Ben Stein's Diary: Marshal Laws
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Marshal Laws Saturday It's a typical Saturday here at the Club Tommy in Malibu. My little angel, Tommy, is playing a vile video game with his giant...
...For the immigration backlash is growing because of uncomfortable conclusions drawn from everyday life...
...Hilda is here with her little girl, Elissa, who is seventeen months, and chasing around the boys...
...Brimelow's rambunctious Alien Nation almost single-handedly turned immigration into one of the conservative movement's most bitterly contested issues...
...Suddenly, like the Proustian tea leaves, my own comment brought back a memory...
...that at some point, there would be nuclear war...
...Now that I do not pitch, I almost never feel like I need a psychiatrist...
...It really makes me sad that the Republicans just do not get that issue at all: It's not about rapacious lawyers...
...I am not kidding...
...I was joking," I said...
...I have always thought that's why we had rock 'n' roll, and free sex and love and craziness in the 1960's—because we figured we would party our brains out before the end came...
...she asked...
...Dinner at Maple Drive, a ridiculously expensive restaurant that has good food and slow service, with my pal Asta arid her young nephew and his best friend...
...I'm doing the voice and face for a trailer for an Asian martial arts guy named Jackie Chan...
...Well, show me a domestic Communist who has any other kind of personality...
...That kind...
...Way, way down it...
...Susan, his lovely physician, in her modest office in Beverly Hills...
...What did I think about it...
...0-16-32...
...The losses were staggering...
...Made an alliance with China against the Russians...
...What I had not learned was why "Jeopardy" still manufactures money...
...Sure enough, there she was, bright and cheery, telling us that there was no snow at Schweitzer...
...I lingered for a long time at the door of the psychiatrists and then went on my way...
...I poked into a dark corner and came across a locked file — probably my high school mementos, my program of the high school senior class play, Li'l Abner, where I was a voice-over, or my yearbooks, my most precious possessions...
...I told her who I was there to beg from...
...Not until the next year," he said...
...My wife and I took him to see Dr...
...Their pursuit of Christ and their study of the Bible and Church history led them to the place they least expected...
...Old people do watch, but advertisers do not care to reach old people...
...I play a producer of a talk show...
...It's amazing how Army and Air Force and Navy (and Marine) brats are always well behaved and pleasant to talk to...
...DE THEM DO IT SLRPR1SED BY num Surprised by Truth, this year's smash best-seller, introduces you to 11 recent converts to Catholicism, including ordained ministers in evangelical denominations...
...Big, big subject...
...It's in a very dingy studio in Hollywood...
...Companies claiming they had working products when they didn't...
...Borjas meanwhile is the economist most frequently cited by Brimelow to support his argument in favor of a moratorium on all immigration...
...Wednesday Ihave a great new movie script agent...
...Just kidding...
...I told him he was much too sensitive to be a corporate lawyer...
...I am up to do a tiny little part on one of my favorite shows, "The Marshal...
...Against reactionaries, yes," said the woman...
...I spent a year in Nepal when I was 21...
...It's so lonely and so cold there that some nights I just come here and they let me sit and watch people buy clothes...
...While we're here, can we get a chip installed in his brain that will not permit him to watch video games or cartoons...
...She walked over to us and I asked her what she was doing...
...But it's a stretch, and money is always a scary topic for me...
...I greeted her and she greeted me back eagerly...
...That's a long way from Buffalo, New York, but it changed my life and made me a better person...
...My pal Jack White, an ad man from Spokane, helped pilot her truck out of the drift...
...So there you are...
...And maybe the most famous bad girl of all time, probably one of the women who changed man's fate, the most famous bad woman of all time...
...Immigration is being killed by quotas...
...The stage was lively, but there was a wave of sadness and insecurity you could feel...
...What is the link between need to control oneself and need to control others...
...When a little boy starts using his father's locutions and modes of speech, it brings so much joy to Daddy's heart I can hardly tell you...
...Mata Hari...
...She looked at me and called someone in a muffled voice...
...My hostess is telling me that quiz shows do not "work" on TV unless it's "Jeopardy...
...This year, I am Grand Marshal (or, as Tommy says, Grand Pooh-Bah) of the Winter Carnival in Sandpoint, so I am doing a commercial for the carnival and for GMC trucks...
...Yet anti-immigration sentiment in America had been growing before they drew their swords, and will continue to flourish even if they never utter another word...
...They are out here visiting from New York...
...That will soon end, but I might as well ride it out as long as I can...
...The nephew has a sweet, sensitive face...
...It's in an office building...
...These tiresome meetings doproduce the occasional epiphany...
...My first meeting is at a small production company...
...He was this guy that Nixon railroaded," the man said cheerily...
...But he doesn't have fifty thousand nuclear warheads...
...The problem: He and I were outwardly interchangeable...
...But, yes, if you really need it, I can do it...
...The Chinese Communists are repressive, but they clearly do not prepare for war the way the Russkies did...
...Are you including Eva Braun...
...She explained with amazing lucidity the exact problem: "Young people do 48 March .1996 • The American Spectator not want to watch quiz shows...
...She was a sarcastic, negative creature with bulging eyes...
...A lot of bad stuff can happen in a Casbah...
...It would be nice to have colleagues to talk to day after day in a sensible way...
...Everyone loves it...
...Dreaded school," he said...
...But when you're a small stockholder who's had his savings stolen, you want a tough guy to get that money back...
...Especially about Richard and Pat Nixon drinking so much...
...They were there, along with flashlights, a portable radio, and some bottled water, in case of nuclear war...
...And a lot cheaper," she said...
...No matter what we did, we were building on sand, because some day—probably without warning, the Russians would bomb us and maybe, just maybe, we would survive because we were seven miles from the Ellipse, and maybe we wouldn't...
...A young Asian woman in a news truck from a Spokane TV station pulled up at Schweitzer resort...
...I assume you're joking," I said...
...No," she said...
...Companies shipping bricks and claiming they were hard drives...
...It must be better than a movie...
...Still," he said, "that's what I want to do...
...You know, how there's no snow and it's ruining the resort...
...I enclose a check or money order for $17 (U.S...
...I do not deserve any more than I have...
...Maybe just here checking on things...
...The dog is lazily wandering around the house, and it's a beautiful late December day...
...Hey," Tommy said...
...About halfway down, there was the junior Connie Chung's news truck...
...My little self will be superimposed on the action sequences of the trailer...
...When I was in uth grade, I had a teacher in English named Mrs...
...I asked him...
...The woman, who was slightly younger than the man, said, "Now remind me who Alger Hiss is...
...But she had to have been...
...Just so I know what to talk about...
...Is your movie about the same Castro who's one of the most repressive butchers of all time in this hemisphere...
...His pal wants to be a trader of stocks or metals or bonds or anything...
...Can you imagine how dirty and sweaty they are after a game...
...Suddenly, I had a recollection: I grew up in a house in Silver Spring, Maryland...
...It's a difficult operation...
...That's why they named the Betty Ford Center after her...
...Hmmm," said the doctor...
...He's telling us now that Nixon had something to do with killing JFK, with killing Bobby, that he killed hundreds ofthousands of Vietnamese to make up for not having gone to an Ivy League college (if so, he made a big mistake—he didn't miss much by going to Whittier...
...But wasn't Pat Nixon a famous drunk...
...I understand my book will be sent by priority mail...
...funds only...
...50 March 1996 • The American Spectator...
...As we talked, the beautiful but wacky Dotty walked over and had a drink with us...
...No," she said...
...But what a mean person she was...
...We had a double disaster with junk holding companies and Drexel...
...I took them down over many years of prayer meetings in an abandoned schoolhouse in Malibu...
...His skin tone was light...
...I can go crazy over it or I can pray over it and be sane about it, but I should not be surprised by it...
...I think Pat Buchanan is the only candidate who understands that "Wall Street" is not a synonym for "paradise...
...Their team uses natural gas to heat their hot water for their shower...
...Great idea," I said...
...Well, I did, but I almost never honk...
...Who's she...
...I still recall the combination, I think...
...Don't you think you should do that, too...
...It hurt my feelings, I can tell you...
...Hmmm...
...Wednesday Four-thirty a.m...
...Those of us who write commentary for a living— especially on newspaper editorial pages —spend a surprising amount of time across the table from folks who want government to rig the economy on their behalf...
...Then, one more little spot for a company called the Clutch Doctors...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Vincent Carroll Sorry, Emma Lazarus Immigration enthusiasts are steadily losing ground in the national debate, and they don't seem to understand why...
...Mary Magdalene...
...I told them, as well as I could, and then they agreed with me that Mary Magdalene definitely was a big draw, and would be a perfect historical figure for the Bad Girls of History series...
...To look for a better way...
...Have you thought about a mini about Alger Hiss...
...I want to know why so many are converting to the Catholic Church...
...Lawyers may be obnoxious and aggressive...
...I'm in Idaho...
...There's not enough snow, but there's obviously some snow...
...And there's another question: why are all left wingers so tense and angry...
...Hey...
...Two things are tipping the scales: multiculturalism and affirmative action...
...I learned that on Wall Street, you can't trust anyone...
...The truth is that the sins of the lawyers are pretty small...
...I asked...
...He wants to be a corporate lawyer...
...She wanted to talk about the movie Nixon...
...My little angel, Tommy, is playing a vile video game with his giant seven-year-old pal, Alex...
...It's cold standing here in the snowdrift, especially when the show comes off the ski mountain...
...Are you perhaps the owner of this store...
...That was not the 46 March 1996 • The American Spectator plaintiffs' lawyers' fault...
...Stockholders burned very badly while the insiders made huge gains...
...It's a funny thing, but politicians just have not copped to the fact that we had a debacle with the S&L's...
...Thanks," the man said...
...All of that is gone now...
...With The American Spectator • March 1996 47 Madonna playing some of them...
...Feinstein's husband was in fact a Communist who had lost his job because of it...
...Appearances can be deceiving, and inside those Speer-like precincts was a perfectly kind woman...
...My mother told them they could stuff their honor society, and that was that...
...Well, we're working on one about `Bad Girls of History,'" said the man...
...But I am off to do my little thing anyway for the last episode...
...Trust the media not to let overwhelming facts substitute for the truth...
...I see...
...Anyway, off after lunch to a great commercial...
...But for the workers, a hero...
...She wandered around, and then we finished and headed down the hill to town...
...By mistake, I thought I had forgotten my gloves at a gas station...
...The reason: his ancestors hailed from Mexico, whereas mine came from Europe...
...Yet there he was, arguing without a hint of self-consciousness that he and his descendants should enjoy, in apparent perpetuity, a legal advantage over my descendants and me...
...They are playing a typical little boys' game, locking her out of their room and laughing as she cries...
...Not a full brain transplant, because we love everything about him, but a partial transplant where the cartoon watching lobes are removed and we make space for the part that wants to study and be really good around the house...
...Ego, pride, and envy are ways of measuring my distance from God...
...Then I pitched them a few notions...
...Box 85152, Dept...
...I used to do a whole lot of that, and I made a few bucks with it, but I didn't like it...
...We have had some truly epic thefts in the hi-tech field...
...On the way home, he said, "At least I'm missing you know what...
...How can I ever explain that kind of life to the people here in Hollywood, to these two young millionaires who think Castro is a hero and all businessmen are Simon Legree...
...At lunch, I sat with Jeff Fahey, the handsome, energetic star of the show...
...They looked at me suspiciously when I dropped my plate, heavily laden with roast beef and gravy, in front of them...
...Later, at about one a.m., I started to get really nervous about buying a new house...
...My lines are really simple...
...I have witnesses...
...another asked...
...There are rapacious lawyers on both sides...
...Not in the least," the man said...
...I walked downstairs to look for an article suggesting a movie I want to write...
...I live in a trailer park a few blocks away...
...As I dragged my miserable, insignificant self out of the elevator and towards the grand desk of the receptionist, raised above the floor, looking down on me for the ant of failure and loss that I am...
...Monday Iam somewhere else...
...The people are great—friendly, unassuming, cheerful...
...We just assumed BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...A separate skit about each one...
...Tuesday Lunch at the faculty club at UCLA...
...That was not the plaintiffs' bar's fault...
...A truly great man, and there has not been much on TV about him at all...
...Maybe Sad-dam has nerve gas or anthrax...
...She ushered me down a magnificent hallway...
...Richard M. Nixon...
...Did you find it...
...One of the men at the table was a major fan of the Mikester...
...I can give you their names and phone numbers...
...What could that mean...
...He spoke American English with no trace of accent...
...But we'll have some pie first...
...I read this, and felt as if I had just set down a big rock from off my back...
...Nonetheless, Brimelow and Borjas are not the sort of opponent one ignores...
...VINCENT CARROLL is editorial page editor of Denver's Rocky Mountain News...
...The whole company lied to me about everything...
...What if the house put me into bankruptcy...
...Send my postpaid copy of Surprised by Truth...
...They have saved my life a good many times...
...She studied him carefully and listened to his chest...
...Well, why not...
...Is there a movie in him...
...Never mind...
...Some kind people at the law school have solicited me to talk to them about teaching next year...
...My interlocutors were an extremely kind man and woman...
...I say something like, "Look at this basketball team...
...I may not be much, but I am all I think about...
...Do you still think there's no snow...
...I'm going to drive her home," said the clerk helping me...
...It was not a joke...
...You know, Cleopatra...
...If I had to get rid of every book in my store and carry just one, it'd be Surprised by Truth hands down...
...To give him his due, he argued politely and intelligently...
...Then, after they had made me feel welcome, we had a fairly sharp talk about Michael R. Milken...
...I was in such a daze that I scarcely recall what I said...
...That was also why the 1950's always had a sort of leaden overhang, at least to yours truly: the end was nigh...
...My mind went back to my first night in Sandpoint a few days ago...
...We also had a variety of tools and some bedding, all under what we imagined was a strong part of the ceiling...
...Now, I am doing it again because I have so many good ideas to try to sell...
...Now you're pulling my leg...
...Yes," hesaid, apropos of something, "I went to work on a kibbutz in Israel when I was twenty...
...Then we talked about "tort reform...
...He apparently said he could not override Mrs...
...I really have to go somewhere soon to find myself...
...Only a little later did we learn that Mrs...
...She's hooked me up with some producers, so now I am back on the pitching trail...
...Still, she had not told me to do a show about Castro...
...What else are you making...
...Good idea...
...because of the snow on the road...
...I asked her...
...I asked...
...Nixon is such a perfect example of the Hollywood mindset that it deserves a book unto itself...
...I am back in my meeting...
...What is 'you know what...
...As I tried on gloves, an elderly woman with a smile on her face followed my every move...
...Now that I think of it, this is about as cold as I ever want to be...
...I think they must score way above the mean in mental balance and general psychic health...
...Friday My little angel has bronchitis...
...I, fearless provocateur that I was, said that we were integrating the schools fairly quickly...
...It dawns on me that I used to go to a psychiatrist a lot at about the same time I was pitching a lot...
...Mostly lies," I said...
...I paced around my apartment and felt scared down to my toes...
...I'm pretty sure I'm in Malibu, but I might be somewhere else...
...My life is now, and always has been, totally unmanageable by me without God's help...
...These fascinating personal accounts are packed with biblical, historical, and theological proofs for Catholicism...
...This is not a mental health problem...
...She said something about how didn't we feel that it was very hypocritical of America to say that all men are created equal and then to segregate the schools...
...well, let's call her) Feinstein...
...Naturally, the company is in Portland...
...Joking...
...In fact, none of them had anything to eat except vegetables and fruit...
...The problem was that my mother never knew how to unlock the lock, so I always did it when my mother needed something from the cabinet for dinner, usually canned peaches (we had enough canned peaches for a long nuclear winter...
...I feel bad about it and would not have baited her if I had known...
...One day she said to us that we were all lazy and difficult and that all we had going for us was that we were "glib...
...But I'm standing in about three feet of snow," I said...
...Finding yourself is pretty basic...
...Then into a room, and there was a perfectly pleasant woman waiting to talk to me...
...Well, we have a lot of great projects, but the one we like best is a miniseries about one of the great statesmen of our era, Fidel Castro...
...I asked them...
...We worked, if you can call it work, for about two hours, during which I ate a lot of carrots...
...With Kissinger's great help, he changed the world and set the stage for Ronald Reagan and George Bush —the most underappreciated president of all time —to administer the coup de grace...
...What if I ran out of money...
...He dressed like most professionals and seemed to earn a comfortable income...
...In a snowdrift across the parking lot from the Green Gables Hotel at Schweitzer resort, outside Sandpoint...
...The sins of looters against stockholders and other savers have been vast...
...She asked me if I didn't think it was hypocritical to repress all people of color in every way and was this maybe a basic part of America, this repression, and why did we call ourselves a democracy at all...
...Wow, these are imposing offices...
...Each year thousands of atheists, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and others are being surprised by Catholic truth, and these converts tell you why...
...I did it part time last summer," he said...
...Slid off the road into a ditch...
...Alas, this little boy also soaks up every time I curse when someone cuts me off, and every time I make a comment that some might (wrongly) construe as racist or homophobic...
...When I get like this, I reach for my book of Malibu Serenity Sayings...
...Feinstein, that's the kind of question a Communist would ask...
...I would ask kids questions and then I would make surethey knew how important it was to actually know something instead of being glib...
...I wish I had a grant to study the psychological makeup of Army brats...
...I asked...
...one of them said...
...No point in avoiding possible pain and humiliation...
...During the making of the commercial, we had an incident that is almost perfect in its crystalline revelation of the media...
...All right, counselor...
...How can I ever explain the flesh and blood warmth of the ordinary American to people who see life as ideology...
...Daddy, I thought you had vowed never to honk because people in Idaho never honk...
...Way down it...
...I said, "Why, Mrs...
...I did not feel cheated by my meeting...
...Stood up to the Russians over and over again—in Haiphong, in Hanoi, in Cambodia, in saving Israel in 1973...
...They are set in their ways and only buy investments and laxatives, not high margin things like soap...
...If he really loves the law, he should be a law professor, as I told him...
...It's about protecting small savers and investors...
...Well, I think you would agree that I have made my point," said little Stephen Douglas...
...That was not the lawyers' fault...
...There's a little buzz of interest in me as a talk show host...
...Esoteric debates over immigration's effect on wage growth, population density, the high-tech industry, and the prospects of the underclass in all likelihood have little to do with the shift in public sentiment...
...His cough is deep, loud, and very scary...
...Feinstein but would take me into the Honor Society the next year...
...We stopped and got out to talk to her just as Schweitzer security came to tow her out...
...Really nice people...
...Call with your credit card 800.879.4214 VISA, MASTERCARD, AMEX, DISCOVER ACCEPTED "Almost never is not the same as never," he said...
...I'm here to do a feature about the missing snow...
...STATE ZIP ASD Order Toll-free now...
...The woman-in-question's secretary appeared...
...An incredibly misunderstood patriot...
...They were an amazingly abstemious trio...
...That was a total myth," I said...
...If there is something deeply wrong in my life, I am probably doing something seriously wrong...
...That was when I went to Nepal...
...I watched her station at 6 p.m...
...This is no joke...
...Alex's dad, Larry, is working on some program on his laptop...
...Who's that...
...They unleash their polemics against journalist Peter Brimelow and economist George Borjas, reviling the former and jousting with the latter, as if the two have become household names...
...It was snowing like mad insanity as we pulled into town after a truly harrowing ride from the airport...
...This appointment is in truly grand offices of a major broadcast company in Westwood...
...We've found a house we might conceivably afford...
...Tragically, ABC canceled the show two days ago...
...134, San Diego, CA 92186 NAME STREET ADDRESS APT...
...Later, she blackballed me for the Honor Society, although I was a super good student...
...What kind of things are you guys doing...
...Just kidding, my boy," I said...
...Really, there's no snow...
...They repair clutches for old Volkswagens...
...They had been perfectly polite to me...
...David Wilder Auburn, New York 11 Converts Give the Biblical and Historical Reasons for Becoming Catholic Yes...
...My husband died in August...
...The psychological bases of political thought...
...A few moments later, she turned her attention to the then-unfolding struggle to integrate the schools of the South...
...As I might have guessed, the perfectly kind woman was an Army brat...
...Again, all in the name of nuclear war...
...He was a modestly successful, mainstream, native-born American indistinguishable from most others of that description...
...Do you eat that much every day...
...I went to Larsen's, the adorable, two story department store to buy new ones...
...Here are some of my favorites: • When all else fails, turn it over to God...
...They were on the right side of that one —namely, in favor of the stockholders, not the corporate looters...
...It was a very funny spot...
...Its the best tool I know of for sharing the Catholic faith...
...I set him straight pretty damned fast, if I may say so...
...In the basement was a green cabinet and in it was a vast array of canned goods...
...I would be the host...
...And now, what do we have but vile Oliver Stone, incarnate insanity, with his new geschrei against Nixon, his disgusting Nixon...
...It's called Quicken, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to use it...
...I felt I had learned something...
...Do you really plan to eat all of that...
...They lied to everybodyall the time...
...It's a synonym for "Casbah...
...Stone is right up there with the Holocaust deniers, the believers in the International Jewish Conspiracy, the people who believe that AIDS was started by the CIA...
...Then off to another studio to do some voicework for a utility company trying to sell more natural gas...
...It's something else.44 'Well, we have a lot of great projects, but the one we like best is a miniseries about one of the great statesmen of our era, Fidel Castro.' Thursday Apother pitch meeting, this time for a talk show...
...Great," I said...
...they both asked eagerly...
...the woman asked...
...I finished my pitch and politely thanked them...
...Basilica Press, P.O...
...It's next door to a group of psychiatrists...
...My wife and I have decided to buya new house so we can all live together and our little angel can have a flat place to ride his bike and play with his friends...
...To find myself...
...Great," I said...
...the woman asked...
...She became furious and sent me out of the classroom...
...We assumed that civilized life would end in a flash at some time in the not too distant future...
...A few minutes later, I honked at a car that refused to leave a green lighted intersection...
...You got me there," she said...
...The GOP in Congress keeps coming down on the side of the looters and their accountants...
...My mother, a devout anti-Communist, heard about the story and went to the principal...
...I'd like to do a quiz show for college kids," I said...
...He is coughing like a madman...
...Who was the number one prime mover in making all of that go away...
...At an editorial meeting last spring, while sitting across the table from the representative for a coalition of minority contractors intent on defending government "set-aside" programs, I found myself pondering the man's appearance, and eventually being annoyed by it...
...I am a person made up of the seven deadly sins...
...That would be a much better use of his talent and intelligence...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 3
