Ben Stein's Diary / Climb Every Mountain
Stein, Benjamin J.
Climb Every Mountain by Benjamin J. Stein Tuesday p aradise. I'm at The American Spectator's Washington Club dinner (see page 72). It's in a big room at The Four Seasons in Georgetown. I'm the...
...I asked her if she were related to Alexander the Great...
...That's why we've bought a computer and I am learning how to use it, however spastically...
...It's sort of the way I felt about RN in the summer of 1973, even before I started speechwriting: the chess game was up...
...Anyway, we all talked about Hollywood, and about Ukraine, where Billy is about to go to work, and then we went off into the sunshine...
...If you want to be men so much, why don't you just go to the hospital and have a sex-change operation?' " He paused for a moment and then added, "If you tell any of our friends from Yale, I'll kill you...
...No, that can't be right, because they watch "Entertainment Tonight" constantly and read magazines about exotic cars...
...A really fine citizen," he added...
...Then he says, "Okay, now we'll shift and I'll be Ren and you be Stimpy because you're so fat...
...He's a red-dog Democrat, and looked really sad...
...She didn't see any reason why only men should use the hammers in society, and she slipped on a ladder and hit her head...
...Maybe I could pretend I was having a heart attack . "By the time she got out of the hospital, it was very clear that she was a different woman from the progressive, together woman I knew...
...I do something that's a lot of fun, like TV or the Spectator dinner, and then I'm back all by my little self in my bed, with no Trixie, and I'm really, really lonely...
...She's been out of work for over a year, and now she was eager to know if I had any postage stamps...
...Occasionally he asks me a question about what makes the airplane fly...
...It was about ten minutes' very easy work...
...How come all your women pals who work for Bill Clinton look like men?' "I felt like I was going to fall under the floor...
...I was happy...
...Tuesday H ere's something interesting that I've noticed...
...Because actually, I wanted just those American flag ones...
...I was ecstatic...
...I've even learned how to glide a few inches with each ski movement...
...Daddy," he screamed...
...I wondered if there might be any way to pretend that my seat was broken and move to another spot in the plane...
...It will be my masterpiece...
...I'm the master of ceremonies...
...my friend asked...
...He's become so addicted to Sonic the Hedgehog, though, that it's almost as if no one but Sonic is there...
...How to guarantee you absolutely will not be considered for a job...
...An iron law: People fixated on rock-music celebrities are not on the success track...
...Anyway, the news was that newly 50 The American Spectator June 1994 released documents show that James P. McDougal actually was no innocent victim but looted Madison Guaranty himself...
...Dotty can barely spell and cannot write a grammatical letter...
...I was to play a washed-up speechwriter...
...As I thought about all of this, I got a call to go to Morton's with an almost preternaturally smart lawyer named (interestingly enough) Bill...
...Amazingly, she was from Macedonia...
...Little Precious is sitting next to me coloring...
...My wife isn't gay herself, not that it would matter, but she always had a lot of gay friends...
...They looked at me stolidly as I auditioned...
...As I skied around, snow began to fall...
...Thursday N ow, this is what I call an emotional day...
...Then, about a year and a half ago, my wife was putting up some shelves...
...What if Nixon had been given, for no money down, half interest in a real estate development by a man who did government business while he was a senator...
...Tonight, I'm going to: sing a few lines from one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, "It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding...
...Together we solve a mysterious death, which, of course, turns out to have happened not because the killer was high on crack and the victim dissed him, but because a corporate polluter wants' to keep polluting...
...A real star would have hung up the phone...
...Now, let's make a list of all the things that Bill and/or Hillary have done that Nixon never did, and that no other president ever did: (1) Accepted a half interest in a real estate development for no money while a state attorney-general...
...I thought of my first wedding day and my first wife (who also happens to be my second and permanent wife...
...I want the communication to be perfect...
...We had lunch with one of them a week after the episode at the restaurant, and my wife said to this woman, 'Hey, how come all of you women in women's groups look like men...
...Since I am only moderately overweight, I selected another part in the script and did well...
...Will that be satisfactory...
...The amazing part is that he actually knows all of the lines, including mine...
...If they admit they obstructed justice, they're done for...
...I could barely bring myself to return him to his mother...
...I called Dotty back...
...I'm so proud of him...
...She will be a beautiful bride...
...I play a medical examiner who helps a detective who's the husband of the first woman president...
...If they don't admit it, they'll die the death of a thousand cuts...
...It was really serious, and for a while, she wasn't expected to live...
...Off in the early morning to do a voice-over for a movie that could be funny...
...Anyway, here's the really interesting thing I've noticed: People who are successful actually have some skills, and work to make sure they keep them...
...5) Used the first lady as the president's bag woman by having her collect bribes paid through the medium of phony commodities trades that any child could tell were rigged—if they happened at all (and this devolution of the position of first lady into bag lady is also unprecedented...
...Is that my future...
...I cannot believe that I get to have ski lessons while there are still people who have to work at the Fit...
...What kind are they...
...It's not just that we all feel the same way about the Clintons...
...Anyway, I thought of all of that because Dotty, my beautiful but not very smart neighbor, just called me to ask if I had the new People magazine...
...But she thinks the kind of stamp she uses will get her a job...
...3) Cooperated as business partners with the explicit looter of a federally insured S&L for fourteen years...
...How did I ever wind up so far from home...
...One big way I've noticed this is by observing the doormen and receptionists here at the Shoreham Towers...
...It's that we all like to laugh and have the same sense of humor...
...I'm going to fax the letters...
...How young they look...
...Wednesday 0 n the airplane, I sat next to a man I had met a number of years ago at a Yale Law School function...
...I'll take Schweitzer...
...How can people be so heartless...
...In fact, it began to come down in torrents...
...Tommy is doing downhill, and I'm cross-country skiing...
...First I must tell you that it comes under the heading of my lifelong interest in what I call "Successology," or why people get to be successful...
...7) Cheated for years on end on their federal income tax returns in comically obvious ways such as not reporting the provision of a valuable waterfront lot for no money as income...
...I'll be using them to mail out résumés, and I want them to look very cheery and upbeat...
...It was a frustrating visit, except for reading about Bill and Hillary in the newspaper...
...Honestly...
...In the waiting room were a few washed-up-looking actors...
...As I was wandering through the San Fernando 48 The American Spectator June 1994 Valley, desperately trying to find my way to an obscure address in Burbank, I got a page from my commercial agent...
...Any particular reason...
...Actually, staggering around on skis is more like it...
...Off to lunch at Morton's with a very funny guy named Billy Kimball and his girlfriend, a recent Vassar grad...
...Then she told me how well-behaved Tommy was...
...But I love it...
...I sat down at a computer and wrote my guest commentary...
...2) Accepted illegal contributions from a federally insured S&L that contributed to the failure of that S&L...
...I'm not at the Office of Economic Opportunity...
...They're like family...
...But about a Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu, California...
...Monday B ack to L.A...
...year-and-a-half ago, Something Happened...
...I think so, Dotty," I said...
...The very first meal I took her to after she got out, the waitress was really slow...
...Then one day he told me he had a job as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft...
...Between my gags at the mike, I'm trying to figure out why I like the Spectator crowd so much...
...If they did, it would change their lives...
...You're skiing...
...Hmmm...
...I am to try out to play a grossly overweight news anchor...
...I discussed this with my brilliant friend Bill and then took him to the airport, and as I drove back along the dim streets of Los Angeles, past the slumbering strippers of Baldwin Hills, and then past the recently re-opened stores of the riot area along La Cienega, I thought of poetry...
...Still, I'm not at the Federal Trade Commission...
...They even made a custom snowboard for him and would not accept payment...
...If they admit they were crooks in Arkansas, which they unequivocally were, they're sunk...
...Indeed we do...
...Maybe it's my present...
...He looked happy, and zoomed down a hill...
...There are only a few of us conservatives in Hollywood, and we have to stick together...
...Now he's a partner at a large management consulting firm, and undoubtedly makes a lavish living in his native San Francisco...
...Very progressive, very interested in progressive politics...
...A student fell in love with me and told me she would follow me around like a dog or like a turtle for all time, not for money, but just because she loved me...
...Then, as I glided back in the other direction, Tommy came by...
...I see," I said and rang off...
...They turn themselves inside out to accommodate little Perfect...
...No kidding...
...But, again, why expect anything else...
...She had her gown made at a discount place in Mount Vernon, New York...
...I love being with these people...
...Come on up and I'll give you a few...
...For years, there was a Moroccan man who sold little flowers with lights in them outside the Hard Rock Cafe...
...I think they're legends of jazz or something like that," I said...
...How can people be so cruel...
...I didn't want the evening to end...
...You could see a few moves ahead, and the end of the game...
...I had to apologize and leave a really big tip, and when I got her out to the car, she said to me, `What a pitiful wimp you are...
...I love Schweitzer Mountain...
...I, especially, could learn a lot from him...
...I saw you on C-Span at the Spectator dinner...
...By and large, even when they have nothing to do, they don't read or watch educational TV...
...At the gate, there was a new guard to take my pass...
...Sunday H ere we are back at Schweitzer in Sandpoint, Idaho, skiing...
...My wife, Liza, was always the most wonderful kind of woman," he said...
...Cold winds blew...
...But of course, why would I expect anything else...
...So Liza says to her, 'Hey, aren't I the right color to get served here?' " "I was so embarrassed...
...I like to say that any day I can hug little Angel, even if he's saying, "Let me go, Daddy," that's a damned good day...
...The room is filled with people I like: Wlady Pleszczynski, Ron Burr, Baron Von Kannon, John Podhoretz, David Brock, Boone Pickens, Steve Forbes, Bob Bork, Len and Suzanne Garment, Jane O'Donnell, Senator Lugar, Aram Bakshian, my wonderful parents, and, of course, the star of the show, Bob Tyrrell...
...Finally I found the voice-over studio and read my small part...
...He had been a major liberal at Yale, and continued to be...
...Now I have to go back to Los Angeles and be a stranger again...
...In happy tones, she told me that I'd been selected to do a commercial for the state lottery agency of a major southeastern state...
...Sometimes he says, "Daddy, you be Ren and I'll be Stimpy and we'll act out a show...
...Suddenly, with all of the din of Morton's around us, I realized something: there's no way Bill and Hillary can get out of this...
...I used to be like them, and now I feel like an ancient-mariner-cum-peddler, pathetically hawking his wares, which happen to be himself...
...Sounds wonderful," I said...
...For one thing, she had become very race-conscious, only in a terrible way," he said...
...Back at the rental shop, I visited with Jackie, the dream ski woman, Heather, Extreme Craig, Matt, Regular Craig, and everybody else...
...It would be one day's work, and pay extremely well...
...Hippies...
...God, I thought, is that me...
...That's all it takes...
...Well, no," she said...
...and tell about how the real problem in most of our lives is not the budget deficit, but a sleep deficit, and we all have to get more sleep...
...That's the way the hippies I knew in Santa Cruz twenty years ago were to a t. Pretending to be saints and angels, and chiseling whenever they could...
...It got worse," my friend said...
...Very helpful in getting a gay- and woman-friendly curriculum in our local school board, and she was actually arrested picketing the school...
...Really...
...I really admired that guy, and people could learn a lot from him...
...I was in my borrowed skijacket and wet pants...
...Why didn't you punch that rude waitress instead of taking it out on me?' " "How horrible," I said...
...Never mind," she said cheerily...
...Time passes...
...I thought...
...Someday soon I'm going to write a book about this...
...Morton's at lunch is something -closely akin to a cloud—light and cheerful and quick and delicious and not at all expensive...
...She was in a coma for at least two weeks, and then she started to wake up and to heal, or at least that's what we thought...
...I did my little bit, glowed in the light of publicity for a few minutes, and then headed back to my apartment...
...The press would be screaming the house down, that's what...
...She's been out of work for so long it's a sad joke...
...But you could not in your wildest dreams imagine how beautiful she looked...
...It will be something like Edward F. Denison's pioneering Sources of Economic Growth, only I'll call it Sources of Personal Success...
...I was very mean to her, and now I'm being paid back by being around women who are as hard as acrylic lacquer...
...I just bought their newest disc and it's really great...
...I play an agent whose client is screaming at him...
...Two snowboarders breezed by, looked up at the snow, and one said to the other, "Man, it's really puking up here...
...A stewardess came by and told me how much she liked me in "The Wonder Years...
...It was something like a blizzard...
...God help her...
...Never.0 ff to another audition at Warner Hollywood...
...That's what I thought, but it will be up to the producer and director...
...I have been on the track of this for years because I want to know why I'm not more successful, and why some real fools are heads of corporations and proprietors of wildly billion-dollar-size successful production companies...
...make cruel fun of Bill and Hillary...
...I keep thinking: What if Nancy Reagan were revealed to have been given a $100,000 bribe lightly disguised as commodities profits...
...Satchel Paige used to say that any day he got up was a good day...
...In all the world, I feel most comfortable with my parents, little Perfect, and my estranged wife, and then with the people from the Spectator...
...He should never have had to go to jail...
...El The American Spectator June 1994 51...
...You can have Aspen and Vail and all their famous names...
...This is what you get when you have one-party government in the media...
...It was humiliating...
...Before I could even think of what to say, Liza threw this in...
...A woman I used to date came by the table...
...6) Partnered up with and accepted campaign contributions from a convicted drug dealer (whom Bill then pardoned...
...4) Interfered with a federal investigation of a homicide...
...He is a tough Irish street cop, even though his wife is a patrician...
...When he does that, I am required by law to hug him and kiss him...
...And, may I say, for sheer arrogance and contempt, never has a coupledeserved such a fate more than the Clintons...
...What if Pat Nixon were revealed to have been business partners for fourteen years with a man who presided over the looting of a federally insured S&L...
...Wednesday M ore Whitewater news on the radio as I drove over to a small acting job in Pasadena...
...And if it's Winston Churchill who said that nothing is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result, let me add that it's almost as exhilarating to "ski" without breaking one's neck...
...W hen I got back to the Shoreham Towers, I had a call from red-headed Dotty, my beautiful but wacky neighbor...
...Extremely well" is a relative term...
...Tomorrow, things will be better, and I'll still have little Perfect...
...She looked smug and said maybe to Philip...
...I walked out into the parking lot for a few minutes to wait my turn...
...For some reason, it made me laugh out loud...
...Then, a long, blissful sleep and then a visit to Tommy, the wonder boy...
...He's so delicious I can hardly stand it...
...I felt sorry for myself, and remembered when I had taught at American University twenty-two years ago and been a tremendous hotshot with the kids...
...Anyway, I had my fun, and then returned in the pouring rain to my dreary hotel room and felt sad...
...Fax the application...
...Half-hearted following of a story of a Snopesian family that lied its way into the White House and is now pulling every lever it can to cover it up...
...I still have her photo of that day on my desk...
...It's the friendliest resort on earth...
...The poem of Hillary and Bill, those cheaters—cheaters on spouses, cheaters on their taxes, cheaters of thevoters, cheaters on election laws, cheaters on saving and loan laws, those cheaters who told us they were new and better, more moral, and were really just more hypocritical, more mortal...
...We sat in the dim light and I laid out the crimes of the Clintons...
...What if John Dean's body were found in questionable circumstances across the street from the CIA...
...Quelle surprise, as my tenth-grade French teacher used to say...
...How young all of these important people in Hollywood look...
...It was great...
...He was always reading textbooks about engineering...
...Thank you, my boy," I answer...
...You can count on me," I said...
...She told us she was getting engaged and that her gown was being made at Vera Wang...
...I hear it's got a great article about Pink Floyd," she said...
...There is much to be said for learning something new...
...How does he get out of this...
...Stein," he said...
...It's not just that they're all smart, good-looking, and rich (just kidding about the rich part...
...It's the best place I've ever been for lunch, except maybe the White House Mess in the days when Bob Haldeman used to keep us in stitches with his witty antics...
...Yes," she said...
...I miss Bob...
...That was by very dim light...
...I read my part, and then got in my car to drive home...
...Or, to put it another way, people who are successful go to the trouble of investing in themselves...
...I felt happy...
...she asked...
...This is the way it always is...
...On the other hand, maybe they're not allowed to watch PBS or read...
...Then, over to Universal for an audition...
...I'll get you The American Spectator June 1994 49 some stamps tomorrow if I'm at the grocery store," I said...
...rested briefly at the mighty Shoreham Towers, then got into my fabulous car (fabulous because it never breaks down) and headed off to Channel 13...
Vol. 27 • June 1994 • No. 6
