Ben Stein's Diary: Ben and Jerry
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY by Benjamin J. Stein Ben and Jerry Tuesday „ ar between Sundown's finish and Midnight's broken toll, / We ducked inside the doorway as thunder went crashing....” I cannot...
...I had a car drive us down here because I felt so tired...
...I got a great feeling of peace just being near President Ford...
...The waitress insistedthat I take it for free because she is such a fan of my show...
...Tommy Stein, 11 years old, a sixth grader, video game addict, was playing a video game online in some sort of AOL chat room where he could play and also have instant e-mails with the other players...
...I am convinced that if we did not have a Constitution and a citizenry who believe in law—at least a part of the citizenry that believes in law— Clinton would behave toward us about the way Saddam behaves toward his people...
...On a shoestring budget, we are making a pilot, in fact three pilots...
...He is getting his own show, and it'll be a scream...
...And I want a weakened, subdued Iraq...
...And she did...
...Of course, we all know he's working with the White House...
...I'll spoil him for as long as I can...
...I can still recall the shock—our teacher, the one who called blacks horrible names, did nothing—and Alan Lester and I were soon in an ineffectual fistfight...
...The American Spectator March 1999 61...
...He should be in prison for life, at the least...
...Afterward, while he played intently and a maid cleaned the room, I went and had tea in the lobby overlooking that great Christmas tree...
...We're here because tomorrow I am going to interview Gerald Ford for a fine magazine called the American Enterprise...
...All in one day...
...Tommy discovered that the TV had video games attached, and I could not move him after that...
...Where are they when we need them...
...Heidi's act is that she is a sex bomb, but mostly she is a master of comic timing and le mot juste...
...There is a big difference between the paranoid and the normal style of living...
...The Senate trial is exactly analogous to a trial in court...
...I tucked him again, and then kissed him...
...It's impossible not to," I said...
...A very pleasant two-man crew filmed and recorded me sitting by my condo pool...
...I went to the computer and opened I want to find the little jerk who sent that e-mail and choke him and whoever taught him that evil...
...Nice try, killer...
...But Clinton is killing innocent men, women, and children in a vain attempt to delay his day of reckoning...
...When I ordered half a meatball sub on white bread, Tommy said, "I'll have the same as my Dad is having...
...But when I asked her to come on my pilot— even though it is not for air and is not paid work —she agreed instantly...
...Tuck me in or else you get an embittered, unhappy little boy, and I'll be with psychiatrists all my life like your Doctor Paul...
...They seem to operate at a level of gentility far above what I usually encounter...
...Heidi Swensen will be a star...
...I had been working in my little office and had an unexpected visit from the beautiful but totally wacky Dotty...
...I thought I would die then and there...
...It never occurred to me that on the Internet no one can really get to know him and know what a great kid he is, totally unworthy of any criticism except that he resists doing his homework...
...So when the piece appeared, it had been neatly edited, so that it had no — zilch —specific criticisms of Clinton...
...Now, I have no love at all for Saddam Hussein...
...He's my little god_ He is my angel...
...I really mean it...
...I think it will all work, The American Spectator • March 1999 57 though, and it cannot be a minute too soon...
...And then my coach turned into a pumpkin and I went home...
...I have been a friend of John's since 1972, when he was a student and I was a teacher at UC-Santa Cruz...
...I particularly remember a teacher who —horrifying— called blacks "coons...
...I am telling you, law has a lot of applications that could help send Clinton back to the home for aging would-be dictators...
...Tommy, our son, is blond, blue-eyed, a little poster boy for Norman Rockwell paintings...
...Of course, we have no idea who this sick person is...
...After opening presents, I'm off to take my father and Phil and Julia DeMuth to lunch at the Beverly Regent...
...I was required to write a two-minute speech on my feelings about Clinton...
...Plus a million dollars in the bank, plus a big diamond, plus any car I want, and a live-in, and I never have to do another thing for my whole life...
...Here, the media powers were yelling at them...
...Mommy," he asked, "how did they know I was Jewish...
...They work out of a little shelter on Sepulveda under dismal conditions...
...Then he said, "Daddy, you have to tuck me in really tight, really tight around my toes...
...Out of the ether, out of the latest in technology has come the oldest of hates to strike at my little boy, my angel, my Tommy...
...But that's exactly what Clinton is doing here, isn't it...
...And often extremely articulate, especially Representative Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, surely destined for bigger things...
...I went home to sleep under the same roof as Tommy, wifie, Puppy-Wuppy, Susie, the kitties Peabo and Artemis, and the spirit of the dead fishes, dogs, and birds who have passed through...
...Then they were joined by a former Playboy Playmate and some poor soul who does foot-fetish work for movies...
...to sleep there in my apartment with its wallpaper of life-size photos of Tommy...
...Tonight, I put Tommy to bed...
...I can't recall them but they were something like raspberries covered with pineapple husks, or banana custard in champagne...
...Something Freudian is going on, as well...
...Off we went to a preview of a movie written and produced by my longtime friend John Mankiewicz and his partner, Dan Pyne...
...It beats the heck out of being teased and tortured when I walked down the halls of Montgomery Hills Junior High School long ago...
...Julia and Phil did their usual high quality conversing...
...he cried...
...She was so kind to me and did such a magnificent job...
...These are the finest people on earth...
...Saturday I t started innocently enough and maybe everything evil does...
...I never thought I'd feel afraid of a U.S...
...Tommy came out of his room, and appeared behind me...
...Tommy, go to sleep," I said...
...I spoke about how he was a perjurer, a killer, a had president on foreign policy, and I did not like him, and 60 March 1999 The American Spectator hoped he "would soon be removed from the office he has disgraced...
...GO TO SLEEP...
...Al Burton was there, and so were my first two guests, Susan Estrich and Martin Mull...
...One of the great things about modern life —or so it seemed to me —was that incidents like the ones I had gone through, at least in a big city like L.A., were historical relics, not live wires waiting to shock my son...
...I tucked him in, made him chocolate cookies, gave him milk, and told him how much 1 loved him...
...Well, Saints Preserve Us...
...It was a gorgeous, balmy, liquid-sky evening in Los Angeles...
...Thursday D er Tag...
...Here in Jerry Ford's America, there are no barricades, just a few smiling people with guns...
...Why does he not get a new referral of impeachment for that...
...I was a sixth grader in a school in suburban Silver Spring, Maryland...
...Let's use 'em...
...How come Iraq doesn't take Clinton to the International Court of Justice...
...Trial lawyers working for Paula Jones brought Clinton to this pass...
...Tommy talks all the time about Dilbert...
...However, it never occurred to me to change my name—and my parents would not have let me do it in eighth grade anyway...
...God bless him and those like him...
...58 March 1999 • The American Spectator When I heard the story at dinner that night, I was of course furious and edgy...
...This Clinton guy is a cold-blooded murderer...
...Martin Mull and Susan were fabulously funny...
...They usually have never met a Jew, but they show no interest one way or the other and the Nintendo or the kokanee salmon fishing goes on...
...It's positively amazing how the women who have no clue at all about human relationships wind up alone...
...Tonight, I am the luckiest, happiest man on the planet...
...Tommy is such a sweet child, so full of fun, always so ready to mingle and play, with such a sweet, open countenance, and he lives in such an accepting world, a world changed beyond recognition from 1956, that I really thought he might go his way without anyone baiting him because he is a Jew...
...Dry, warm, clear, perfect winter desert weather...
...We also had on my co-host, Jimmy Kimmel, but he was just a tad too wild for use on my air...
...But shouldn't Tommy be reading Gibbon...
...All right," I said, "and here we go...
...It was big on him, so he zipped Peabo, his cat, in there with him, with only her sweet little face sticking out...
...I got called yesterday to appear on "Night-line," one of my favorite shows...
...That's knowing quite a bit...
...Just a few smiling people with guns...
...He put his face about an inch from mine and said, "If you don't tuck me in right now, just the way I want you to, I'll grow up to be bitter and unhappy and spend all the money you leave me on doctors...
...Tommy has never before shown the slightest reticence about being Jewish...
...I tucked him in tighter, and then he said, "That's not tight enough...
...I wandered through the hotel, stared at the immense, perfectly lit Christmas tree next to the pool overlooking the Coachella Valley, and then had room service with Tommy...
...Fantastic...
...Great attitude," I told her...
...president, but Clinton is out of control...
...My game show is far, far, far too hard on me...
...The Secret Service man showed Tommy his Uzi...
...Wednesday A heavenly night...
...I drove myself over to a tiny little studio usually used to make Korean language shows right next door to where I got my Cadillac...
...Here it is, the day before the House of Representatives is to vote on the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and what is Bill Clinton doing...
...You got impeached anyway...
...Tommy has put down his video game stick (or whatever it's called) and is now lying in bed reading one of his vast trove of cartoon books...
...He took his kitty, Artemis, and put him under his covers...
...up my e-mail...
...That was waste and embezzlement, too...
...They ask questions, talk about subjects other than themselves, are well informed...
...My partner is my dear pal, the redoubtable Al Burton...
...He posed for photos with my son and me...
...What a fantastic country...
...Then there was a boy in junior high named Gary who used to call me a "dirty Jew" until I began to lift weights and got strong and he stopped picking on me...
...I was sad for my son...
...Here in Jerry Ford's America—which is still not Clinton's America, thank heavens —there are no massive concrete barricades, no reroutes of traffic...
...But the GOP in Congress did what was right...
...Phil knewwho wrote a modern Christmas carol that a group of singers was singing...
...This is a great country," he said over and over again as we hung around Jerry Ford's office...
...One of them responded, "You dumb Jew...
...Then there was a man in a car who shouted at me, "Get out of the way, kike," when I was bike riding near him...
...Pretty soon he'll be grown tip and not want to spend one minute with me...
...And I say again, without the enshrinement of the Constitution in our hearts, Clinton would be a very dangerous man...
...But to Tommy, it's now an invitation to get mocked and baited...
...It was packed with revelers...
...Why has Clinton gotten away with this kind of theft...
...This one is about an office worker named Dilbert who has a lot of real-life experiences in modern work land...
...Suddenly, after years of near total inaction, without any particular provocation, without a United Nations command to do it at any specific time, with several big powers opposing the move, Clinton is bombing Iraq with cruise missiles and throwing thousands of tons of high explosives at various targets...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...And speaking of law, why don't we lawyers file a whistleblower lawsuit to collect back from Clinton the tens of millions of tax dollars he spent defending the lie that he did not have sex with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky...
...Somehow it is totally right that Jerry Ford is on the immense, serene golf course...
...There are federal laws against tampering with a jury, attempting to influence the trier of fact or law, and also laws against extortion and blackmail...
...How can the Democrats in Congress stand still for it...
...Life is personal...
...Larry Flynt has admitted that he is paying money to dig up dirt— and we all have dirt in our lives—to try to help Clinton in the Senate trial and before that in the House impeachment...
...I'm going to say it again...
...We lifted our glasses of wine and orange juice to an America that still works...
...This week, we are doing run-throughs just to get me into gear...
...Why isn't Flynt tampering with the trial when he blackmails the Senate or the House...
...It was lovely seeing their hippieselves...
...I can't do that, so I just have to stay up late chewing on my rage and encouraging Tommy to be who he is and not hide it and realizing that in the good ways and the bad, life goes on...
...Monday G uess what...
...Actually, I went to my apartment, where my father had just arrived from Washington for one of his infrequent visits...
...This would not have happened to Saddam's Iraq, the ordinary Joe Mohammed in Iraq, if it were not for impeachment...
...Back to our lavish room...
...I also knew that many neighborhoods in Washington were restricted against Jews, as were country clubs, elite private schools, and topnotch law firms and banks...
...A light breeze rustling through the palms...
...The second show featured a Hollywood detective, and the third a woman named Heidi Swensen, a shapely blonde destined to be the most famous comedienne in America...
...Tommy sat like an angel, not complaining, making funny comments under his breath...
...When we got home, he put on the West Point jacket my hero father-in-law gave him this Christmas...
...56 March 1999 • The American Spectator Jerry Ford was friendly...
...I really thought the world had changed that much...
...They were brave...
...Again, what a country, where the guards of the power elite take out their guns and let their photos be taken with little kids...
...Lawyers could do a lot more...
...He has been going to a Jewish school all his school days...
...I mean it," he said...
...Christmas Day T ommy did not get anywhere near as many presents as he wanted this year, and I did not get anything...
...Lots of Secret Service at a condo and series of rooms at Thunderbird Country Club...
...To start with, the people who work for him are super polite...
...The game went on for a time, and then our son apparently won...
...I cannot possibly believe what is happening...
...Now, here's the interesting part...
...He's a good boy, but no one likes to attract trouble...
...The action is insupportable...
...At about seven Tommy, my little angel, appeared at the door with the wan but still beautiful Dana...
...I never really put any credence in all those stories about murders in Arkansas, and I always thought Vince Foster killed himself because of an adverse drug reaction (though it is odd that he killed himself right across the street from the CIA...
...For some sick, miserable SOB, that was enough —that, plus the protection of his cowardly online anonymity...
...She's a testament to the truth that people are individuals and that attempts to place them in highly predictable stereotypes don't always work...
...We checked into our wonderful room...
...Today I am actually doing the three pilots...
...In North Idaho, where we spend the summers, he cheerfully explains that he is a Jew to friends playing video games or fishing...
...I sure hope that when he grows up he can get a job reviewing or writing comics...
...I won," he e-mailed to the other players...
...Friday A glorious Palm Springs day...
...Now here is a little bit of la vie as it really is...
...He went to sleep wearing jacket and cat, smiling in his sleep...
...I only was shown saying I thought he was "a bad man and a bad president," but that it would not affect me much if he were not removed from office...
...I will never think ill of the House Republicans again...
...I told you we were doing it on a shoestring, and I was not kidding...
...Today we interviewed Phil DeMuth, my very witty friend, and Steve Greene, another wit...
...When she talked about her three roles for Cinemax as the "sassy, sexy girl next door," we all laughed out loud...
...Naturally, they originally had us in a horrible room but we switched—hotel policy generally is to put you in a bad room and then, if you holler, let you go to a better room...
...Anyway, that is not what this little anecdote is about...
...The last vestige of an era when you could have some trust and admiration when you thought about your leaders...
...It did not surprise me...
...Then we watched the movie, which was terribly clever and funny...
...We chugged off to President Ford's office to interview him...
...Alec Baldwin, famous movie star, was threatening to murder Henry Hyde—lots of death in the "liberal" mind...
...When it was over, we left and got sandwiches at Subway...
...Clinton is symbolically murdering his critics here at home by his projected acts of killing in Iraq...
...I wonder if Phil has had a class in politesse, or if Julia has...
...When Tommy and I got home, my wifie was in a state of high excitement about the impeachment...
...He's strong and resourceful and I think he will "work with it," as we actors say, to learn about himself, his religion, and how to be fair in an unfair world...
...Soon we were exhausted, and after returning home went to sleep for the rest of the day...
...Our son's screen name is his first initial and then our name, Stein, and then a number...
...Unlike many actors, I have no doubt that the little tiny bit I do is fine...
...He reads to me from Dilbert...
...In America now, life is no longer centered on the president, or on Washington, and that, I said, was a good thing...
...I simply cannot get over Susan Estrich...
...She moves in the highest circles of liberal intelligentsia...
...It's a fine name, as good as any anywhere...
...He went back to his computer, my wife reports, and worked at it for a few minutes and then came back to tell Mommy that he had now changed his screen name and had two cartoon characters for names...
...What did you say...
...On the Internet, all someone knew about him was that he won the game and that he had a Jewish name...
...Good night, my boy," I said...
...In the theater were Larry Wilson and Elisha Shapiro, long-time pals from UC days...
...The producers wanted a group of "ordinary people" to talk about the issue, and by ordinary people meant "famous" people who were not within the Beltway...
...The Santa Anas ruffled the palms...
...Over the Web, across the Internet, in digital ones and zeroes, now has come to Tommy Stein what he never had known before—hatred because of his religion...
...Don't they know they're next if this gets to be the way business is done in D.C...
...Tommy sat beside me reading truly hilarious panels from Dilbert...
...Susan Estrich is a big time liberal pooh-bah...
...Amazing, but Clinton's gambits did not work...
...Well," said my wife, "Stein is usually a Jewish name...
...You spoil him unbelievably," my wife said as I left his room...
...In fact, Tommy soon lost even that...
...Tommy was in ecstasy...
...You're right," Alex said...
...I tucked him in tightly, especially around his toes...
...I didn't know that...
...The transparency of this murderous fraud would be funny if it were not for innocent people getting killed...
...If I were a more active kind of guy, I would sue Clinton for wrongful death on the part of those Iraqis—and that poor guy in the Sudan who got blasted when Clinton bombed an aspirin factory after the Starr Report came out...
...In that day, my fellow students and even teachers routinely used racial epithets in our segregated school...
...Because of his looks, perhaps, or because he lives in Los Angeles, or because of his Temple school, he has never been the butt of an anti-Semitic remark in his life before this one...
...It was a short ride through the desert to his digs in Rancho Mirage, then through a tiny gate, and there we are in a different time and place, a decent time and place...
...But when that creep called Tommy a "dumb Jew," Tommy for some reason recoiled and changed his screen name...
...listening to Thor's car radio about the impeachment...
...He had family murdered by the Nazis when they occupied Norway...
...Prosperity is everywhere...
...But now that I see Clinton killing in cold blood in Iraq, I am not surprised at all that good people think he's a murderer...
...That required a trip to room service, but then the ice cream appeared...
...Now here is the point...
...But anti-Semitism had never struck me personally until a boy named Alan Lester and I were having a tug of war with a rope and Alan Lester said, "Let it go, you f--king Jew...
...They did a swell job...
...Something about wanting my help getting her super-rich boyfriend to marry her and buy her a huge house...
...As I say, that's the life of the media, which is not logic, but experience, and that is all life of every kind...
...Why isn't ' Ken Starr indicting Larry Flynt for jury tampering...
...Glorious...
...I have always l6ved the desert outside Palm Springs, and now I love it even more...
...NO ONE IN THE WORLD WAS HAPPIER THAN I WAS AT THAT MOMENT...
...They talked about how awful politics have become and how great life is in Hollywood...
...We had a fine dinner, but the desserts were strange...
...Friday W ell, this is a little object lesson in la vie de la media...
...I assume it's because we have been friends for some long time...
...I admire them to no end, especially their boss, Martha Wyss, who works tirelessly for the helpless and friendless until they get friends and help and love...
...He sat beside me eating and he said, "You know, this is really good...
...We talked for a while, ate some cereal, and then he went simply cannot get over Susan Estrich...
...Instead, we are giving a large gift to Friends of Animals, which is the group that got us Martha, Trixie, Susan, Ginger, Susie, Puppy-Wuppy, and Peabo...
...A defendant in a trial is not allowed to blackmail the jurors and the judge...
...But they are unfailingly brave and devoted to their animals...
...Everything went fabulously well, but then I always think my shows are great...
...Ohhh," Tommy said...
...Tuesday N , ow, here is a question...
...I hope to be able to persuade him to change it back to TStein...
...This shows amazing goodwill and kindness...
...We have his screen name and that's all...
...I, your humble servant, am trying to put together a talk show, starring little me, for Comedy Central...
...With that kind of thinking, any man would want you...
...Then I said I did not think he would be, but that my life would go on...
...All of the women I know who are single, all of the men I know who are single, every single one of them has a wildly inflated sense of entitlement combined with extremely low self-esteem, and absolutely no regard for doing a single unselfish thing for anyone else...
...This is hard work, to be sure...
...He reads them over and over again...
...The problem is that not everyone gets my sense of humor...
...If I could segue to something a little easier, I would be very relieved indeed...
...But I was also thrown back from late December of 1998 to the spring of 1956...
...Tommy, an aficionado of the Web, immediately reported the incident to AOL and then went to tell Alex, his mother, my wife...
...BOO...
...I have to admit that Dilbert is amazingly funny...
...I asked if we could just get chocolate ice cream...
...If I may say so, I am a natural at this...
...America changed and became a truly open society...
...Why is what Clinton did any different from what a bureaucrat does when he embezzles money or throws a contract to his girlfriend...
...I suspect that there are many stand-up guys out there just like Jerry Ford, if not as famous...
...No, tighter," he said...
...She was so kind to me and did such a magnificent job...
...I am not going to lie about it: I LOVE BEING FAMOUS...
...17 Then, back to L.A...
...I think I'll go in and tuck him in myself...
...I think I'll get this kind from now on...
...Mark these words...
...The subject was Clinton and his impending Senate trial...
...And why not a suit to recover the billion he spent bombing Iraq—money that should have gone to military pay raises—just to distract Congress from his lies...
...I really love Jerry Ford...
...But his first reaction was to change his screen name, and that makes me want to crawl through the Web and find the little jerk who sent that e-mail and choke him and whoever taught him that evil...
...She is always on TV and often used to argue with me...
...Our driver, Thor, a Norwegian, was in tears thinking of how great America is...
...Bigger than "South Park...
...Good for Trent Lott for saying the truth...
...Thursday T ommy and I are at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, near Palm Springs...
...So why isn't Clinton indicted for jury tampering...
...Thor, our driver, appeared in his battered old Lincoln...
...I hated those experiences, and many more like them, and they still haunt me at night...
Vol. 32 • March 1999 • No. 3
