Ben Stein's Diary: Public Emmy No. 1
Stein, Benjamin J .
.BEN El N"4-So by Benjamin J. Stein Public Emmy No. 1 Friday ife is truly amazing. I mean, amazing L with a capital A. Try this on for size. When I was growing up, my Dad used to tell me of...
...I almost passed out when she said her rate for sitting was $40 an hour...
...But it was genuine trauma at first, and I really was scared...
...Shhh," he said...
...I deplore uncertainty, and I really hate the idea of being in a chair that collapses under me...
...I got very, very nervous...
...Then the flight, which was perfect...
...Here's Frank singing with such subtlety, with such restraint, about his imagination and how it can make a cloudy day sunny, make a bee think of honey—and then there's modern music talking about which girl has the biggest butt...
...There was once a time when culture assumed gentleness on the part of the nation...
...Cohen that the Times is off into its own little clique of sanctimonious Phariseeism...
...I thanked everyone, most of all Al Burton who invented the show and Andrew who honed it to diamond brilliance...
...I'm not your dreaded rival," he said cryptically...
...Monday W ho here remembers Bob and Ray...
...The fabulous Radio and TV Museum in Beverly Hills sells tapes of their great performances...
...77 I mention this because over recent years I have noticed a phenomenon: Many of my best friends are miserably unhappy in their marriages...
...My dear friend M., whom I have known for more than a quarter century, who is a smart, funny writer from a famous family of writers, called me months ago to tell me he had written a funny story about his agent...
...Friday 0 ff to the Daytime Emmies at Madison Square Garden...
...I also think of it when I listen to my Frank Sinatra discs...
...He literally said you should pack your bags to go to hell...
...She's always yelling at me, always high, always complaining that I don't make enough money, and then she takes her pills and passes out and when she wakes up, she starts yelling at me again...
...I sent it to the New Yorker," he said, "and they're going to run it...
...This is a big area...
...Their spelling bees, where one contestant gets easy answers and lots of chances and the other gets incredibly sabotaged is a perfect specimen of how life really is...
...In these marriages, each spouse thinks that what he wants is the be-all and end-all of human understanding...
...I sometimes listen to the same Matt Neffer ten times in a day...
...Then he politely wished me luck as I did him...
...They kept the piece forever...
...I loved the "Letter from Paris...
...You shouldn't smoke dope every night," I told him...
...I have to," he said...
...Wow, did he stink...
...In that horrific event, white people—the park was segregated, I guess—would throw a ball at a target...
...In fact, probably they do...
...THERE IS NO WAY TO DESCRIBE HOW GOOD IT FEELS TO HAVE YOUR SON IMITATE YOU...
...I call my wife "The Saint" partly because she is so smart, so beautiful, and so sympathetic to everyone who crosses her path...
...44 Most of the middle-age men I know live in something like prison conditions at home...
...Whatever you do," he said, "don't refer to this on any messages you leave me...
...Rules of marriage: Give your spouse space...
...This is undignified...
...Thursday 0 ff to New York City to attend the Emmies...
...I cannot hope to enter that little world any longer...
...WRONG...
...I cannot believe I won...
...Like all writers, I wanted to have something in the New Yorker...
...Maybe they feel as if their husbands are controlling and tormenting them...
...He's only a botanist, a distinguished teacher, and a devoted dad to his kids...
...When we came back to the hotel room, Tommy said "Congratulations" and shook my hand like a little man...
...He's suicidally depressed because his wife got drunk and yelled at him for being "a loser," as she put it...
...It stars Kurt Russell, who is always great...
...There is nothing in the New Testament about how you are only allowed to use a certain amount of gasoline...
...Well, maybe that's my excuse...
...Every single person at that fair was white, so there was no obvious racism...
...Anyway, I realized from Mr...
...We might even win Best Game Show Host...
...I love it a lot...
...Michael Milken, my nemesis, but also my inspiration for his persistence, would undoubtedly do this just to show he's a fun guy (ha-ha...
...She is a saint for respecting my personality and Tommy's...
...Because it's a lot easier for us to be calm and peaceful towards one another when we have "our space...
...And it could be called Shane in Outer Space...
...My son and I listen to Bob and Ray, listen to old R&B from the fifties, listen to Frank...
...I imagined that if I did, I would be all set for life...
...It was by a guy named Peoples who also co-wrote the best postwar movie, Blade Runner...
...When I fell into it, wouldn't I hit my butt with a painful thud...
...But what I learned today is that the mag is run by genuinely ill people who confuse New York, read Brooklyn, solipsism with God's word...
...I also met two sweet little kids from "The Young and the Restless" who could not have been cuter...
...So, I nodded, the catch was tripped, and with a great thud, I was in the water...
...I called my longtime pal X., a lawyer in D.C...
...I particularly love Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder, but also Mary McGoon, and of course Tom Swift and his Amazing Atomic Fertilizer Spreader, and any of the detective stories like "Mr...
...The point then was to dunk some authority figure and allow the ordinary citizen to vent his anger at those in positions of power by buying a chance for a buck...
...Why not also get dunked if it pays for a few years of Tommy's college tuition...
...I also love the imitations of Arthur Godfrey...
...In recent years, however, although I sent them pieces, they took nothing...
...Maybe I should just roll with the punch and try to have fun with it...
...Over the years I sent in pieces which the New Yorker religiously failed to publish...
...It was hot...
...Then, after frustrating him and blocking him and ruining his relationship with his agent, they ran it...
...Well, maybe one year...
...God is so good to me...
...He answered that because they used so much gasoline, because they took up so much space, because they stood up so well in crashes—if you bought one in New York where there was a subway, you were destined for hell...
...I think we could all use a great big huge dose of liberation in the home...
...A real lot...
...I have been writing off and on for them for many years...
...Men are not supposed to be miserable because they're married...
...If they hit the target, they would trip a catch that would dunk a smiling black man into a pool of water...
...The whole point was for me, yes, little me, to be dunked...
...God, I hope so...
...And then, bang, we won Best Game Show Host, Jimmy and I. I screamed...
...Maybe I should fight my own fear and excess anxiety andget on with the show...
...But, YEA!, I had triumphed over my fear...
...So that's it...
...It's far too suggestive of being hanged...
...Where Bob and Ray wrote and acted with diamond points, we now have acting with sledgehammers and blunt rocks...
...Then they'd refer them to an editor and many months later I would get a rejection...
...It always has been, but now it's a Phariseeism that is its own parody...
...I loved the movie reviews, some of which I can still recall word for word after thirty years...
...Then, I had a thought...
...Plus, the tank was warm, yes, but it was not very deep...
...When I was growing up, my Dad used to tell me of one of the most horrible examples of callousness and racism of his youth...
...From Nixon speechwriter to Emmy winner...
...The devolution of the culture since Bob and Ray is truly terrifying...
...Bob and Ray were fixtures on CBS radio and maybe other networks as well in the fifties and into the sixties...
...But I'll work on my own ideas of what's important and you work on yours...
...Treat, Chaser of Lost Persons...
...Well, file that away...
...Plus, no one had told me or warned me...probably with good reason...
...Some things do not change...
...Plus, I was getting paid, and paid fairly well—although thanks to Uncle Sam, I never get paid that well...
...But what happened afterward was difficult for my pal M. The editor demanded fact checking and a statement of authenticity even from the agent he was mocking in his piece...
...They ignored his phone calls...
...To our seats...
...I loved it...
...I AM HAPPY...
...I jumped up and down...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...If I can pay a few months' stunningly large mortgage payments while also overcoming my fear, shouldn't I do it...
...Accept that you can be and often are wrong...
...I wanted to leave...
...My wife checks my answering machine and if there's even a word that she thinks is critical of her, she's ready to kill me...
...Ouch...
...I thought that I would probably be the barker inviting people to try their luck while a poorly paid day actor got dunked...
...You still have great writing in your news stories...
...I met many lovely people though, including a beautiful soap star named Kelly, who is Bill Simon's stepdaughter and is as smart as she is pretty...
...We have worked together for years on a wildly successful campaign, and they're my pals...
...To continue with this issue for a moment, friends always ask me two questions: Why do I call my wife "The Saint" and why do I have so many houses...
...But not here in my little house, and maybe there's a clue...
...Now, I will never feel bad again about never having written for them...
...There was a feature where the high school principal, or maybe it was the mayor, would get dunked when people threw a ball at a target...
...Maybe it's just as important to care for your family as to be a completely PC, "small is beautiful," crank...
...It's wrecked your life...
...Think of "Crying in the Chapel" or "The Glory of Love" from the early fifties—and then think of any rap songs now...
...As so often happens, our driver got lost and let us out about five blocks from the entrance but never mind...
...I didn't feel really bad, only a little puzzled...
...I started to get really nervous...
...But then I thought that I, on the other hand, would never take money from the Chinese Communists...
...I was scared...
...Then he came with me to my bathroom, gargled just like I do, brushed his teeth in rhythm as I brushed mine, and said, "What'll we do to celebrate, Daddy...
...It's my family...
...Believe that your wishes are not always the supreme authority...
...I know this is a small thing to you but it was a big thing to me...
...There's no commandment to take a subway filled with strangers when you transport your kids...
...Are they kidding...
...I like the idea of my son and my wife and me surviving if we have a crash...
...She's got a big heart that way...
...Now, with respect to Mr...
...They were not doing it out of malice...
...I actually might win this year, I thought...
...I am saying that too much energy in marriages seems to me to go into controlling the other guy instead of encouraging him to be free and be who he is...
...Well, more on this later...
...No one thinks that maybe if he prayed over it, he would find that he was wrong and needed to apologize and act differently...
...We left Tommy with a hugely tall German babysitter named Mischa...
...Now it assumes Thug Nation—and maybe it's right...
...I know men who have simply signed away their whole personas on orders of their spouses, just thrown away who theyare to avoid raising the hackles of their spouses...
...But that part of your family is like the Gestapo...
...It helps a lot to believe that there are rules for human conduct beyond "Do what I want...
...Cohen of the mighty New YorkTimes has confused his own "I'm good because I'm little and abstemious and morally better because I'm an environmentalist" view with divine will...
...The only words of mine they ever ran were lavish praise of Nixon and they ran those to make fun of him and me, down at the bottom of a column as they used to do...
...I do have a good show and we did just win our second Emmy for best game show writing...
...Maybe I was being excessively rigid...
...True, the New York Times mag is unrecognizable from what I recall of it even a decade ago...
...Great United soup, great United appetizers, great dessert, a whole box of Godivas for Tommy, and a fine movie called Soldier for me to watch...
...Many, maybe most, of the men I know in middle age live in something like prison conditions at home...
...And true, the op-ed page is a disaster of predictability...
...I had been faxed story boards of what would happen in the commercial, but they were so small and smudged that I really could not read what would happen...
...It is impossible to have a relationship based on being drunk or high...
...How did you do that...
...One of the events at the "amusement park" was called something like "Dunk the Negro" (or worse...
...Then, an epiphany...
...He sounded drugged, out of it, whacked...
...To dunk someone because he's getting paid a lot is another matter entirely...
...It helped a lot that all of the people on the set were extremely nice to me—aside from the dunking—and that I do feel as if Clear Eyes is family...
...A DOLLAR-FORTY A WORD...
...I thought it was undignified...
...But my wifie, my son, and I headed to the airport and whaaam, problem one: The airport was in turmoil because the security envelope had been penetrated...
...Nowhere, not anywhere in the media today, is there any comparably smart per58 July 1999 • The American Spectator formance that mocks the culture, but also assumes so much intelligence and so much wit on the part of the audience...
...This is not a matter of black versus white performers either...
...I smiled and told him that although he was "my dreaded rival" I was a fan of his show and never missed it...
...I asked in a jealous stew...
...Maybe the wives also live in those conditions...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 59...
...Not everyone can have more than one home, but everyone can make space...
...Yes, famous, erudite, scholarly me was suspended on a bench above a tank of very warm water and the plan was for me to be dropped into it...
...Why do I have so many houses...
...I really adored the stories of John Cheever...
...Just out of the question...
...I know," he said and then the conversation went nowhere...
...Think of Count Basie...
...I also imagined that I would be highly paid and that money would drip off me in gobs for every word I wrote...
...If I have a house and garden I can go to with my Puppy-Wuppy all weekend while my wifie reads the New York Times, it's a lot easier to be peaceful...
...Now, to the New York Times...
...If I didn't, I would kill my wife or kill myself...
...Since childhood, I have been reading the New Yorker...
...Man is born free, but everywhere is in chains because he will get yelled at if he dares to do what he would like to do...
...It helped that my nephew works thereand his good friend is the articles editor," he said...
...He was Welsh but with a Mexican accent somehow...
...I am by nature incredibly frightened, and to do anything that gets through fear is a huge step for me...
...There was a big amusement park there whose name I never can recall...
...But their wives are one-woman secret police forces, scrutinizing their every move, criticizing them, making them feel small and weak and like failures...
...After all, my life at this point is about serving as the pompous prof who gets the pie tossed in his face by contestants on my quiz show...
...Personally, I think I—a guy who wrote for Richard Nixon —will win about when Clinton enters the priesthood...
...I kissed my wifie...
...Wait a minute," I thought...
...I find that men and women who truly put God first, who try to act with a little bit of humility before Him, have happier marriages...
...Oh, and also, don't get drunk or high...
...Screaming...
...Still, I trusted the folks from Clear Eyes...
...They often have good careers, lovely kids (or fairly lovely kids) and look thin and fit...
...Especially when the Emmy is in the closet...
...Yuck...
...I was horrified...
...I often thought of that kind of barbarity as the summit of human inability to see and feel other people's pain...
...It is a long shot but maybe...
...When I got to the pier, I saw a big tank of water with a chair above it and a sign saying "Dunk the Clown...
...We had to wait an hour to get through the metal detectors...
...Big stuff...
...Maybe it will make a little difference in giving him a world that isn't Thug World...
...I passed by Alex Trebek wearing an oddly white dinner jacket...
...Dirt cheep...
...Today, I got up early and was picked up by a limousine — a small limousine—to be taken to the Amusement Park at Santa Monica Pier for a commercial for Clear Eyes, my dear pals...
...Plus it also helped that I had a very good bodyguard named Eddie who said he would rescue me if any prob56 Ju ly 19 9 9 The American Spectator lem arose...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 57 Every marriage I know that is in really terrible shape involves at least one spouse—and almost always both —who is drunk or high almost every night...
...Cohen, there is nothing in the Ten Commandments or in the mitzvoth about SUV's...
...Ouch, backbone hurt...
...I went home with a terrible headache, earache, stomach ache, but a feeling of triumph and affection for my people from Clear Eyes, probably like what Marines feel towards their drill instructors who make them do things they thought they could never do...
...All around me were beautiful soap stars and starlets beaming at me...
...Then there's something else: Everyone I know who's really miserable in his marriage has no spiritual side...
...Nor are women...
...I have written for the op-ed page, for the mag, for the business section, even for the book review...
...Not only are they mean and the dernier cri in PC, but they're cheap...
...By the way, it helped a great, great deal that for lunch we had amazingly good barbecued shrimp...
...Want to know the best part...
...Man after man that I call is unable to speak freely on the phone, is starving himself or taking up yoga or otherwise forcing himself to do things he does not want to do on the orders of his wife...
...But you're miserable all the time because your wife tortures you," I said...
...How much did he get paid...
...When she comes home from work, she occasionally wants me to do this or that, but usually she just eats the dinner I make her—which I am happy to do—gets into her pajamas, and starts to read quietly or watch mysteries on TV...
...You see, I plan to buy a Cadillac SUV as my next vehicle...
...Then, several summers ago, I started to go to the fair at City Beach in Sandpoint, Idaho...
...But still, isn't it the husband's job to guard the house...
...And I'm not a social engineer...
...Hmmm...
...Now we're up for Best Game Show and Best Host for Jimmy and me...
...In time I became pals with several men who wrote for the New Yorker...
...But what's the point of staying married to someone who makes you suicidal...
...I am not talking about wife swapping (God forbid) or open sex play...
...This from the New Yorker...
...They were selling eye drops, nothing more or less...
...It also involves why I don't really think I'll feel bad if I never write for either again...
...It turned out I had misheard though, and it was a mere fourteen bucks per hour...
...I am not talking about sex at all...
...There is something sick, sick, sick going on here and I plan to write about it more, which should totally solve the problem...
...I was really nervous...
...Next thing I knew I was up on the bench about to get dunked...
...How could this be happening...
...I don't know," he said...
...They were monumentally sarcastic, hilarious, insightful in a subtle way about life...
...Good luck to you, Times...
...But giving your spouse his or her space is an absolute necessity...
...What a world...
...My butt hurt...
...Filled with screaming fans...
...I already have never written for the New Yorker so I'm halfway there...
...In this issue, he was asked about the ethics of owning a sport utility vehicle in New York...
...Plus, how much could it possibly hurt...
...Doesn't husband mean "house protector...
...This group was clearly not dunking me because I was a Jew...
...So, I was dunked three more times, had myself in the tank for about five hours doing other things, and left that place feeling pretty darned good about myself...
...I want to win...
...Access is success, so the saying goes...
...I would send them pieces which they would say were great...
...Saturday A call to my pal W. in Paris, Texas...
...My boy," I said, "I am already in heaven just being here brushing my teeth next to you...
...Then a very rude young woman at the hotel tortured us until her boss gave us a decent room...
...A dollar-forty a word," he said this afternoon...
...Then, bang, we won Best Game Show and I ran up on stage and smiled as our handsome executive producer Andrew Golder thanked everyone...
...He lived in Detroit...
...We walked to the right place, passed throngs of fans calling out to their favorite soap stars—and often to little me—then went into dinner in a cavernous, hideous room like a big ugly warehouse with red carpet...
...I've known you fifteen years and she's been beating the hell out of you all of that time...
...Henry Kissinger would never do this...
...Truly, if a man from outer space looked at our culture today and then looked at culture in 1958, he would faint at how we have gone backwards...
...Every morning and every night, when I am shaving or drying myself off after a shower, I listen to tapes of Bob and Ray...
...On the other hand, I truly still hate the idea of dunking people just because they're black...
...It's huge...
...I feel able to do so because my wife is so totally committed to freedom that I can do almost anything, and I am the envy of my pals...
...Family, which should be an encouraging, freeing kind of matrix (to use a Hillary-like word) is instead jail and maybe the Thought Police to boot...
...Then a very smelly driver met us and drove us into town...
...But something is wrong...
...And you know what else I thought...
...I still hoped I would get something in there and be rich and famous from it...
...The fact that the victim was always a black man struck me as especially vicious...
...But also because she never bosses me around...
...I figure that the price of gasoline tells all that has to be told about how much of it I should use...
...Maybe some day you'll realize there is life beyond PC...
...Sunday T oday was a breakthrough day for me as a writer and it involves the New York Times and the New Yorker...
...He totally ignores the basic idea that maybe if you can afford it, you should spend your last dime buying a vehicle that will save your life and your kids' lives in a crash...
...Then that man would get back up and be dunked again, or prepare to be dunked, sitting in his chair suspended above the tank of water...
...It's like being in prison here, and the dope is the only way I can feel even a little bit calm...
...We won one last weekend when we were up for best writers...
...Still, I felt glad that I was not the one getting dunked...
...Then off to the auditorium for the ceremony...
...My sister, who is smarter than I am, hated the New Yorker for its pretentious predictability and stopped reading it long ago...
...Specifically, there is a column in the mag about ethics by a man named Cohen...
Vol. 32 • July 1999 • No. 7
