Ben Stein's Diary: Right on the Money
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Right on the Money Wednesday D inner with my pal Al Burton and Michael Davies, my boss, so to speak, at Disney's Buena Vista division. We ate in a...
...Well, my boy," I said, "I would be much more disposed to help you if you really knew the cases, really followed the cases, could help me dissect the opinions in class...
...Not if I kept it off a few weeks...
...When Freud wrote one of his most famous books," says Phil, a psychologist, "it was translated as The Ego and the Id...
...It's insane that you spend all your time with your son and your dog...
...I mean really rolling...
...When he left, we stayed in touch and exchanged many e-mail messages...
...It went up to a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit...
...And it just seemed to me that this was exactly the same case...
...I have really got to work on that fault...
...As it is, you are rarely prepared, rarely know the case...
...Before I knew the stock market would "correct" so dramatically, I cavalierly brought them down here for a weekend with my son...
...You hate me...
...My grandmother saw the RAF military policeman and a chaplain walk down the street and she knew if they walked by the house next door —where an RAF pilot also lived—that would mean Grandfather was dead...
...Friday A simply dazzlingly inspiring phone conversation this morning with Andy Kleinfeld...
...It's been a little turbulent lately, and it's been scaring some people, including me...
...We talked about the case in class, and then we talked more about it at the break, and then P. walked past me on his way into class and said, "Let's rip this case apart, Professor Stein...
...This made a lot of sense to me...
...He even got to be a good golfer...
...Point one, the masters who make the rules for the wise men and the fools, who decide to kill or enslave human beings who are in their way, first decree that their victims are not human beings...
...I think people know what they're doing, no matter how much they might try to pretend that they are saving lives...
...I would like to be the immigration official in charge of deciding who gets admitted...
...But it's all voluntary, and there are a lot of unhealthful practices in society...
...The problem is usually not the 'it' outside you but the 'I' that is your way of seeing and relating...
...What kind of crazy grown man spends all his time with a nineyear-old and an old dog that can't even control where it goes to the bathroom...
...You're crazy...
...So lost, so alone, and so filled with potential...
...He ordered a Manhattan...
...I'll make sure every tabloid in America knows that you're insane...
...So my wife, who is the most sane, down-to-earth woman on the face of the earth, who has almost no preconceptions about anyone, sees people pretty much as they are and gets along well with them...
...But that was if I kept it off for four years," I said...
...So she has a great career and a million friends and a devoted family...
...I mean, the system itself can shoot down six planes, not one missile by itself...
...Saturday B Liss...
...Or Hillary...
...Brilliant," I said...
...Not at all," I said, "not in 52 June 1997 • The American Spectator money...
...Here it is all around me on the beach, my son, and Peter Feierabend's son and daughter, and thousands of other people's sons and daughters...
...I have only a few points I want to make...
...Then he went and got Darwin and put his arm through Darwin's trunk and grabbed my arm with it...
...He wanted me to help him get a job...
...How about the people who sell sugar...
...Stock market turbulence is the price we pay for superior returns," I told him...
...I am sure Elizabeth Dole would say it...
...Sometimes she would get violently sick to her stomach while unconscious...
...Curves, twists, loops...
...We shall overcome...
...I often think of a relative, name not necessary, whose wife was sick for years...
...Daddy could never build this...
...Poor Mary Muff Maguire D has called me about a thousand times today to tell me she hates me for various imaginary crimes...
...Wow...
...The only important value, and everything else is second-best...
...Far from it...
...He told me about the various weapons an F-4 carries: the Sparrow, the Sidewinder, and something they call "the slug...
...Tommy," I said, "I hate to say this, but this is wildly beyond Daddy's abilities...
...People know candy is bad for them and they eat it anyway...
...Your humble servant used to really dislike it when I saw people smoking...
...In fact, I want to compose a speech...
...I sent her a lot of those messages and then I thought, "This •4 Now, I love it when 1 see people smoking...
...I wish it were possible to say to women who think it would be shameful to have a baby out of wedlock that choosing life is dignified and glorious compared with the alternative, and having a baby without a husband is small change compared with the heroism of choosing life in the culture of death...
...How about people who die of cirrhosis...
...Hard cases make bad law," said the famed Learned Hand...
...As he hoisted his glass and I drank my orange juice, Michael said, "As of this afternoon, we have closed the deal with Comedy Central on Win Ben Stein's Money' and we'll go into pre-production in a week or two...
...I remembered when the governor of Virginia, back in the 1950's, had this practice of 'massive resistance' against school desegregation...
...He drew a picture of the ramp...
...How do people get so angry...
...So the Soviets say the kulaks are not humans but parasites...
...I do not want to feel anything like that even in my heart, even silently...
...When I got home, my son was excited about my news and asked if it meant we were now rich...
...No one has ever liked me...
...Don't you think I would be doing a disservice to my lawyer pals if I asked them to hire someone who rarely is prepared for class...
...Let's go to a carpenter...
...Earlier in the day, I had met for several hours with a lawyer from San Diego named Jim Huston...
...Davies in particular took in the details of the weaponry carefully...
...That's why I've had to get so strong working out at the gym...
...They did their duty...
...This is so good a cause that it simply has to triumph...
...To me, balancing the budget is a trifle compared with saving babies' lives...
...and Mrs...
...We had talked for a long time about his career as a weapons/intercept officer for an F-4...
...A far cry from my grandfather's day," Michael said...
...It must be within the realm of human effort to create a real safety net for babies...
...Daddy," he asked, "can you build me a ramp so that I can ride my rollerblades off the ramp...
...Now Judge Kleinfeld was in a position to make sure that no one—white, black, brown, yellow—would be the subject of discrimination again...
...I really love it when I see people smoking Marlboros...
...I would never have thought that in a million years we would be pals, and yet, here we are...
...And I am the richest hubby I know because I have your Mom...
...They assume those risks...
...The ballot measure passed handily, but then a District Court judge who had been a "civil rights" lawyer said the law was unconstitutional and barred enforcement...
...The American Spectator • June 1997 53 Darwin wants you to tell him a story so he can fall asleep...
...I waited patiently for his news...
...The point is that, now that I have aligned my interests with those of Philip Morris, I have a whole different view of smoking...
...We should be on the air by September...
...Are we going to discriminate against a person because of an attributive quality he was born with or are we going to let people be free to make their own lives based on merit...
...After a few verses they say, "Watergate does not bother me...
...I asked one of her pals what country they were from...
...Friday ies irae...
...Tell the truth...
...They worked at jobs...
...Tommy got out of bed, passed by his fish, his tree frogs (Fatty-Moo-Moo and Fatty-Wah-Wah) and his kitty, Peebo, and his dog, Susie-Moo, and his pet elephant, Darwin (this one is stuffed, thank God), and went to his sketch pad...
...Life...
...Just so, the abortion industry says that the baby not yet born is not human—even though it is identical to one that willsoon be born...
...Or maybe Espanol...
...Because people like you, mean, hateful people, have been so cruel to me...
...Then Jim told me about the A-io Warthog, and its gun that fires zo-mm shells made of depleted uranium, the heaviest metal there is, that go so hard and so fast that they can go right through the armor on any tank and blow the insides of it to pieces...
...I imagine I'll have to compete with Bill Clinton for that job...
...Life...
...When she saw the chaplain walk past the house and turn down her walkway, she collapsed and never was the same again...
...That's the Phoenix missile...
...But then I hung up so I don't really know what came next...
...By the way, how can they possibly sleep at night...
...He was just on a three-judge panel in Pasadena that heard arguments about whether Proposition 209 was constitutional...
...I strolled into the room with the answering machine to hear Mary Muff's latest messages...
...Great," said I. "And I wanted the decision to be as unambiguous as possible, because I wanted it to say clearly that the law would not allow discrimination...
...It's the premium for risk aversion that we get paid for hanging in there in the bad times as well as the good times...
...Well, I didn't know I was at first, but I sure know now...
...Then there's the M-61 mini-gun...
...He nodded, and God love him, he's been a killer in class ever since...
...17 is hopeless...
...Should people who get AIDS be allowed to sue the estate of Allen Ginsberg...
...We're talking psychology...
...You think you can get away with hating women, forcing them to have abortions in back alleys...
...He's with his pals Alex and Rachel Feierabend...
...And why are people on the proabortion side of the struggle so bitter...
...04 56 June 1997 The American Spectator...
...I also wonder if some really important women came out and said that while career is great, it's not worth killing your baby over, what effect that would have...
...Maybe even Jane Fonda...
...How could anyone come out and say, "Yes, it's cool to have an abortion rather than have a detour in your career...
...You're like everyone else, conspiring against me...
...We ate in a banquette in a corner of Morton's...
...Now I love it when I see people smoking...
...Brave men," I said...
...Just strictly colorblind law...
...Now, my idea is that we need a few more young women immigrants from the Czech Republic...
...A few weeks ago, one of my students, whom I will call P., approached me at the break...
...How could they possibly say otherwise...
...The point here is not that I have discovered a new legal theory...
...I am sorry to say that many years ago, Spy wrote some vicious, and viciously untrue, items about yours truly...
...We stopped at Shutters for lunch, and there I had an epiphany...
...Should they be able to sue Sea-gram's...
...He was the second-oldest pilot in the RAF flying Hurricanes and Spitfires in World War II," said Davies, reprising a conversation we had enjoyed some months ago...
...I sat next to Tommy's bed and told him a story about Ren and Stimpy buying an A-io Warthog at an Air Force surplus sale...
...In fact I have noticed that it's the hallmark of people who have mental problems to see everything as a conspiracy against them, and the hallmark of sane people to see life as a freeway, and—as my pal DeAnne used to say 54 June 1997 The American Spectator if you keep going in the right direction, you'll eventually get where you want to go...
...No, I'm not at Spy any more," he said...
...In fact, we're not going to take it any longer because we love our kids so much...
...But that's not the right translation...
...Most of all, from the President to Bart Simpson to Tiger Woods, everyone has to say, "Life is the ultimate good...
...They heard arguments, read papers, and now the judgment has come down: It is not unconstitutional for the voters of California to say that they want no discrimination for or against anyone by race...
...Well, it would have to be really, really easy to build," I said, "because Daddy isn't all that great with his hands...
...A dead baby does not make anyone very happy except maybe the sad, bitter people who make a living at it...
...It was like a Rube Goldberg idea of a child's ramp...
...We talked for a long, long time about the stock market...
...I don't really like being cursed at, so I hung up...
...Just about everyone who smokes seems to smoke Marlboros...
...The right title should be It and I." "What on earth does that mean...
...They didn't complain...
...Then, maybe sometimes shame and embarrassment are reasons to have an abortion...
...Tommy is getting better day by day...
...Thus I have learned of the power of alignment of my interests with those of others...
...I knew they were not speaking English...
...It was a quiet night...
...But for now, I am working on something else...
...He had saved his country, won brilliant decorations, and then this was his life...
...Philip Morris, or MO, as the stock symbol is, makes a little item called Marlboro cigarettes...
...If they are really poor, I guess economic insecurity is a big reason...
...What about people who die in car crashes...
...Great judges make great law—or let the voters make great law...
...This is a sort of testament to the human spirit and its powers of resilience and camaraderie...
...Then I'm thinking of why women have abortions...
...Tommy's America is going to be very different from the one I grew up in...
...Now he writes for the New Yorker and does nice work, and here I am having dinner with him...
...God help her...
...You think I'm going to let you get away with that...
...I asked...
...It doesn't matter," she said...
...It was supposed to have been a big celebration about my show, but I was too sad thinking about Michael's grandfather and grandmother and his mother to think TV-show happy thoughts...
...But they know it's risky to do so...
...Then they used it to blow up the house of Mr...
...I really love it when 1 see people smoking Marlboros...
...Someday soon I am going to compose a parents' manifesto about how we are getting pushed around by our own kids and we're not going to take it any longer, no matter how much we love our kids...
...But he persevered, almost never complained, was always there when needed...
...Wow," I said, which seems to be my word du jour...
...To do so, they blatantly cited their own precedents incorrectly, especially in another case called Basic v. Levinson...
...The main ones seem to have to do with not paying her $i,000 a pound for the three or four pounds I lost under her scary tutelage...
...When you begin to realize that you are seeing the world largely in your own confused way and that's causing you problems, and that the outside world can be seen as either good or bad, threatening or unthreatening depending on how you feel like seeing it, you make a lot of progress...
...If they're grown-ups, they know the risks...
...I told all of this to Al Burton and to Michael Davies...
...The main premium I was thinking about, though, is the premium for forgiveness...
...We drank our toasts and then turned our talk to modem day military combat...
...I asked...
...No preferential hiring...
...After all, that gasoline implicitly invites drivers to go fast...
...But I am the richest father I know because I have you...
...Afterward, I told my son about the dinner...
...But I desisted, and then one day out of the blue, Kurt called me...
...It really made me happy to know him...
...Is this so you44 Anyone who deals with Disney for any length of time certainly knows he's not doing it for the money,' I said...
...He's a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals judge based in Alaska and a really smart, well-principled guy...
...Would Whoopi Goldberg say it...
...Then, following an investment strategy that I had read about, I bought stock in Philip Morris, among many other companies...
...It made me crazy...
...Then I sent her many e-mails reassuring her that I did not hate her and always liked her and that she was a child of God and was loved no matter what she had done in her life...
...Husband and to take over Hollywood, Yugoslavia...
...I'm going to ruin your life because you hate women and want to get them under your coat-hanger control...
...I waited for him to say he was the luckiest little boy in the world to have me as his Dad and my wife as his Mom, but that would have been too much to hope for...
...Others returned with severe wounds...
...I don't want a policy of 'massive resistance' to anti-discrimination in California...
...Does your conscience bother you...
...Should they be able to sue the people who sell them high-test gasoline...
...Anyone who deals with Disney for any length of time certainly knows he's not doing it for the money...
...But I will put Tommy in chains if he ever smokes...
...It means that mental health comes from approaching your problems outside yourself and acknowledging that a great, great many of them come from inside yourself...
...I think this is the greatest blow for individual freedom since Brown v. Board of Education," I told the judge...
...It's about a wild misunderstanding of the securities laws by Justice Kennedy and some others...
...I was really, really happy about his progress...
...Ohhh," he said, looking sad...
...So I wrote a few columns for him, and then he was fired for reasons that are not totally clear, but he obviously stepped on important toes...
...Millions more served in bitter cold in Greenland and the Fulda Gap, and in desperate humidity in Panama and Subic Bay...
...Should they be able to sue...
...I wonder if the pro-abortion people, in their heart of hearts, may just have a guilty conscience...
...It shoots something like fifty 3o-mm rounds per second and each round is about a foot long and hits whatever it hits very, very hard...
...It can be explained just as clearly to others...
...Step one—at least for me—is a campaign to let every thinking person know that a baby in the womb is a human being just like the cute babies in movies...
...I came really close to suing them...
...This was before they developed machine guns that could fire through the propellers...
...No one even remembers Korea, but brave men died in horrible conditions there...
...That's what I say.44 'You think you can get away with hating women, forcing them to have abortions in back alleys?' 1 Sunday lam riding my bike once again in Santa Monica, watching the mass of humanity ride, bike, blade, skateboard, andyuck—walk along the boardwalk...
...Long ago, in my hippie past, when I complained about some company making extortionate profits, my father said, "Well, if you really believe that, you should buy stock in the company...
...Hundreds of thousands did not come back...
...They're having a great time as the incredibly lazy human beings that modern American kids are...
...Pretty scary...
...And then sometimes one's glittering career is a reason to have an abortion...
...Once again, that's everything...
...What I did think as I headed off to kiss my angel boy was that this is a world and a nation of heroes...
...Czech Republic," said the young woman...
...And it can fly about fifty miles and shoot down six planes at a time...
...Little Perfect and I are rocketing along on the boardwalk in Santa Monica...
...I will," I said, "because it's a truly stunning premium that we get paid compared with bond investors, and it makes a lot of sense to be patient...
...Thursday A little miracle of teaching...
...Richthofen was shooting back at him with a pistol...
...He flew in a Spad and used to fire a shotgun at Baron von Richthofen making damned sure not to shoot off his own wings or his propeller...
...If it's not a human though, it's easy to kill it...
...This man, a stupendously brave war hero, would clean up after her and then sleep by himself, waiting for the next health emergency...
...Exactly, and the goal of therapy is to get people to move from seeing all problems as being outside them to seeing their role in how they make their problems...
...You should write something about this," he said...
...Then they grew old and they took care of their wives and children...
...They watched their friends and families grow old and die...
...Darwin likes you...
...Should the estates of the people who drive fast be allowed to sue the gasoline refiners...
...It would be different if anyone were making people smoke...
...He was shot down on the last day of the Battle of Britain...
...It has everything to do with the sanctity of human life...
...Under Prop 209, the law would be strictly colorblind...
...They lost many of their abilities...
...The Nazis say that the Jews, the Poles, the gypsies are not humans but officially subhuman...
...Who takes life works against the basic building blocks of the spirit and is a bad person...
...Honoring that is not a "choice" in our society if women and men understand what a baby is...
...Then she started to curse at me...
...But we will get it done...
...That is a big part of life, just doing your duty...
...The slave holders say that the black man is not human, but at most three-fifths of a human...
...Alignment, not competition, is the smart way to go...
...They broke thirty years of unanimous circuit court precedent to suddenly take away some of the most basic protections that securities owners have...
...Late at night, I heard the phone ringing...
...He still remembers another boy dunking him under the water in a public pool because he was Jewish...
...Today, we're discussing possibly the most mendacious securities case of all time, Central Bank v. First Interstate...
...By chance, she and her pals stopped to watch a little African-American family dance and collect money on the strand...
...Are we going to let everyone who gets a heart attack sue M&M/Mars because the fat and caffeine in chocolate lead to heart disease...
...It's amazing how easy it is to fall into the trap of feeling superior to people just because they're different from me...
...I have some amazing news;' Michael Davies said in his thick British accent, "but I can't tell you until I have a drink...
...You may know that Prop 209 was a The American Spectator • June 1997 55 ballot measure here in sunny California that said there could no longer be any preferences of any kind under state law for anyone based on race, religion, or sex...
...She was with other young people...
...Millions served in Korea and Vietnam at various times...
...That's what it's all about...
...If the market didn't scare so many people away, those who stayed in it wouldn't get so much more than bonds for such a long time...
...can write some new mean thing about me...
...Amazing...
...In a couple of weeks, I am going to speak at the National Right to Life dinner in New York and I have to compose a speech...
...It is a sacred duty and opportunity...
...You're doing it mostly for the fun, aren't you...
...Anyway, we hurtled along the boardwalk past the throngs of newly minted Americans speaking all of those languages they speak, wearing their beach garb—usually T-shirts with cartoon characters from shows I've been in...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...Then these men came back...
...Motivation...
...No special quotas...
...Should they be liable to people with diabetes who overindulge in candy and then have attacks of hypoglycemia...
...It has nothing to do with "choice...
...This country is home to many brave men and women just like this man, although maybe not as handsome...
...Kurt is a brilliant Harvard grad who helped to found Spy magazine...
...Twelve million Americans went off to fight in World War II...
...Tommy put his arm around me...
...He's on his blades that I just got him, super K2's, and I'm on my beachcruiser bike, and Phil DeMuth, my new best pal, is along with us...
...He'll get some excellent blinis and Peking Duck, but the cheerleaders at his high school are going to be cheering in Farsi or Korean...
...It turned out that the judge and I had been in high school in suburban Washington, D.C., he in Virginia, and I in Maryland, at exactly the same time...
...When my father was a kid in Detroit, people in public parks were mean to him just because he was a Jew with curly hair...
...My grandfather survived, and then he came back to active duty in the Battle of Britain...
...He was asleep before I got to the part about the depleted uranium...
...Yes, but it's almost no money for you," Michael said...
...I keep thinking of a great line from the classic Lynyrd Skynyrd hit, "Sweet Home, Alabama...
...Other people feel as if they're being picked on, look for fights, and get into quarrels with everyone they cross paths with...
...We had both been moved by the sad plight of Americans discriminated against by reason of color...
...We all sat rather solemnly eating our chicken and our sea bass and our lambafter that...
...He is prepared, knows the cases intimately, and is ready to rock and roll...
...And so when Alex comes, I can jump off the ramp with him...
...Here is an amazing turn of life...
...Cast not your pearls before swine...'" It really is a tragedy about her...
...I'm the editor of New York and I want you to write a column for us about finance...
...On the other hand, as we raced along, hearing Phil's words of wisdom about psychology, watching my Tommy boy on his blades, we passed an almost unbelievably beautiful young woman in a yellow bikini top and shorts, on blades...
...But they persevered...
...Then, rush, rush, rush into town to have dinner with Kurt Andersen...
...You know," he said, "I was a Freedom Rider in Virginia against state-ordered segregation that discriminated against blacks, back in the 1960's...
...It seems so clear to me...
...It weighs over a thousand pounds," Jim said...
Vol. 30 • June 1997 • No. 6
