Ben Stein's Diary: It's My Money
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein It's My Money Wednesday 0 ooh, this is good. I'm over here in Burbank in a little conference room. We're having a run-through for a show that Disney is...
...There was no possible way that Prop...
...Then I headed into my batch of CD's and took out one of my anti-stress reliables: Bob Dylan's classic, Hard Rain...
...How many First Ladies have been credibly accused of obstructing justice, defrauding the Resolution Trust Corporation, suborning witnesses, and perjury...
...I don't care," Tommy said...
...Didn't they eat the buffalo...
...Of course, the right answer was Bill Clinton...
...Then the program started...
...Then I got caught in truly brutal traffic on the Hollywood Freeway...
...All it did was make a mark on the floor...
...Many of them are much faster at pressing the buttons than I am...
...Then a group played Dixieland, incredibly, in this day and age, with a white man imitating Louis Armstrong...
...I'm hoping that a giant dumbbell falls on her 56 January 1997 • The American Spectator and immobilizes her for a while and that she gets some humility...
...It was all starting to make me hyperventilate and feel like an atom about to be split...
...There's a clue in here somewhere...
...Trying to put little boys to bed is really an amazing chore...
...However, the electoral process seems completely off the rails this year in any event...
...Wash your face...
...I am 51...
...How many know all of the Presidents since FDR...
...I took the boys to Universal City Walk...
...He came up with the idea a few months ago, and told me about it...
...But this was a particularly lovely day, with a fine mist over the water and a cool, moist breeze blowing onshore...
...I think Dole was 21 when he was shot, but I was really touched anyway...
...They are nice kids...
...Last night I brought Tommy out to our house in Malibu so we would be close to the event...
...I really like him the best of anyone, because he is able to figure out why everything works or does not work, game show-wise...
...Today we have two women who were "Jeopardy" winners and one who was a "Debt" winner as my competition...
...The fourth movement...
...One of the organizers whispered to me that he knew me because he had been the assistant to Murray Chotiner, a Nixon hand of long ago...
...Then I had the monumental task of allowing them to play Ultra 64 for a half hour, play on the computer for a half hour, and then go to bed...
...That shows how little I know, I guess...
...It is a truth of life that when you hang around with insane people, you get to feel insane yourself...
...I wish there were some on economics or law, but I guess that creature from New York would have known them too...
...The studio executive, not the dancer...
...Yes, but they said a lot of blessings before they ate the Buffalo, to help the buffalo's spirit make the journey to the afterlife peacefully...
...She looked at me in total astonishment...
...I asked...
...Then serious again...
...It prevents bias based on race or sex or religion...
...If only Dole and Kemp had a platform...
...We got word that the Veep candidate was running late...
...Watching are a raft of people from Disney, including a very intelligent-looking woman named Anne Miller...
...There were questions about geography, about history, about TV shows (I do very poorly on these), and some on music...
...Do you understand that you could have killed Jeb...
...Then embarrassed...
...They had a lot to lose if it passed...
...Tuesday y esterday, the day before the election, I got a call from David Davenport, the president of Pepper-dine...
...Then I got home and had message after message from various lunatics, especially the same nutritionist nut who seemingly has a plan to torture me until I lose weight and start lifting weights and getting fully buffed out...
...This is Malibu...
...And by the way, I can't imagine how she gets away with calling herself "Goldberg...
...The studio is in an out of the way part of town usually thought of as the artists' district...
...My little vote will just be overwhelmed in the flood...
...He talked about the family and about his senior partner, Bob Dole...
...We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome some day, oh, oh, deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day...
...They ate sparingly and bought souvenirs...
...Run away, ignore, argue, escape, run around, argue, pretend...
...He has brought along our other pal from Sandpoint, Jeb Harvey...
...No hicks...
...Moments later, he was asleep, still holding my hand...
...Frankly, it all scared me...
...Then I made him say, "Jeb, to show how terribly sorry I am about what I did, I would like to take $200 out of my savings and buy you a new Nintendo Ultra 64...
...But when Bob Dole was 18, said Kemp, he raced across a field in front of German snipers to rescue a wounded radioman on a field in Italy, and now he has no use of his right arm...
...Jeb looked ecstatic...
...Why not be as generous to yourself as you would be to a good friend...
...Writer...
...Then laughing...
...No lip-biting...
...1Y Just after six I headed off to Morton's for a quick drink with my pal Staci...
...What did I do...
...211 disaster and the bizarre, crazed Kabbalists...
...I get a pittance to develop the show, and then if it hits the right notes and gets on the air, I get a bit more money The idea of the show is novel...
...Whisper, whisper, whisper, jumparound, whisper, mysterious sounds of things thumping and falling off shelves...
...It's called "Win Ben Stein's Money...
...Inside, I ran into Pam Morton, super chic manager of Morton's...
...I wonder how the buffalo felt about that...
...She had no idea...
...Wow, is it maddening to be waited on by people who speak absolutely no English at all...
...Also, the perfect Westside Liberal Democrat...
...That oneness and wholeness within the Universe is part of God's plan...
...54 January 1997 The American Spectator Frankly, I had been dreading his speech, because I had heard him give a poor speech about a year ago...
...Inside the studio, there was a large bare room with cast-off furniture that the owners had apparently picked up in the street...
...The Malibu High Choir sang...
...But why every other business in California and every big brokerage and every big investment bank ganged up on it—that I don't understand...
...But I was pleasantly surprised...
...It's a funky place with a lot of homeless and a blasted, treeless, impoverished quality that impresses some imbecile people as hip...
...Then I took them to the Hard Rock Cafe, of which I will soon no longer be an owner...
...He screwed up his face to look real serious and then scowled and lunged at me in various ways...
...However, I never met Murray Chotiner...
...Then he hugged Tommy...
...It turned out that all of the people working on the video, except maybe the camera man, were part of a Hollywood Kabbalah cult...
...Naturally, the story tried to make the United States seem like warmongers and killers...
...Both boys are ii...
...Same damned thing...
...Then Tommy appears at my door...
...211 folks...
...Off in the distance, I could see the outriders of Jack Kemp's motorcade...
...Ode to Joy...
...I wanted to just shrivel up and die...
...Why not do the best I can today and let God take care of the results...
...If this works, yours truly will be a happy guy...
...What do you think...
...Are you free...
...Don't you know it's a code plan to keep down women...
...I think this is why boys are considered more difficult than girls...
...Has any American president ever consciously tried to look like a South American Caudillo...
...But what would the positive plan have been...
...Jeb is a champion wrestler and a tough little monkey...
...Trying to round them up and make them actually go in one direction is an amazing adventure...
...71 to Pepperdine...
...What Shakespearean play was set in ancient Athens...
...My fellow voters looked so deadly angry and confused...
...I was very definitely game...
...211 party, I saw Bob Dole come down and give his concession speech...
...If they had laid out a comprehensive plan for putting Bill Clinton in the dock, a really detailed negative plan, and then a really detailed positive plan, they could have whipped Bill...
...The punchline could have been laid in a little better...
...After that I gave up...
...The rally was conducted in a spirit of such moderation and good cheer...
...I'll try anything...
...An actor of some repute, Chad Everett, told me that he had sat next to me at the GOP convention in 1972...
...He also said, when Marshal Blucher or some other general remarked what fine men he had, "Sir, they are the mere scum of the earth...
...Their nature video script was laced with off-the-wall references to the oneness of the animal eaten and the human or predator eating the animal...
...I guess that's fair enough...
...Surely this was a modest goal...
...Friday This weekend we are being visited by Alex Feierabend, the very sweet son of my recently departed pal Peter...
...You make sure you don't go until I fall asleep," he said...
...Sunday B oys will be boys...
...211 spent more than the entire Clinton campaign spent nationwide...
...Jack Kemp was going to speak in his last speech of the campaign...
...Pretty scary...
...I caught up in round three and won...
...I thought it was very dignified indeed...
...211 spent more than the entire Clinton campaign spent nationally...
...I thought he was kidding...
...It was simply what democracy is supposed to be.44 I could see the outriders of Jack Kemp's motorcade...
...One of the women contesBENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...He spent a good fifteen minutes introducing his entourage, a strange crew that included a minister from Howard University, Bo Derek, John Mackey, a truly great football star, and lovely Joanna Kemp...
...He cried a lot...
...tants was a New York lawyer fully trained in hitting the buzzer fast...
...I took the crossbow from him and stomped on it on the new tile floor that Mommy had just installed at stupendous expense...
...Then we had a fine speech by our next congressman, Steve Sybert...
...Still, I was really and truly excited about the show...
...There was a lot of praising reference to predators generally...
...I continued to play the game with a woman in the building who worked on game shows...
...Then I am a competitor in round two and round three...
...Why should there be wage-fixing by the government in any area...
...I said goodnight to Bill Lerach, a very complex and little understood person,44 In the final month, opponents of Prop...
...Naturally, like all really stupid people, she takes it out on the one who is kindest to her, namely, little me...
...I will also be a very tired guy...
...Then there was a part saying the state could not fix wages of plaintiffs' lawyers...
...So, as you can imagine, this party is a bit sad...
...He tried to punch me...
...After the event, Tommy got several blue and white Dole-Kemp footballs...
...This time a chorus came up...
...Wow, did he look cute...
...0 deep in my heart, I do believe...
...He looked so cute it was hard to believe...
...Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves, idiot wind, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves...
...She is, as my old pal Duncan Kennedy used to say, "cathecting" her rage at her parents onto me...
...I guess I must nowlook like he looked in 1972, when he was, uhh, uhh about, urn, 57 years old...
...At Alumni Park, an immense, grassy area with a duck pond, events were in full swing...
...That night, Tommy and Alex and I had dinner at Alex's home...
...By the time I got off, I was a basket case...
...It's south of downtown, near the train station...
...I want to sleep with you, Daddy," says little not quite William Tell...
...As the Duke of Wellington said when he toured his troops the night before Waterloo, "I don't know if they'll scare Napoleon, but they scare me...
...Again, this seems like a modest enough notion...
...0 ff to vote at a little house on Mulholland Drive...
...Or maybe it's transference...
...It's amazing to me that whenpeople are in stress or sick, they never ask to have Freud read to them, but they always want to hear from the Bible...
...But he was visibly staggered, dazed by the blow...
...Put on your pajamas...
...Hint, he was a Scot...
...Little Perfect, God bless his heart, took from his bottomless chest of toys a plastic and metal crossbow that shoots foam darts that really could not hurt anyone...
...Po' thang...
...I wish I had never even heard of this woman...
...In the parking lot of Morton's, by far the most powerful restaurant in California, home to billionaires every night, attached to a perfectly lit palm tree, was a huge poster saying "NO ON 209— Prevent the Enslavement of Women and Minorities...
...Onward and upward...
...They thought they were one with the buffalo...
...Then there is our primary overseer from Disney, a game-show genius named Andrew Golder...
...Wrong again...
...2. treating the people who are bad to us well...
...After a while of playing this game, the crowd began to shout "Give us a `Bueller," so I said "Bueller, Bueller" a few times...
...We're having a run-through for a show that Disney is developing starring little moi...
...He soon forgot his wound, stopped rubbing his neck, and demanded to know exactly when he was going to get his Nintendo Ultra 64...
...Tommy went to sleep listening to a story tape about the atom testing at Bikini Atoll...
...I don't know if she scares the people at Gold's Gym, but she sure scares me...
...It was a The American Spectator January 1997 55 modest measure to restore certain rights to property owners that were lost in a very bad Supreme Court decision in 1994...
...The Indians understood this...
...I think we've learned a very old lesson here...
...Fat chance...
...Malibu in the morning is a spectacular sight to begin with...
...You have to guide them through the very most basic steps of bedtime...
...Then I listened to the even greater song, "Idiot Wind" —"Someone's got it in for me, they're planting stories in the press, whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick, but when they will I can only guess...
...Plus, the event was extremely well prepared, well supplied with souvenirs of the campaign and the candidates, totally different from what the media image of the campaign has been...
...Oh well...
...Go to sleep...
...A bad little boy raised his hand and said, "Nixon...
...In all of my life as a moderately sentient human, I have never seen as much confusion about anything else as I have seen about Prop...
...I made him come out of his room, look Jeb in the eye, and say he was terribly sorry for doing such a stupid thing...
...Pam, did you put that up...
...I can actually win or lose money depending on how well I do against contestants...
...Finally, I got them into the car and brought them home...
...I think they all think their own kids look great," Alex said...
...Our resident Whoopi Goldberg imitates whites a lot, and very poorly...
...6. doing things that are foreseeably harmful to me...
...In his usual cheery voice, he told me that the final rally of the Dole-Kemp effort was to be held on election day morning on the campus of Pepperdine...
...5. thinking of myself as the center of the world...
...You'd introduce him and some other people...
...But then I had what might have been a better idea (or maybe not...
...Faith is my fortress...
...On the way home, I had about ten messages from my nutritionist, Buffy, a beautiful tall woman who looks like a better-looking version of Annette Benning...
...Then he spoke...
...I wonder if every parent in the world thinks his kid is as cute as I think Tommy is," I asked Alex...
...A bit scary, to tell the truth...
...They had come from Toronto to bring the Kabbalah to Hollywood...
...On the way home, through Burbank, past NBC, past Warner Brothers, I thought about the infinite possibilities for human adventure that lie here in Los Angeles...
...Tell me a story about World War II...
...Then a dip into the Beatitudes, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...
...I was a hippie (albeit a Republican voting hippie) in Santa Cruz in 1972...
...Then I saw Juan and Evita, theatrically lit, standing side to side just like the posters for Evita...
...For most of the ride back along the Ventura Freeway, I marveled at the Kemp rally...
...It had been federal law for more than three decades...
...Great, great...
...He hit Jeb right behind the ear...
...A few working together got that...
...Yes, have you voted against it yet...
...Adam Smith...
...They ran around like little madmen...
...Argue, protest, delay, ignore...
...I vividly recall the event...
...I told her...
...211 down at a hotel near Pershing Square...
...Then as I drift into oblivion, a few Malibu Serenity Sayings: • "We have to pray for those who harm us, but we have to avoid them if possible...
...I like her a lot...
...Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth...
...Actor...
...Then kick me...
...I, your servant, got to the mike and started quizzing the attendees, a la "Win Ben Stein's Money...
...The hillsides were largely burned from the fires, but the parts that were not burned had turned green—which is what Malibu does in fall —and contrasted pleasingly with the light blue sky...
...Then, lo and behold, we had offers for it from several different studios and went with Disney...
...I left the studio feeling totally insane...
...Then I tried an easier one...
...Then the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven...
...Attractive, thin, weight-lifting, punitively dieting women in Los Angeles can be deadly...
...Care to do it...
...I am on my way downtown to be in a commercial for some kind of nature videos...
...Julius Caesar," she said like a shot...
...You believe that...
...Kemp said that when he was i8, he was playing football at Occidental and planning to play more football...
...I doubt it...
...Wouldn't you know it, the damned thing wouldn't break...
...I think they all wish their kids looked like Tommy...
...First I stood out on the deck and sang, at the top of my lungs, my favorite mind-changing song...
...That's what we want to explain," said the first one...
...and to his beautiful colleague K.L., and headed off into the night...
...So was the crowd...
...I guess this is why I stay here...
...It's hard to describe how angry I was at Tommy...
...I enjoy the run-throughs a lot, except that some of the contestants are a little too smart...
...It does not take a village to raise a child...
...But, alas, she is real and so is Dole's loss, and so is the Prop...
...Well, you were aiming at him weren't you...
...There could have been less rambling about his entourage...
...Anyway, more proof that Wall Street can pretty much call any shot it wants...
...Clinton voters, Perot voters...
...There was a tiny platform, a trailer with a very unfriendly Secret Service woman inside—packing a Sig Sauer, which she eagerly showed to Tommy—and a knot of Republican functionaries...
...3. expecting the people who are consistently harmful to me to stop being harmful...
...So she beat me silly in round two...
...They really are astonishingly aggressive and frightening...
...Sort of like trying to herd mice...
...Everyone was so friendly...
...52 January 1997 • The American Spectator "I didn't know I would hit him," Tommy said between sobs...
...Plus, that sweet child, Chelsea, hanging around like a fifth wheel...
...She is from Scotland, so I asked her, "What famous historian and social theorist first posited in detail, in writing, the causal connection between economic organization and political development...
...He was from Scotland...
...It wasn't a business killer or a job killer because it just returned California to what federal law had been for thirty years, when jobs and businesses had been doing just fine...
...Then he stuck out his hand and held my index finger...
...I was happy to see them march in the door from the airport...
...Today, the competition was particularly brutal...
...And finally, to get me ready to rock and roll, the answer to everything, "Surrender, ask God for help, be grateful for what God sends you, and do what's in front of you...
...Gosh...
...Lights out...
...My, but it had a lot of cute little 18-year-olds...
...Serious...
...Yes, but I aim at a lot of things I don't hit," said little Johnnie Cochran...
...My longtime pal, Al Burton, is producing it...
...How many know all eleven states of the Confederacy...
...I like it...
...It's totally cool that accountants were against it...
...He pulled back the crossbow to maximum tension and then shot it right at Jeb...
...He said his son had recently been 18 and he was playing football, too...
...That means, in the case of Tommy Stein and his pals Jeb and Alex, that they come here, that they get taken all over town, to Knott's Berry Farm, to Magic Mountain, to the Universal City Walk, that they get super expensive video games, all at the expense of the Bank of Ben and Alex Stein, that we provide a grown-up driver and guide to take care of them —and all they do is ask for more and more and more and drive me crazy...
...I dipped into the Ben Stein Urban Stress Kit for my cure for the day...
...She is flipping out for a variety of reasons having to do with her father and mother and a very mean boyfriend...
...If only they had had some substantive ideas, they could truly have kicked out Bill Clinton...
...How many Presidents have been called as percipient witnesses before two criminal trials...
...Then knock me down by kicking my legs out from under me...
...He spoke excellently...
...One of my favorites on that disk is "Shelter From the Storm" — where The Jester (as opposed to the Jackster) sums up the total Hollywood experience of Ben Stein: I offered up my innocence, got repaid with scorn/ "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm...
...Then he gave much of his speech en espanol...
...In fact, the Jackster gave a fine speech indeed...
...I hope you will accept it...
...Or, to look at it in another way, if the plaintiffs' lawyers' wage is fixed, maybe we should also fix the wage of the defense lawyers...
...Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted...
...Afterwards, I was really stoked...
...Then Tommy wanted to show us his Tae Kwon Do moves...
...Campus police and Highway Patrol directed students, guests, Kemp followers (a joke my father made long ago), the Malibu High School choir, and little kiddies from Webster Elementary and Our Lady of Malibu to their spots...
...Then they ran around more...
...211 would have driven business out of California, because it reached any business in America...
...Then the verse about "We are not afraid, we are not afraid, we are not afraid today...
...But it was a darned close run thing...
...Get in bed...
...The producer and camera people were friendly, but had a disturbingly "off" quality...
...209 is pro-civil rights...
...But the basic point was well taken...
...Then, the boys were gone and I was delirious with The American Spectator • January 1997 53 joy...
...Immediately they started to play with Tommy...
...The parking lot attendants are almost all from Central America, but when Iasked the head honcho if he had put it up, he just shrugged and said no...
...Tommy's assistant and mine, a lovely woman named Tina, came to the rally along with her family...
...Oh, great...
...Don't let go until I fall asleep...
...Ninety-nine percent of it was about allowing injured stockholders to go after accountants who had defrauded them...
...The crowd was getting restless...
...It takes Daddy...
...Besides right to life, I'm not sure how much else really needs to be changed...
...Game-show host...
...He did not have a platform, but what a great guy...
...In moments, there he was on stage, pretending to pass a football...
...While I was at the Prop...
...Well, I bought souvenirs for them...
...Your humble servant plays the moderator in round one...
...I asked...
...I can see why people from the hinterlands are scared of tough women from New York...
...Its skeleton was made of steel...
...They spent four or five times as much as the pro-Prop...
...Friday E arly rising...
...So much for English being the Official Language of the United States of America...
...I sent Tommy to his room...
...Then there were a lot of strange inside references to the Kabbalah, which is a mystical Jewish cult approach to theology...
...And a lot of really big stars are turning to Kabbalah for explanation," another said...
...He was doing a sort of slow whirlpool around the room as he held his hand on his very obviously hurt ear region...
...We'd like for you to be the Master of Ceremonies...
...So did our pal Shoshonna, with her son, Martin Luther, looking adorable and eager in his red sweatshirt...
...No one that I called on did...
...It has to do with complete oneness with the universe," said yet another...
...Then we went off to Taco Bell for lunch...
...Ignore, ignore, argue, argue...
...In moments, he was on stage, pretending to pass a football...
...I wonder if this could be why our First Loverboy likes to campaign so much...
...However, while I was not looking, Tommy substituted a Chapstick tube, made of metal, for the dart...
...If you elect us," Kemp said, "I will be Bob Dole's right arm...
...By the time I brought Alex and Jeb to the airport to return to Idaho, I was delirious with fatigue and frazzle...
...Did I mention she was an honors graduate of Cambridge...
...This morning, I roused Tommy and made him take a shower, and then off we went44 Tommy went to sleep listening to a story tape about the atom testing at Bikini Atoll...
...She also knew entirely too much...
...We have Dolly Parton already coming to lessons," one of them said...
...He really got us wound up, mostly with platitudes and homilies...
...Yeah, but they probably think Tommy looks better...
...She's always telling me about the powerful men in her life, Jack Nicholson and various thuggish bond traders and making me feel like the wimp that I am by comparison...
...Ai =111^1111^111111 SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference The American Spectator January r997 57...
...Then, off to a party given by the supporters of Prop...
...Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...I made him stay in his room for about an hour...
...They are sweet kids, but wow, are they high maintenance...
...No appeals to racism or class anger...
...How long, I wonder, can we have a Constitution if Bill Clinton feels free to ignore the law and the courts and can get away with it...
...This is all commie propaganda," I told Tommy...
...Pam," I said, "Prop...
...It was fall...
...What's to stop him...
...Insane behavior for today is: 1. treating the people who are good to us badly...
...4. expecting others to think of me as being as important to them as I am to myself...
...These nice people were thinking that I was my father...
...In the final month of the campaign, the opponents of Prop...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 1
