Ben Stein's Diary/Alaska Goes South
Stein, Benjamin J.
Alaska Goes South by Benjamin I. Stein Father's Day M y pal Stone and I were walking down a hot street in Sandpoint, Idaho. His two children, 14 and 10, ran in front of us and played with my son,...
...Then a movie star...
...It's a carbon of a letter I sent to the Woodward & Lothrop department store's "Best Father Contest...
...I went back to the newsstand...
...Let's discuss it again when you're 21," I said...
...Last night, I had severe throat pain...
...Go see a doctor...
...On the flight from Portland to Spokane, the air-conditioning was not working...
...The lawyers for the state of Florida are seated near me...
...His family never had much money...
...Larry Lissitzyn, a brilliant lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut...
...The driver apologized so many times I thought I would throw up...
...A father has to stay alive for his kids if he can...
...Daddy," he asked...
...Alaska, in an excess of pure idiocy, has discontinued nonstops to Spokane...
...Not when it's your fault," I said...
...As for me, I've been very lucky...
...Yes," he answered...
...NO ANSWER at the freaking police phone at the second busiest airport in America...
...It would have meant my whole life," he said...
...I think it's very hard work and dangerous...
...Be a construction worker...
...That's living...
...No, because you can try to do that, but you can't be sure of succeeding...
...He has almost never told me to do any specific thing except by the example of his life...
...What job pays the most per hour...
...He never once criticized me...
...Far from it...
...You have to put up with long hours and brutal competition...
...Tommy chewed and thought...
...No," he said...
...We'll do it together...
...Then more pain in my chest...
...I'm an expert witness in a lawsuit against little players like Merrill Lynch and Coopers & Lybrand and a few former owner-managers of a large insurer out of Jacksonville, Florida...
...I'll pay a hundred dollars to her if she gets it to me in Sandpoint by 10 p.m...
...I think maybe from say ten to forty dollars an hour, but I'm not really an expert...
...The sky was clear...
...In Spokane, all of the baggage came down—except mine...
...This is your viral pneumonia," he said...
...This was not that kind of deposition...
...It's amazing to me that my father—without a father in a position to help—got as far as he has, while I have just blithely absorbed a father who can do almost any earthly thing for me...
...People carrying huge straw bags, live animals, speaking a million different tongues of mankind...
...Stone paused for a long minute...
...I strolled into the toy section...
...I want a job that pays enough so that I can just work a few hours a day and then spend the rest of my time in a pet shop...
...Once, when my boss at a large newspaper made fun of my work, my father said, "You don't have to take that from anyone...
...We were there together, I as speechwriter, all through that horrible last Watergate year...
...But look at what Alaska did to me, a good customer...
...Then a trip to the emergency room...
...He came from nowhere, did not even finish high school, was in the Marines, and is just a heck of a guy...
...I can just feel how tired they are...
...God Bless Animals...
...I was just talking crazy before...
...Real jobs...
...of some wackos called the Aryan Nation, or something like that...
...They're gaunt...
...He went to compulsory chapel every day and never regretted it...
...I called the newsstand manager...
...Tommy ate his cheeseburger while I nibbled (well, more than nibbled) at his French fries...
...The defendants—so the state of Florida says, and I think they're right—engaged in a highly complex scheme to defraud policyholders and the state of Florida out of about $400 million...
...Just trying to sound tough...
...This was on my mind after the exhausted lawyers left and I came into town to dine with my son...
...He still sings the first verses of the Doxology when he's feeling low...
...Pulling my hair...
...Then Spiegel was charged with fifty-five felony counts...
...Someone in Tallahassee ought to be paying attention to how hard these guys work...
...He reads to me and tells me about World War II, and I love him...
...As I was talking to Barron about economics, in walked a woman with a toothy smile...
...They are so good for us unworthy humans...
...But he was right behind me...
...Too expensive...
...He's been married to my mother for fifty-eight years...
...I liked your idea of being a sport fisherman much better...
...John Keker, a big Democrat, but a great guy and a friend of almost thirty years...
...He stopped at our table and I congratulated him...
...Today, he was made chairman of MCA, a big studio that owns Universal...
...No...
...Then I'll do that...
...His two children, 14 and 10, ran in front of us and played with my son, 7. "I have some health problems," he said...
...I have never known him to turn down a friend who needed help of any kind...
...Yeah," I said to Barron...
...I got to yell and scream and rant and rave...
...Okay," Tommy said...
...I ran down to the gate we usually leave from...
...A few minutes later, another guy, this one really fabulous, Ron Meyer, walked in...
...He and my mother regularly housed me and my cohorts when we came to town to demonstrate...
...Then I spoke to a moron reservationist who said that we would have to each pay $35 to change our flights...
...Telling everyone how much gray hair I have...
...In Portland, we learned our plane was late...
...What would I do without my Ginger Bear...
...I have had some depositions where the questioner obviously wanted me to kill myself before the day was done...
...Of course I have to stay alive for them...
...Well, you have some savings...
...Actor...
...It was also overfilled with young parents with babes on their laps...
...A jolly doctor had me X-rayed, and then showed me a line on the X-ray of my chest...
...No Tommy...
...I sometimes lie in bed, listening to the halyards on the boats in the marina in Sandpoint, or watching the stars above Broad Beach in Malibu, or feeling my building shake from some Chicano's super bass speakers on his car, and I think of what it has meant to me to have a father who could send me to any college, who could do any homework problem...
...Army, a mechanic and toolmaker at Ford Motor when Ford did not have Jews...
...50 The American Spectator September 1995 The day went by very quickly...
...Well," he asked, "what job pays the most that's also a job where it's not a gamble...
...The reason I kind of like him is that he's always very friendly to me even so...
...He did his work and I did mine in that doom-laden atmosphere, doing it together, as one might say, and it got done...
...No suitcase for Ben Stein, very, very frequent traveler Stein...
...I was one of the people who pointed out that in conjunction with Michael Robert Milken—b...
...I'll be right here...
...Here I am in depositions in the lavishly furnished offices of a major firm called Rogers & Wells...
...That's what my entry says...
...She called the airport police...
...Anyway, we're down in my basement, going through my files, pushing rat's nests and spider webs, and talking about what we've found...
...On days when he had little to do, he sometimes took my father to baseball games...
...Instead, a sweet woman told me that I might get my bag tonight or I might get it tomorrow...
...Like a flamethrower was going down my esophagus...
...The S&L failed...
...On the way up to Sandpoint, I stopped in Hayden Lake...
...I'm not sure...
...A nightmare day from hell...
...My father was the chairman of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers as I posed outside shouting "One-two-three-four, we don't want your filthy war...
...What happened...
...I have known him fifteen years...
...I guarantee it'll get there," she said...
...The best...
...Other days, he went to stockbrokers' offices and watched the prices move across the ticker—little imagining that his son would some day 48 The American Spectator September 1995 have the power to move those prices by the words he used...
...You have to be away from your family a lot...
...The weather was perfect...
...Sunday H ow does the expression go...
...Monday I am back in L.A., sitting at Morton's with my pal, Barron Thomas...
...But it has all of my clothes in it," I said...
...When Joan Rivers sued me, he offered to help me pay my legal fees indefinitely...
...Shrimp scampi...
...You will work with very, very aggressive, difficult people...
...I am so glad I am not them...
...Neither of my father's parents had gone to college...
...Tommy and I often go there...
...Doing voice work is probably the best job in the world," I said...
...Then I want to be a professional soccer player," he said...
...Your job now is to learn and to play...
...Spiegel and others paid a huge settlement...
...He has written important works on fiscal policy and the role of government...
...I have never known a more loyal man...
...I would prefer you not do that, either, come to think of it...
...It's a very hard job...
...Could I have gotten this from stress and being all cramped up on a flight from Portland to Spokane...
...The day was far from over...
...How much do sport fishermen get paid...
...Please...
...Well, if some rich company wants to buy another big company, the investment bankers figure out how to do it and raise the money...
...This is a great way to earn a living...
...My challenge is to give a full, truthful answer, phrasing it intelligently enough so that even a very adroit lawyer will not be able to use it against the state of Florida...
...He's also trying to get me to say things that would make it appear that the state of Florida was somehow to blame for the failure of Guarantee Security Life...
...It was not smelling nice...
...To talk about Drexel junk...
...They still hold hands as they mosey out of the Cosmos Club after Sunday Brunch...
...I hugged him, yelled at him, hugged him, yelled at him, and then was so crazed I went into the men's room to be sick...
...I ran around a corner...
...For some reason, the bumper sticker occurred to me, "Next time you need help, ask a hippie...
...There's nothing I ever did to deserve such a prize...
...They used to be the best airline on earth...
...It was mobbed...
...Then, lunch...
...God help the children whose fathers do notknow what it means to be a father...
...I am to play one of two humans in an interactive CD-ROM event called "Toonstruck...
...He's now comfortable on a scale his father could not have contemplated, mostly by thrifty living and cautious investments...
...Tommy and I were separated...
...Forgive and forget, I say, about most things...
...That depends on what fish they catch and how much business they have taking people out fishing...
...But I want to know what's the best job," he whined...
...I admire that a lot...
...I'm in the Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint...
...When I was in law school, I became a student radical and a major demonstrator against the Vietnam war...
...It looked as if I'd been shot in the chest...
...He had graduate training at the University of Chicago...
...We will do it together,' and we do...
...Pam Morton, the manager of Morton's, came over and whispered to me, "I love her...
...One of them told me he hardly ever saw his family any longer...
...Tommy and I checked in and passed a monitor that said our flight would be delayed for forty minutes...
...They needed the seats we were supposed to occupy...
...I have a lump on the back of my neck...
...What do you think it would have meant to you if he had survived until you were 48...
...I got to do the easy part...
...Speak of the devil and he appears...
...Just heart attack right now...
...I'm in my basement, in my Milken archive, with two lawyers from the state of Florida, Department of Insurance...
...I am going to write a very angry letter...
...I put Tommy in the car and headed for McDonald's...
...I paused at a pay phone to call the airline and change our connection...
...Everything...
...This Lembke fellow is clever indeed...
...I don't want to get into that whole world of doctors and hospitals...
...The pretty woman smiled...
...There was low humidity...
...The scheme hinged on phony valuations of Drexel junk bonds...
...My main problem is getting distracted by the very palpable exhaustion of the lawyers for the state of Florida...
...Your father died when you were eight...
...I can tell he's trying to get me to say things that would exculpate his client...
...Wow, I hope I never have to work that hard...
...Another ten minutes later, she came back on to say it was fixed, with no apology at all...
...When I was afraid to get a computer, he said, "I'll show you how itworks...
...He almost never discusses money, except in terms of the federal budget...
...The suit was a publicity stunt that was soon dropped...
...The other one has had a cold for months...
...You are seven, and you do not really need to know...
...It has a mind of its own...
...Because I'd yelled at him, I let him punch me a few times, and he enjoyed that a lot...
...Tommy and I arrived bright and early at the Alaska Airlines terminal at LAX for our journey...
...On the way back to my condo, the limo lost its air-conditioning...
...Otherwise he teaches by this example: Herbert Stein was born the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant father and a "Yankee" second-generation Jewish mother...
...Whenever I have any question or problem about economics or finance, he drops whatever he's doing to help me with it...
...No Tommy...
...They are making me nervous, just because they obviously have worked so hard...
...There he was...
...No Tommy at all...
...They sit together and watch "Murder, She Wrote" with religious fervor, explaining its twists and turns to each other...
...But a mass of dangerous-looking passengers, any one of whom could have snatched him, God forbid...
...I'll do that part of the day, and be a sport fisherman part of the day and a construction worker...
...I got a cheeseburger and promptly dropped a huge gob of ketchup on my one and only shirt...
...Saturday W hat a horrible day...
...I asked...
...The best paid job per hour is probably movie star or professional athlete...
...You're not all alone in this...
...It's about the wanderings and fantasies of a cartoonist played by the very talented Christopher Lloyd...
...He has worked in the Navy, the War Production Board, the FDIC, the Committee for Economic Development, Brookings, the White House, the American Enterprise Institute, been a director of a bank and a very large metals company...
...You said so...
...The lavatory was not working...
...It wasn't necessary...
...As we walked farther through town and then across the Long Bridge that traverses a narrow, magnificent neck of Lake Pend'Oreille, I thought of a note I have in my file drawer at home in Malibu...
...Being your father," I said...
...In the car on the way back, Tommy asked, "Are there any good jobs that are really fun...
...Oh, boy," I thought...
...Well, you have to be mean and tough...
...When I left my wife, when I moved to New York, when I came here to the fleshpot to become a Hollywood gypsy, when my wife and I got back together, he never criticized, never told me I was wrong to do anything...
...I have terrible insomnia on many nights...
...The staff had been concerned...
...I start to cry when I think of how lucky I am to live in the land of the free and the home of the brave...
...God, I love that store...
...Don't wander off," I said to him...
...If you like out of control liars...
...Stop it," I said...
...All right...
...Well, the woman who delivers lost bags is very overworked...
...You're right," he said...
...I never have, and you don't have to either...
...I have never known him to tell a lie...
...Come on," he said, "we'll do it together...
...But waking up heir to the freedom of a North Idaho lake is a good start...
...Frankly, that's not at all hard to do, since the state of Florida has such a powerful case...
...Don't you have any idea of how much better this is than being in depositions...
...Every part of it is great: The fun Englishmen who put the idea together...
...Job that pays by far the most: investment banker, especially in mergers and acquisitions...
...Anita Hill...
...I'm not sure of the year, but the letter attests that it's mailed with a three-cent stamp, so it has to Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu and Hollywood...
...That's where I come in...
...How could you, Benjy, have been so stupid as to let him out of your sight even for a second...
...be at least forty years ago, when I was no more than ten...
...That was fun...
...But that's not the example that moves me and teaches me what I want my son to learn: In all my life, I have never seen my father do anything he thought was ethically questionable...
...I went a few miles down the road to my favorite store, K-Mart, and replaced my wardrobe at bargain prices...
...Maybe music star...
...Yummy...
...Then I thought of the Board Room, the no-frills lounge that Alaska runs for SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Turz c.`‘CIrke-S TC1rZtar, 1\)0d1,_, Broadcasters Making a Difference The American Spectator September 1995 51 frequent passengers...
...Oh, yes it is, Benjamin," the young woman on the other end of the phone said...
...My father graduated summa cum laude from Williams...
...Not being a lawyer like Mommy...
...My father and grandfather, mother and grandmother, always taught me to offer thanks to God first of all for being in America and then for being an American...
...I have never seen him do anything he thought was even remotely questionable (or even disagreeable) for money...
...My father is great because he never just tells me to do things...
...You usually have to be good at math...
...I don't think so, my boy," I answered...
...Friday I was picked up this morning at the crack of dawn—well, 8 a.m.—by a driver and a limo to take me to a set in far down Orange County...
...Fix it, please...
...Sitting in his tiny chair, holding his stuffed dog, he said, "That's what I want to do, Daddy...
...My whole life...
...Now, they're barely creeping along...
...Monday W ell, speak of the devil, once again...
...It's a gamble and if you fail, you wait on tables...
...He had a great lawyer and beat them all...
...Hnurun...
...As I ran, and I mean ran, up the steps, I thought, "If he's gone, I want to die right now...
...His father was a cavalryman in the U.S...
...I have a lump in my abdomen...
...July 4, 1946, Van Nuys, California—Tom Spiegel was behaving very badly towards the depositors, stockholders, and FSLIC...
...When it was over, I went home and lay down next to my dog for an hour...
...All in a deferential tone, as if I were doing them a favor by being here...
...But it also has a very good McDonald's where they always say "Bueller, Bueller" to me, so I like them...
...She's great...
...Now that I think of it, a number of the people I admire most in life were Marines...
...Not ever...
...I pondered his question...
...Ron was deputy head of the powerful agency, Creative Artists, until lately...
...We're in a big conference room...
...I'm being deposed by a very, very clever fellow named Charlie Lembke who works for the ex-wife of one of the defendants in the case of the failed insurer, Guarantee Security Life...
...What do they do...
...PANIC...
...Frazzled...
...If you could make her notice your bag and you .. ." "I get it," I said...
...No, because, to be brutally frank, my lad, you are far too undisciplined to be a soccer star...
...But Ginger lies down next to me and gets dog hairs on my collar...
...It cannot be taught to lie down or fetch...
...They've been struggling with this case for months, maybe years...
...Why not...
...That meant we would miss our connection in Portland to Spokane...
...When there is something to be done, he says, 'Come on, Benjy...
...Tommy was in a great mood...
...Tommy went to a newspaper/toy/snack stand a few feet away...
...Snack section...
...I'm surrounded by photos and mementos—old collars, old leashes—of Trixie...
...He was watching a TV ad about taking classes to be a construction worker...
...Then an incredibly painful cough...
...When I wanted to be an author, Michael Korda at Simon & Schuster would only take my first book if my father's name was on it as co-author...
...Hard work...
...A few years later, when the war was over and I had a miraculous access ofgood sense, I worked at the White House with my father...
...He was unemployed during most of the Great Depression...
...I called Alaska...
...Then the producers showed me around the rooms where the artists for the CD-ROM—which will take about eight hours to play—were working on their renderings...
...We went through the metal detectors...
...But no police ever answered the call or showed up...
...What has happened to Alaska Airlines...
...Tuesday W ell, this is the wages of Alaska...
...John R. Coyne, Jr., Nixon soul mate, best friend, and a killer writer...
...It's not just coincidence that he and my mother were sitting directly behind Julie and David Eisenhower at Richard Nixon's funeral last year...
...If someone is kind to him, my father will stay with that man through thick and thin...
...But I want to know right now what I have to know to be an investment banker," he demanded...
...I also greatly admire Peter M. Flanigan, Navy pilot in World War II, my incredible father-in-law and his brother, both Silver Star winners, the bravest guys you would ever want to meet, and the most unassuming...
...We shouted our revolutionary slogans with sandwiches my mother and father had made for us in our pockets...
...I think my kids would rather have the money when they're 21 than have me...
...Happiness," says my brilliant producer friend, Ricardo Mestres, partner of the genius John Hughes, "is not a lap dog...
...I ran from gate to gate...
...Maybe put a bit more curl of the The American Spectator September 1995 49 lip into it...
...Well, my laddy boy, I don't want you to think about that...
...I play his mean-spirited, curmudgeonly boss...
...Until a few years ago, he was chairman of a huge Drexel-controlled S&L named Columbia Savings...
...Are you insane...
...I could not stop eating...
...His name is Tom Spiegel...
...A lot more than I did this morning...
...CI 52 The American Spectator September 1995...
...I recommend a lot of rest...
...It was hot and fetid...
...No Tommy...
...Live prudently," is the strongest admonition he ever says to me, when—for example—I am contemplating buying a large farm I will never use...
...There's a lot of pneumonia going around in the Northwest, and you could have gotten it in a poorly ventilated cabin...
...But that's a gamble...
...Yes, that's so...
...Like getting a very, very large loan on a house, only it's to buy a whole company, like Ford or Sony...
...Are you crazy...
...A lost child...
...How can people ever face their sons dying in wartime...
...God help the fathers who don't know how much they mean to their sons...
...The worst of terrors...
...Blithely carrying his fishing rod, eating pretzels, coming out the door of the Board Room...
...Then another corner...
...His mother worked as a clerk at a department store to support the family while my grandfather tried to start a series of small businesses that went nowhere...
...On one side of me is a table led by someone I have come to admire in a grudging way...
...The incredibly polite way they direct the action: "Could you do it a bit nastier...
...I don't think that's the deal when we have to change because you've made us miss our connection," I said...
...Daddy," Tommy said, "how much do construction workers get paid...
...But this is not about the old school tie...
...We'll work it out...
...The lawyers for Florida are exhausted...
...I want to work those big backhoes and cranes...
...Rogers & Wells, God love 'em, have laid on little snacks and juices, and there is a fairly convivial atmosphere...
...Alaska shares space with TWA, and the place was like a movie set of the Place de la Concorde during the French Revolution...
...So much for your FAA dollars...
...It's the h.q...
...The "Rogers" of the title was RN's secretary of state briefly, and I went to law school with his daughter...
...Kept on hold for TEN MINUTES...
...No Tommy...
...What has it meant to me to have a father who got me every summer job, who helped me get jobs even after law school, whose name opened doors as a writer...
...Really, once I got it in my head that I was being questioned by a super-smart guy and that all he wanted was to find out what I would say at trial, and possibly embarrass me a little bit and take a tiny jab at my friends from Florida, I felt fine...
...I wish there were one near me...
...She has stepped seamlessly into my life...
...I have never seen him even look, and I mean not even look, at another woman...
...Well, what do you think you mean to your kids...
Vol. 28 • September 1995 • No. 9
