Ben Stein's Diary: A Golden Age for Thugs
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein A Golden Age for Thugs Monday H ere I am cleaning up my son's room watching a talk show and they are talking about our time—to the effect that we are now...
...This is not a big thing in the progress of mankind...
...But there it is...
...He laughingly said he had tried them and they didn't work...
...62 May 1998 • The American Spectator...
...7 He looks frighteningly off base...
...If you wonder what the struggle against The Clintons is about, it's about the rights of individuals —the people whose files their hoods played with, the people in the travel office, the women whom Clinton assaulted and then had his lawyers smear for asserting basic legal rights...
...But I think any intelligent man or woman who thinks about just the possibility that abortion is murder will have a hard time stopping before the terminus of the notion that it is murder...
...That is a fine little airline, with good service, helpful flight attendants, and prompt service...
...I intro Jimmy, who intros the contestants...
...And the dancers...
...Some profs at Yale said I was a crank and asinine, but those were small things...
...On the other hand, it's my show...
...I'm not kidding: Robert Goulet...
...By an amazing coincidence, my driver, J.J., used to work for my dear pal Sid Dauman in New York...
...But basically it's like a well-upholstered prison...
...I know that there are intelligent people who disagree strongly with what I say here...
...Kick step, kick step...
...Monday T oday I had such a good feeling about the Mirage that I called Kevin Hanley, my ace broker at Merrill Lynch, and bought a thousand shares of Mirage Resorts...
...There we rehearsed the show I am in...
...He's sort of drooling and lurching back and forth and I don't know if I really want to beat him...
...They do the impossible effortlessly...
...Later, after the show, he told me he could not recall the study or where it appeared...
...Hey, there are a lot of people here...
...Struggles to keep from smoking...
...Quasimodo on the bell tower of Notre Dame de Paris...
...The Golden Age metaphor seems to apply especially to corporate earnings, which have risen very fast since 1987, more than doubling in that time period...
...This is a function of how large our contestant pool is now that the show is well known...
...Dinner at the Palm with Bob Goulet and everybody else...
...She somehow gets feathers all over...
...They know that a baby in the womb relaxes when she or he hears soothing music and they don't think there's a baby there...
...Never mind that every one of those babies is maimed and killed in an abortion, so that you really have a calculus in which the lives of about a hundred thousand babies are traded for the lives of one grown woman...
...That's why we have to ride our Wave Runners or hunt deer in Alabama or do whatever we do...
...She had to crawl along cold creeks and under barbed wire to escape to Trieste, thence to the U.K., and then she met Bob...
...He said I was a drug addict, had a student mistress (both total lies), and kept a dog on campus in violation of rules (that part was true...
...It goes roughly like this: Freedom of speech does not come from the reporter but from the soldier...
...Any physical punishment even if well deserved...
...But dead...
...For the rest of us, who see abortion as the violent taking of innocent life, it is hard indeed to see our era as a Golden Age...
...This talk is based on the performance of the United States economy since about the end 41991 until now, when we have had an uninterrupted economic expansion accompanied by rates of inflation that are low by the standards of the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era...
...I just love this hotel...
...Tuesday S HOWTIME...
...I played basketball with Tommy, down at the L.A...
...I play a nerdy statistician talking about what a great year Sony Studios had in '97 and what a great year we are going to have...
...This last isn't always easy...
...Finally my car came...
...The problem is that we are getting far, far too many contestants who are really good players...
...Nice work if you can get it...
...Now, I want to be the first to admit that not everyone sees abortion as the ending of a life...
...abortions performed on United States women and their babies...
...He stood on the stage like that weird character from Of Mice and Men, making muscle gestures and grinning crazily...
...Here's the reason: I told him no TV, no video games if he didn't help clean up...
...It was nice but not in the same league as the Mirage...
...As I walked down the hall, I was met by two more drunken women...
...This kind of impulse-buying probably means we are near a crash, but I bought them anyway...
...My bosses had arranged for me to have a big room at Bally's to rest in before the show...
...There was a long delay in getting my clearance but I finally got it...
...I mean a solid cement wall...
...Then, after dinner, I was caught by two drunk women, mom and daughter...
...BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein A Golden Age for Thugs Monday H ere I am cleaning up my son's room watching a talk show and they are talking about our time—to the effect that we are now living in "The Golden Age" or at least "A Golden Age" in the history of America...
...He said I was a subversive and a danger and so forth...
...of us don't see this as "A Golden Age"—and why we won't see it that way as long as the killing goes on, no matter how high the market goes...
...Naturally, our cars were not at the airport to meet us...
...I was introduced by Vanna White, shot out onto the stage, and soon I was44 I sang my little heart out with Bob Goulet, Leslie Nielson, and the Rockettes...
...Still, it's a big thrill to be in a dancing and singing stage show with Rockettes...
...Jimmy asked him if he took any obsessive-compulsive medications...
...It's not like work at all...
...I get to my little tiny dressing room about eleven in the morning...
...Children who hurt them...
...The dancers...
...This rise, combined with low interest rates, has powered a breathtaking rise in prices on the nation's stock markets, which I like a lot, and have talked about before...
...Freedom to learn does not come from the teacher but from the airman and the pilot...
...I pass down a The American Spectator • May r 9 9 8 59 short dark corridor and next thing I know, I am in front of the stage...
...This is the same kind of file that the Clintons got on goo or so Republicans, supposedly by mistake...
...Yeah...
...That's my axe...
...Then, off to more rehearsals...
...Pitiful...
...I met Steve Wynn at a Milken-related function years ago...
...It's a miracle...
...I absolutely do not believe it," I said...
...Would we think we were in a Golden Age...
...Now we learn that the Clintons have hired a detective to find out dirt on the staff of Ken Starr...
...It's not funny," I said...
...This is gangster, Stalinist politics...
...Maybe he's really a solid family man...
...Then an intense woman named Jackie who mutters about her stock market losses puts on my microphone, and I am off and running...
...But I am still a competitive maniac, and I have to struggle all the time not to feel really sad when I lose...
...He ignored my congratulations and good wishes and just made stranger and stranger gestures so, on Jimmy's cue, we both ran off the stage and left him there...
...How would we feel if an enemy invader killed a million and a half of our unborn every year...
...I know what kind of lies are in these files...
...Well, actually all I do is talk and point at a blackboard...
...Complaints...
...Long ago, I was a teacher at The University of California at Santa Cruz...
...There are probably some people who still see a baby in the womb as unfeeling tissue, like a mole or subcutaneous fat...
...More Scientology...
...There was an investigation...
...Come back soon and give us a chance to win Ben Stein's money," said the pit boss, who had earlier yelled at me for touching the dice with both hands, a strict no-no...
...His wife is a staggeringly beautiful woman from Macedonia...
...It's all lies (except about the dog), but it's there...
...The kids complained to the provost of our college, an aging drunk racist whose name is not important...
...He owns a lot of the Mirage and a lot of other casinos...
...dancers, and got ready to do my thing...
...It doesn't matter if you're in coach or first class, no matter what, there will be a lot of screwups...
...Then I get awakened, groom myself, and Terry, the question man, and Alex, the standards and practices man, come in...
...I complained to the governor and chairman ofthe board of regents of the University of California, one Ronald Reagan...
...No...
...Thursday H ere I am cleaning up after my son, his kitty, and his dog...
...Showing of tattoos of a woman with a whip...
...I wonder where she is now...
...By the way, Tommy also does cleanup now...
...For the next half hour they talked to me about their lives...
...If these pre-born lives are inconvenient, goes the reasoning of this group, then it is the right of the mother to kill her child...
...They are the ones who are hearing in their heads that if they don't win the game, they're nothing, dirt, and their parents won't ever want them to come home again...
...As I ate my dinner, I thought of a fine aphorism that my pal Frosty Prewitt sent to me online this week...
...I try to be relaxed about it and take it in stride, but it's not easy...
...After dinner I did something I have never done before...
...Here is how it goes...
...There is a ten-second tape that begins the show, and then, wham, I walk out onto the stage, make some funny gestures, and give my intro...
...Thursday N ow for a little story about why I am so angry at the Clintons...
...This is a brutal, but honest, approach...
...Jimmy, my co-host, and I giggle about the contestants, and then it's show time...
...Luckily I don't believe all of it, so Tommy gets some punishment and now his room is a little bit neater than it was...
...Then, when it was his time to play me, in what we call "the best often test of knowledge," he told me in a surly voice that he was sure he would beat me because he had watched the last game on TV and had gotten all ten right...
...Then I get dressed and have make up applied by Suzie the makeup woman...
...Then my driver, J.J., took me over to see the Hard Rock Casino and Hotel...
...Then I go up on the slightly raised stage and greet my contestants...
...But all too many can beat me...
...One of them was scary and the other merely bombed...
...No," said the girl...
...Notice how everything here is scary...
...He was so good that it really did not faze me to lose to him...
...Then I go to sleep...
...To tell the truth, by and large they seem like fairly nice people...
...I am there with them and so is a huge dead roach in the corner...
...He actually makes his bed some days...
...I used to disagree strongly myself—before we had our own adopted son, before we saw what might have been sucked out and ground up in a "clinic" or "women's health centers" (most absurd terms for killing rooms for little girls and boys), before we learned what everyone now knows about just how alive a baby in the womb is...
...Then I think about some other numbers...
...Perhaps you can see why some44 How would we feel if an enemy invader killed a million and a half of our unborn every year...
...It wouldn't have mattered...
...To no one's amazement, the faculty at UCSC cleared the man of racist and discriminatory behavior...
...It is really lonely here without Tommy and my wife...
...Hard, hard work...
...It's small, human sized, and very bright and cheery...
...I recall roaches like that from when I had a house in Rancho Mirage...
...She is amazingly beautiful and smart...
...But it was great fun...
...Richard is a handyman who works only so he can support his hobby of role-playing as a super hero at super hero conventions...
...We are in an immense room that will eventually seat about 4,000 people...
...Small world...
...I played for five dollars a throw, chicken feed...
...I can always tell the crazed ones by their facial tics, their sweaty palms, and their intense forward stares...
...Studies show what the authors want them to show...
...I really am not that interested in drunk people's stories...
...There are a lot of folks out there who know more facts, can recall them faster, and have a lot of other advantages over me...
...Brilliantly choreographed by a young guy named Adam Shankman, and music beautifully done by a legend named Peter Matz...
...We're doing these briefly in the dusty rehearsal hall...
...I feel like a fighter getting escorted to the ring...
...Yes, his blue parakeet—Blueberry...
...It's that simple...
...I flew on Reno Air...
...I didn't get back to my hotel until about eleven p.m...
...Then over to the actual site of the show at Bally's Hotel...
...But the audience is told that it's about intelligence and this means it hurts when I lose...
...Swastikas are not funny...
...It's also a function of the greater ease contestants have with the show now that they have been familiarized with it by six months or so of TV exposure...
...I know that the only meaningful kind of intelligence is fearing God, loving one's family and one's country, and serving God and man on earth...
...I know what kind of blackmail the Clintons had in mind...
...Freedom of religion does not come from the preacher or the rabbi but from the sailor...
...I played craps...
...Some of the questions are questionable, at least to me, and I protest them...
...Rather, it has big pieces of glass right up against a cement wall...
...Well, not really a miracle...
...How would we feel if a disease claimed a million and a half unborn lives every year...
...But it was a left-wing monolith...
...Then, back to L.A...
...In any event, I hate to lose...
...In a tiny little bed while listening to Mozart...
...That makes you a candidate for abusive relationships...
...I am bound to say that if Milken's other friends had been as reasonable and un-bullying as Wynn, the Milken story might have been different...
...No," said the doc...
...At Caesar's Palace, disaster...
...I just read a study that says any physical punishment of any kind by a parent causes immediate behavior problems and usually long-lasting problems, like problems with relationships...
...In the 1972 election, my beloved ex-girlfriend Pat and I were the only two votes of 1500 on campus for Nixon...
...They go over the questions for the first round where I am the question-asker...
...I settled in and then went down to the lobby and signed autographs...
...Directed perfectly by a man named Stuart Ross and stage-managed by three gals named Susan Dietz, Joan Stein, and Mary Klinger...
...Very smart...
...We got to the set early...
...I am supposed to be smart...
...I sneaked to my corner of the stage, hung out with the Rockettes and the L.A...
...I saw it and ordered them to rearrange the chairs...
...I did my small part over and over...
...Richard, in this case, has a scary tic, a head that rocks back and forth in what I think is called ataxia, an effect of anti-psychosis drugs, and a weird, totally fake smile.44 He's sort of drooling and lurching back and forth and I don't know if I really want to beat him...
...Anyway, he has this mad unabomber quality of living in a pigsty and spending every moment and every dime hying to learn more facts so that some day he could come on "Win Ben Stein's Money," beat me, and then go to a Spider-Man convention and tell everyone about it...
...They told me the stories of their lives and I smiled grimly...
...Scary...
...For example, in game three today (we play four a day, and that's brutal), it went like this: "Sy is a law teacher who graduated from Yale Law School and teaches about administrative law...
...In my next life, I want to be a dancer...
...It's just an opinion, but I think publicists are supposed to communicate with writers—not insult them and make up slime stories about them...
...It measures quick recall of scattered facts...
...Giant, atomic mutant-size roaches...
...There is no royal road to travel," said Pam cheerily...
...It happened for a reason...
...It's a stage show, with Rockettes and other dancers...
...In the event, I did fantastically well in the booth, with eight right out of ten and we were tied, but at the very last instant he pulled out that "MLS" stands for Master of Library Science and won...
...More Americans than ever are millionaires, and while precise numbers are hard to come by, estimates from the Northern Trust Company are that more than one in every hundred Americans is a millionaire, and families with more than $5 million in assets are no longer rare...
...Then he helps me find a bagel...
...I also think highly of Steve Wynn...
...At a long remove from there is an air hole through which a dusty hint of light can appear...
...And I might add that freedom of the marketplace does not come from the bond trader or the speculator but from the Marine, the soldier, the sailor, the pilot...
...You must be kidding," I said...
...That's it," said the doctor...
...After they left I read my almanac to prepare for my struggles on "Win Ben Stein's Money...
...Through their mighty political groups, the pro-abortionists compel TV stations to refuse advertisements showing partial birth and other abortion artifacts...
...Wow, do I love being on stage...
...It felt strange being in a rehearsal hall with women who just for laughs would do splits or kick the ceiling with their feet...
...We are doing the new season of 'Win Ben Stein's Money...
...I actually don't like this intro a whole lot because I often feel pretty crazy myself and I don't want to make fun of people who feel the same way...
...Also reeking of tobacco...
...Since 1973, when the United States Supreme Court, with no precedent before it at all, decided that it was not constitutionally permissible for states to restrict abortions for most women, there have been an estimated 37 million or more BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...And for those who don't care to make the trip down that road, perhaps you can imagine the feelings of the tens of millions of us who see clearly that abortion is a violent killing of the most innocent of humans...
...It's un-American use of the government to wreck lives...
...The S&P 500, for example, has roughly tripled just since 1991, and the S&P Soo has more than doubled just since the beginning of 1996...
...Tara is a belly dancer who also drives a taxi...
...In fact it's bliss...
...Did they ever spank you...
...I read it in a study," said the doctor...
...Tuesday A aargh...
...I watched the show, played my part, and I am really impressed...
...Also, I have to be on board that the answers are right...
...If I do say so myself, I am pretty funny at this...
...Of course, there are also people who realize very well that a baby is a life in being, but honestly say that these lives are silent, have no votes, and are entitled to less legal and moral protection than the lives of grownups...
...By prearrangement, the crowd shouts, "You're crazy," then I look wounded and upset, and then I smile and plunge forward...
...Call me crazy...
...They let me in on all the funkadelic pronunciations...
...I have a room that is huge but has a positive reek of stale tobacco, is next to the elevators, and—this part is unbelievable—has no windows...
...Clintonism is thug politics...
...He looks great and has a stunning wife, as does Leslie Nielsen...
...All the others were for McGovern (or Spock...
...There is a lot of nonsense going around everywhere...
...That contradicts thousands of years of experience and my own experience that my son acts better, and seems to feel under control if I spank him very rarely when he's out of control...
...I won twice today, then lost to Richard...
...He in turn wrote the students a letter telling them to keep fighting against "easterner moneymen like $tein" (or something like that...
...Bragging about rich men who loved them...
...Really a lot...
...At a table at New York, New York...
...77 done...
...It's never deserved," said the doctor, "and it always leads to mental problems...
...Anyway, off to the rehearsals for our giant Sony show...
...She picked men up at bars, went home with them, and then experienced feelings of guilt and shame...
...Naturally, I complained, so they showed me a smaller room also with no view, and (this part is amazing) a round bed...
...It's that simple...
...The overwhelming mass of the interviews went well, many better than I deserved...
...I told the provost that if he did not apologize in writing I would file a complaint and also quit...
...They see the baby in the sonogram looking like a baby and they don't believe it's a baby...
...This room, which I moved to after lunch, is cheery, spacious, and looks out over a scary volcano that goes off about every hour...
...In the finale, I sang my little heart out with Bob Goulet, Leslie Nielsen, and the dancers...
...After the rehearsal, I went through the Caesar's Palace lobby a few times trying to find the Palm, where we had dinner—Bob Levin, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Goulet, and many other friends...
...I had asked 60 May 1998 • The American Spectator for a room that was bright and cheerful, with no smoking or tobacco smell, and definitely not next to the elevators...
...I am bound to say that Bob did it better...
...Saturday U p at the crack of dawn for a trip to Las Vegas...
...As far as I can tell, he does a great job on them, running them cleanly and cheerfully, with pirates and scary big tropical birds everywhere...
...A heck of a lot better...
...Time passed, a few months at most, and I went to the White House...
...I loved it...
...But to be in Vegas, living high off the hog, and to hear what life was like in Communist The American Spectator May 1998 61 countries only a short time ago...pretty lucky for us that we are here...
...This year the show is a lot better known than last, so on a day like today there will be dozens of people in the audience shouting "Ben Stein, Ben Stein" as I walk onto the set When I hear this shout, it always makes me think of how Mary Muff Maguire used to call me in the middle of the night and say, "Ben Stein, Ben Stein" in a loud giggle into my phone answering machine...
...Even though she lives mostly in a cage...
...It's play and most of us adults do not get enough play...
...And, of course, there are those who believe that the killing of about a million and a half babies per year is worthwhile if it saves a handful of women 58 May 1998 • The American Spectator from being killed or maimed in illegal abortions...
...Everyone else was just glaring at me, but Steve came over and talked to me in a reasonable way...
...picked me up to take me to a desolate rehearsal hall...
...And freedom of assembly comes from the police, too...
...Every single one of these abortions violently ended the life of an American baby, as I see it...
...Sunday A giant improvement...
...But I had never done it before and I still don't really know the rules...
...I ate a snack of corn chips (God bless Frito-Lay), got my fix of salt and fat, and headed down to the stage...
...Did your parents abuse you physically...
...They are, at least to my mind, like the Germans who refused to think about what was happening at Dachau and then vomited when they saw—and never wanted to see again...
...I keep thinking of numbers like this and the idea of the Golden Age...
...I was with Bob Levin, head of distribution for Sony, and his beautiful wife, Pam...
...That one told me she liked women more than men...
...I love the high market, but it's dirt compared with life...
...Last year, the Golden Age year of 1997, saw abortion "clinics" and hospitals end the lives of about 1.4 million American babies...
...Scary...
...And everyone is working and lifting and doing smooth stepping like it was breathing in and breathing out...
...They demanded autographs so I let them into my room—a big mistake...
...The flight was over in a few minutes...
...There are people who know that babies look just like postpartum babies very soon after conception, r when they are still in the womb, and have a strong sense of pain, but those people can still call an abortion something other than the violent killing of a baby...
...Well, I took a nap and determined to move tomorrow...
...I had to have a security check to get a security clearance—although I never saw one secret thing...
...Then we argue about them and that gets resolved...
...Then in the last round I seemingly lost to a genius chemist from the Silicon Valley but on closer examination maybe it was a tie...
...Ten years later or more, I filed a Freedom of Information request with the FBI for my file...
...I try very hard not to hear that voice in my own head, but sometimes I do...
...Hmmm...
...I always stick out my hand and ask where each one is from and what he or she does...
...I felt pretty daring shooting craps...
...Scientology...
...This guy, this Richard, just blew the other two off the stage, even though the law teacher was fantastically smart...
...None so blind as those who will not see, goes the adage...
...And partly it's because I am older and wearier...
...They will not even allow viewers (or themselves, I suspect) to see what their policies have wrought...
...Kate Donahoo of Sony went through fire and ice to get me a far better room at a hotel called the Mirage...
...asked a doctor on the show...
...And now his bird...
...And gambling...
...They see the baby reacting to a needle and moving away from it and they don't think it's a life...
...Most of that time I spent wondering how a little discman can interfere with a big plane's navigational systems...
...A woman called in and said her sexual behavior was leaving her feeling dirty...
...Robert Goulet and Leslie Nielsen are the true stars, but my part is funny, too...
...And the idea that any physical punishment at all causes mental problems is such nonsense I cannot believe it...
...The dancers have their snake outfits, their space bug outfits, their businessman suits, and I have my same old outfits I always wear...
...Now, that's in my file...
...After my nap J.J...
...on Reno Air, and home to my pumpkin...
...I asked...
...I love those Rockettes a lot...
...The day after the election, some students reacted to Nixon's win by arranging the stairs and tables in the dining hall of College V into a huge swastika...
...But then I thought of what really daring guys do landing airplanes on carriers at night, and I felt the right size again...
...It's sick...
...The only really bad remarks came from, surprise, surprise, the man who had spelled my name with a dollar sign and whom I had busted as the racist pig he was...
...This is not cricket...
...If we did not have a GOP Congress to restrain the Clintons, God help us all...
...I loved that place and love it still...
...This is apparently a lesson lost on many PR people, as the current life of William and Hillary Clinton shows...
...Few of them are as wacky as Richard seems to me...
...Even the room service is fast...
...I go downstairs on an elevator with Yaniv, Suzie, Jackie the sound woman, Al Burton, the producer, and Bones, the stage manager...
...A few days ago, I was a guest on a strange, surprisingly graphic show about life and love called "Love Lines...
...Hey," I finally asked, "does either of you know a Mary Muff Maguire...
...But this quantum of people who see abortion as something other than gruesome, who believe it is justified for the convenience of adults and adolescents, and who will kill any number to save a tiny number, are in an interesting position: they cannot look at their handiwork or the handiwork they defend...
...I think Peter Morton, the owner, must be a sort of genius to do this Hard Rock thing so right...
...He did have a beautiful daughter...
...Or maybe that was just my impression...
...He refused and I quit and returned to Washington and a job at the FTC...
...The daughter, a stunning beauty, has just turned 21 and they are celebrating by being drunk...
...When I was mouthing off they spanked me a little bit...
...Dark suit, Hermes tie, and black shoes...
...I left ten dollars ahead...
...True, my show measures only a tiny, infinitesimal simulacrum of intelligence...
...Athletic Club, put him to bed, talked to my wife about old times at Yale, and then went to sleep thinking about how happy I am...
...I took his comment, rightly, as explicit anti-Semitism...
...But he retired early, and I have no idea where he is...
...With giant lights shining on me, I say something like "Now, why am I giving these three totally strange strangers a chance to take away my money...
...My guard, Yaniv, helps me take in my stuff, including books and stereo gear...
...Well, on occasion...
...They are from Seattle...
...Months later, I got it...
...The dancers are all so up, so cheerful, so happy, happy, happy...
...He wrote me a letter saying that this kind of behavior disappointed him but frankly did not surprise him...
...Well, did they beat you...
...No one is in Britannica for knowing a lot of Academy Award data or when someone discovered Panama...
...I raised my eyebrows and she asked, "Well, don't you...
...Across the country, they shrink from photos of the babies killed in abortions...
...I wish Tommy were here...
Vol. 31 • May 1998 • No. 5
