...On the other hand, in those days I didn't have a conscience...
...Well, did you see all the dirty, jokes about women that Jay Leno had last night...
...It's bliss...
...You can just play all day and Granddad's trust will cover it all...
...Then, I walked past George Washington University, where my eternal wife, or perhaps I should say my eternal flame, went to law school...
...We had terrible headwinds...
...It tends to have major consequences not readily foreseeable...
...They're amazingly friendly and-nice, and I want them to adopt me, even though I'm older than they are...
...You sit right down and do your homework," Mommy said...
...Don't they pay any attention to that...
...Toys are my world, and I really know that I'm the best person for the job...
...Someday soon I'm going to write an article for a men's magazine about why you should not under almost any circumstances leave your wife...
...Instead, he said, in effect, "Hey, we work in TV...
...Chalk up another few hundred million lost to the taxpayers...
...It doesn't matter if you'd never have any skills or any good work habits or know anything...
...This from my Russian immigrant friend, Lev Davidovich Bronstein, who now calls himself Whitney Mandeville (not Trotsky...
...But if Rabin reneges on his pledge to Shas and forcibly removes the Jews from Hebron, he will set off a political firestorm in Israel that could bring down the government...
...Last night, she saw the stalker on videotape slashing her tires...
...I want to be buried on the set...
...This last from a woman who's a beautiful, sweet friend, but if she thinks a psychiatrist will help, my heart goes out to her...
...To die en route to Dulles...
...I'm really getting worried...
...I feel that way particularly in Washington, where so much of my youth was spent...
...But what if it's going to cost them billions down the road in lawsuits...
...What a piece of work is man...
...This boot camp idea is really growing on me...
...How is the RTC ever going to get our money back if these are the kind of people who represent them...
...It's not a real subject...
...They make about a half-dozen shows, including "Blossom" and "The John Larroquette Show...
...That's all I'm going to say...
...The American Spectator April/May 1994 57 Then, a visit to dreamland, and then into my trusty Acura for the schlep back to town...
...Up at seven this morning to read a funny commercial for Amoco gasoline...
...It's about Jews and blacks...
...He's a stalking victim himself, so he knows all about it...
...The rest of the time, they were sitting in the back of the cabin hanging out and gossiping...
...I'm in law offices in Washington, D.C...
...One of the sets is a bar, and I, your humble servant, was invited to hang around the bar while they passed out incredibly delicious corned beef sandwiches...
...And all the sex jokes about men...
...I love her," he said...
...It's crude, but almost unbelievably funny...
...Hey, Ben, I'm sorry I didn't call you back last night, but my tires were slashed again, and the police were all over the place and the stalker left me a note saying he was going to terminate me...
...The writer of today's show, Steve Nathan, takes it all very seriously and has given me an extra scene, which makes me love him...
...The starsare Joel Murray, Jay Thomas, Annie Potts, and Joanna Gleason...
...I had long hair...
...He's going to leave everything that really matters in life for her...
...That's right...
...Never mind that she's about as emotionally mature as a tadpole...
...But I like seeing them out there in the room, writing furiously, trying to understand the intersections of law and economics...
...One head of the company, Tony Thomas, noticed that W. was in the dumps and distracted...
...Really, Daddy...
...She was being stalked by a maniac who was slashing her tires, breaking the antenna of her car, and generally leaving frightening letters and notes warning her that she was about to be "terminated," as she reported...
...How sad...
...A blue-stocking madam, you got it...
...God, that must have been almost twenty-four years ago now...
...How well I remember, lo these many years ago, driving along Eye Street and seeing a beautiful girl strolling down the street with her law books, only to realize that it was my sainted wife...
...We did our fabulous scene, and then our fabulous other scene, and then the show was over...
...I lost touch with her for a while and then got in touch with her again about a year ago...
...It's only about two hours on the freeway, bumper to bumper, fully crawling along and getting tortured by sudden stops of trucks in front of me...
...Really...
...Well, he was confused," I answered...
...He's lost a front tooth, and wow, does he look cute...
...Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy," Tommy said in the car as I drove him home...
...Now I can pay my rent...
...I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Q., a very smart forensic accountant in Baltimore...
...The first call is from my part-time messenger...
...It's on what's called a "digital patch" to a city in Texas...
...Then, because he had no school the next day, we went off to Universal to see Ace Ventura, Pet Detective...
...I have a better idea...
...Tough Love by Benjamin J. Stein 56 The American Spectator April /May 1994 Now, I'm sitting in business class...
...INDIANA CENTRAL OFFICE, BOX 62, B1.„001,.„,liNcijoN.1, INDIANA 47402 ELEPHONE: .812 332 7251 Providing t. - Best Rod/(i) and Television Thursday A nother glorious day on the set...
...Tuesday Ireally don't like this...
...What are you telling him...
...He asked her what the problem was, and she told him...
...I'm going to see my psychiatrist now about how to deal with this stalking...
...he cannot place any trust in Arafat's assurances and guarantees...
...Then I walked past the famed Presbyterian Church where Truman used to worship, past a townhouse that used to be Brookings long ago, past the building on H Street where my father used to be research director of the Committee for Economic Development, and where I used to be an office boy, past the IMF where my old girlfriend Pat now works...
...Out of pure compassion and empathy, and at considerable expense, these people reached out and saved W. Wednesday m aximum Overdrive...
...We're incredibly rich, and whatever you want to do is fine...
...The idea of properly incentivizing people with boot camps makes lots of sense...
...I didn't want to leave the set...
...Click, click, click...
...The men and one woman in the room are obviously hard-working lawyers...
...I was just kidding," I told Tommy...
...Even though it was winter, the day was clear and warm...
...Today, W. called me, exhausted but triumphant...
...Years ago, Q. met a beautiful exotic dancer in a bar New Orleans while waiting to catch a plane...
...he cannot admit that his Handshake was a Monday I don't like this at all...
...This is not easy...
...Why, Daddy...
...Just that he's all right the way he is and that he doesn't have to change a thing...
...he cannot simply cut and run from the West Bank, leaving over 100,000 Israelis to the tender mercies of the PLO and Hamas...
...This is pitiful...
...I just want to stay home and watch TV with Nana...
...Then, a rush through maddening traffic to the set of "Love and War...
...Now, conscience grows all over me like a spider's web, locking me in, making me walk the line even when I don't want to...
...Then at lunch I zoomed across town to do another commercial...
...Let us work with the police to set up some video-cam surveillance of the garage where your car is kept at your old apartment...
...Oh, well...
...From then on, highly trained video people from Witt-Thomas were on the case, along with the security people...
...Tommy screamed with laughter...
...I just want you to know," she says, "that the reason I'm staring at you so hard is that I'm legally blind...
...and without progress on either the Palestinian or Syrian front, he cannot suppose that his government, with its razor-thin parliamentary majority, will remain in power for long...
...Then she had to move to a hotel under an assumed name...
...But they know next to nothing about the subject...
...I'm really loving my new job at the topless place...
...It's bustling here on the CBS/MTM studio lot in Studio City...
...This time it's about how loud rock music is torturing me and everyone else who's trying to get his head together, man...
...Five years ago, maybe more, I met a beautiful young woman, whom I'll call W., at the local CNN studio...
...Thursday A n incredibly busy day...
...Then a stop at a Thai restaurant to pick up some (surprise) Thai food, and then to visit little Mr...
...Click, click, click...
...It's not that I'm in trouble, but my job's on the line...
...In that time, the stewardesses came to visit us exactly twice...
...It was red...
...Jews and blacks...
...I walked past by Lafayette Square, looking down at the Bunny Hutch where the president lives...
...Cellular asking where my payment is...
...W. has to help make a case against the man...
...I don't want to go down in a fiery crash because they didn't wave their mammoth blow-dryer over the wings enough...
...I love my students...
...Sunday A nd now for a little tale of why sometimes life is like a movie .. . and why businessmen are not always SOBs, not even in Hollywood...
...Truly hysterical...
...It's more like phrenology...
...She's not afraid of anything...
...Back at my hotel, I took a long nap, and shed some of the weight of the past...
...Bill had to leave and go to jail because of something called Whitewater," I said...
...Timidity is a major problem in lawsuits...
...Check it out, blood...
...I sent the head of NBC a letter complaining...
...This is Terry...
...Well, as he was walking across the lawn, a huge eagle came by and went poo-poo on Bill's head," I said...
...Perfect...
...He cannot acknowledge that he deliberately deceived the Israeli public with his campaign pledge never to negotiate with the PLO...
...Click, click, click...
...Do your homework or it's boot camp...
...How noble in reason...
...She was scared at first, and by the third time her car tires were slashed, she was very scared...
...But whichever way he turns, he seems trapped...
...Nevertheless, they all seem to think that one day it's going to be clear to them...
...W. has to learn not to be so friendly to exercise trainers...
...But she was saved by a businessman and a business...
...71 of tough guys I usually work with...
...Take it from me, it's like shooting the Archduke Franz Ferdinand...
...We have our extras (or "atmosphere artists" as they like to be called) and we're getting ready for some major- league schmacting...
...The second is from a madam whom I've never met, but who sends me messages and faxes day in and day out...
...How easy it is to get a laugh with a toilet joke...
...My wife came into the room...
...I thought they were supposed to be offering us drinks and so forth...
...Now, he's about to leave his Japanese wife and four children to move in with her...
...Today, the LAPD arrested the stalker, and he's in jail...
...Israeli newspapers describe him as someone who is very uncertain, wavering between the hawks and the doves...
...Next door to us, they're making an episode of "Hearts Afire" that has Rush Limbaugh as a guest star...
...After the meeting, I walked about fifteen blocks back to my hotel...
...It's not so bad...
...I really can't believe what goes out on TV nowadays...
...A madam concerned about dirty jokes on TV...
...It was swell...
...T 6 6 ell me a story," Tommy insisted as I put him in bed...
Vol. 27 • April 1994 • No. 45
