Ben Stein's Diary: CanaryYellow
Stein, Benjamin J.
by Benjamin J. Stein C anary Yellow Saturday ~ t's an overcast, miserable afternoon here in gilded Los Angeles. As usual, I have a flu of some kind. I think I've had this flu for twenty years....
...The hostess told me I would have to leave because I was wearing my running shoes...
...Never mind...
...He claimed to have hard data that exactly 12 percent or exactly 15 percent or some other silly number of executed prisoners were innocent...
...His source: Barry Scheck...
...80% markedly improved: _9 Macular Degeneration _9 Retinitis Pigmentosa _9 Conjunctivitis _9 Glaucoma (5 different types) _9 Allergic conditions of the eye _9 Xerostomia (Dry Eye) _9 Laser Burns _9 Cataracts (including patients w/implanted lenses "Macular degeneration improved - glaucoma gone after 3 months...
...How many times I recall meeting him in that small but elegant lobby, spying Salvador Dali, who used to live there, lounging on a couch...
...I know some mighty smart people who went to UCLA, but they sure were not at that rally today...
...What an amazing fool I am...
...Maybe it's sorrow at the end of the season...
...I am too shy and too married to do more than flirt, but I do love to have attention paid...
...Well, it seems clear to me, but maybe not to him...
...She's beautiful and smart and energetic, a combination that's tough to beat...
...Wealthy stockholders want cuts in the capital gains rates...
...She wrote long entries about her travels, about what she ate, and then, suddenly, she would say something like, "None of this is important...
...36-37 Hoover Institution p. 91 Judicial Watch p. 33 Lear Financial p. 65 Microsoft Corporation p. 5 Oval Office p. 23 Prudent Bear Funds, Inc...
...I drove Tommie Bell back to her hotel, and then Carl and I rendezvoused at the Polo Lounge, my new favorite place, and reminisced about old times when we were both thin and young and no girls liked us...
...I have been doing a lot of those lately...
...In that case, how can the cable and broadcast networks expect the growing number of viewers they want and need...
...It can be used as part of the nutritional management of all types of eye conditions...
...The "question" was basically this: IfI, the young woman, am going to school, why do I have to pay for it...
...Not one can recall being called that awful word in anger by a white...
...There, on beloved Fox News, was a clip of A1 Gore speaking at a black church in upstate New York, I think it was...
...I really think every young American should work for a good long while before college...
...It does not help that there was no parking space for me at the party and that I had to park in a scary 7-11 parking lot and walk across scary Hollywood Boulevard...
...18-19 GOPnet.com p. 3 Haverhills pp...
...3- He was not wearing a tie and jacket...
...Wow, hard to believe both types are in college...
...Hey, I never got to say good-bye to Muffy...
...This has been a tiring time, to put it mildly, My new co-host, the lovely Nancy Pimental, has proved herself to be witty and funny and good natured, but we've been working at a ghastly pace...
...Then a long stroll down Fifth Avenue with my nephew Jonathan...
...A whole raft of people wanted to interview me for this or that network or Website and I mostly obliged...
...It's reassuring that Linda takes her duties so seriously...
...I wish every bar and restaurant had the same standards...
...Farbissina" is the Yiddish word for it, meaning kind of angry and cagey and pretending to be a victim while really being an aggressor, if I understand it right, which I may not...
...I came down to Washington on the Delta Shuttle ~yesterday...
...I think she and my wife must have the same genes...
...I do not like the sound of that...
...I guess no one ever uses a pen anymore...
...It might be the most dismal party I have ever been to...
...If you still have your parents, you're rich...
...I have a simple conundrum that I pose to my audiences...
...It had been drained and now he was reviving rapidly...
...I was told that my nephew also had to leave because: 1. He was wearing running shoes...
...Still, I felt bad...
...Saturday B ut not for long...
...Everything else is secondary...
...I started to answer but I was met with a series of questions about why is Bush so mean to drug users, 60 May 2o o o _9 The American Spectator why is he so anti-gay (he's not and the GOP should not be is what I said...
...The amazing Santa Lucia Eye preparation is made of two types of plants...
...And what was he saying...
...How much more ] love my Pepperdine kids and my Stanford kids--the students from Palo Alto particularly seem about ten times as mature and have ten times better senses of humor...
...She'll thrive there or anywhere...
...Friday y uck...
...A few are lewd...
...Then on to an interview with a man who claimed that Bush was in favor of executing innocent prisoners on death row...
...The room was smoky...
...Frankly, just between us girls, I applaud that woman for keeping up standards...
...Our show is a family, though, and like a good, loving family, I suspect it will get corrected...
...Also, you can see the ocean from his office, which is heaven...
...Soon, I will no longer be able to answer them...
...I don't think so...
...cutor--like Janet Reno when she was a prosecutor in Florida--can be a terrorist...
...But no one else took the matter seriously...
...Now that I think of it, I feel that way a lot of the time...
...We're hoping to do a TV series together about the great events of the Baby Boom...
...The party was at a huge pool hall in Hollywood and it was generally dark I am too shy and too married to do more than flirt, but I do love to have attention paid...
...Personal checks please allow 3 weeks for defivery...
...As to the loans the student had to pay off, well they were just like loans for buying a drill press or a server--a capital asset that would pay for itself over time...
...62 May 2o o o _9 The American Spectator Then, to bed, to think about how badly I was mistreated...
...Not only that, but it was a $25,0o0 game...
...I write my e-mails, look out at the night sky, and feel pretty darned good...
...I cheerfully left...
...Hey, why isn't anyone pointing out that Al Gore went to a high school that frankly and openly practiced racial and ethnic exclusion when he was a student...
...or something like that...
...She was taking ballroom dancing lessons at George Washington University at age 7 i or maybe 7 ~ . She said she got to class, sat down, and the students started to swing dance "and my heart broke" because she remembered my sister Rachel and me dancing the jitterbug in 1959 or so in our basement on Harvey Road...
...It is processed with distilled water and no preservatives for the specific use of eye washing...
...11, 41 World Affairs Television p. 6 World Journalism Institute p. 71 To learn more about the benefits of advertising in The American Spectator, contact: John Funk, Associate Publisher--Advertising...
...Most of the people in my family are still in bed at ten in the morning-- including me...
...I thought of trying to tell these kids that they were just a special-interest group looking for handouts like any other, but they wouldn't have believed it...
...Long ago, my father stayed there when he was in New York for the Committee for Economic Development...
...I was lying down on my father's and mother's bed, a tiny old double bed in which they spent sixty years, reading my Mom's handwriting...
...As I was being interviewed by a particularly strange-looking group of students from outer space, who should appear before my eyes but Mary Muff Maguire, my beautiful former nutritionist...
...The further problem is that we had a question about sixty shows ago about this exact " _9 _9 h issue...
...I am madly in love with Meredith Fox, in a platonic sort of way...
...Box 1120 Blue Springs, MO 64013-1120 Name Address City State PLEASE SEND SANTA LUCIA EYE DROPS (.5 oz Bottle approximately two months supply) $59.95 plus shipping - MO Residents, include $3.96 sales tax per bottle...
...I went to visit my dear old Economics Professor, Lowell Harriss...
...The Gore camp will do anything to win this race...
...As you can imagine, I became hysterical and started to hyperventilate and answered slowly on the next question, which was not that hard...
...After dinner, I wanted to show Carl my new house in Bev Hills...
...Absolutely everything...
...But right now I feel as if the ground has been cut out from under my feet...
...Actually, I never can go right to sleep...
...I started right away reading my mother's diary...
...Naturally enough, I said "bird...
...When I was in my late twenties, I had really bad digestive problems...
...Thursday II am at my doctor's office...
...I often ask black friends or colleagues if anyone has ever called them the n-word...
...The three players (who, again, had already beaten me once) were all great quiz wizards...
...Address: The American Spectator, P.O...
...He agreed that conditions had improved dramatically for African Americans, but he said he resented the fact that whites were so afraid of blacks in terms of crime and violence...
...We talked for a long time about his honeymoon to England just as World War II was starting, about his early days with Milton Friedman, and most of all, about his knowing my parents when they were young grad students at the University of Chicago in 1935, '36 , and '37...
...She was having none of it...
...It's always good and the view is great...
...Afrikaans Lakota Amharic Latin Arabic Latvian Bulgarian Lithuanian Cantonese Mandarin Czech Norwegian Danish Persian Dutch Polish English Portuguese Estonian Romanian Finnish Russian French SerboGaelic Croatian (Scots) SIovak German Spanish Greek Swahili Haitian Swedish Creole Tagalag Hausa Thai Hebrew Tibetan Hindi Turkish Hungarian Ukrainian Indonesian Urdu Irish Uzbak Italian Vietnamese Japanese Welsh Khmer Yeruba Korean Zulu ItUDIQ.I~QI~Im" Room X506, 96 Broad Street, Guilford, CT 06437 free fax 1-888-453-4329 e-mail: RX506@audioforum.com ] The American Spectator _9 May 2 o o o 61 I sulked in my tent, like Achilles, and then packed a few things from my dressing room, and then went to my "wrap party...
...There were young people milling around, many of them carrying video cameras or microphones...
...I vamped for a while, feeling really ill, and then went on stage and said I liked Bush because he seemed comfortable in his skin, had a good sense of humor, and wanted less government, not more...
...This St...
...I knew she was back at UCLA studying to be a pundit, but I certainly did not expect to see her during a random visit to crowded campus...
...He is a limo driver...
...I just wish she went to Pepperdine, where she'd hear more sensible voices...
...This is the big perk of being famous: Women flirt with me all of the time...
...This product can be used safely in anyone including infants and people with illnesses and it has no contraindications to its use...
...I arrived late last night and went right to sleep...
...p. 15 Santa Lucia Eye Drops p. 63 T. Rowe Price pp...
...It's that simple...
...But wait a minute: Who's the divider here...
...E.V., Nebraska "Cataracts gone after 3 months...
...So was my childhood neighbor and dear friend, Carl Bernstein, who is in town staying at our old house in the Hollywood Hills...
...My imagining is that when my sister and I are not visiting the apartment, my parents' spirits are there, maybe even when we are there, and they're still watching "Murder She Wrote" and my father is still having to explain the plot to my Morn the way he always did, and then my father watches the basketball, and then he tea& War and Peace...
...But I answered it just as the buzzer was going offand they would not give it to me...
...When he talked about stock markets and capital, he always said, "And let's assume all of the stock is owned by widows and orphans...
...I can't sell that place no matter what...
...I agreed BENI~IN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...My fan club head, the lovely Tommie Bell (a woman) from Georgia, was extremely sympathetic...
...Several men told me how much they liked "Win Ben Stein's Money...
...Back to my room to sleep...
...Why...
...I started to tell her that an education is acquiring a capital asset mainly of use to the acquirer, although also of use to the society at large...
...They can tell you things that scare you...
...Advertiser Page # American Spectator Online p. 35 Audio Forum p. 61 Blackstone Audio Books p. 83 Bose Corporation p. 2 Cato Institute .. p. 11 Classifieds p..87 Discovery Institute p. 9 EL.A.M.E...
...What impressed me at this morning's gathering was that there were thousands of young men and women up bright and early, neatly dressed, all pleasant and cordial, and I guess they're doing business...
...Harriss looked very well...
...But I can recall being called a "kike" and a "f--king Jew," leading to fistfights many times when I was a child...
...He'll be a major asset on the campaign trail...
...That's a great way to begin and he also ended in great ways...
...I should not even for a minute feel the slightest ingratitude after the way I have been born and live...
...But Gore endlessly tries to con blacks into thinking that Bush is a Klansman...
...My mother was a highly trained economist, but she was also a woman explosively packed with sentiment, most of it love for her children and husband, and wow, does it make me miss her...
...We talked about race relations...
...I also feel dislocated and crazed...
...Down to Foggy Bottom to my father's apartment, actually mine and my sister's kids' apartment now...
...Prof...
...She was a small woman, barely above five feet tall, always thin, but she had so much love in her...
...There are only so many millions of eyeballs in America...
...Someday soon I'm going to write a column of all the insults and slights that went my way when I was young because I was and am a Jew, and it'll stun you...
...Who's the race baiter...
...Might be fun...
...Despite it, I get quite a lot done, although never enough...
...Then, back to the hotel for a rest...
...A trigger happy proseBy patronizing the companies and products posted in this issue, your positive response rewards them for advertising in one of the gems of American publishing, The American Spectator...
...2. He was wearing a hat...
...If you ever have to fly between D.C...
...I think the simple answer is that people will use the Web at odd hours and moments and it will never replace TV, especially cable, but then, I am often wrong...
...But what must it be like to be a conservative on that campus where statism is a religion...
...I wonder what Brigitte Bardog must think...
...The finalist was a portly guy of almost superhuman ability to answer quickly and on target with the judges...
...It was a sad, unhappy event, because I felt as ifI had been mistreated in that last game...
...My co-Bush supporter, George Bush's very handsome nephew, spoke to them as well in a less abstracted way and I thought he was a smart cookie...
...Whose fault is it...
...Working gets that bad attitude of entitlement right out of you in a big hurry...
...They really think they are special and deserve to be treated as if they were little angels sent down from on high...
...One of the questions was something like, "What kind of animal is the T 1 1 ,~,, canary as in Ganary lsianas...
...No, they were looking for "dog" because apparently in antiquity there had been a myth that the islands were inhabited by supernaturally large dogs...
...By and large, those eyeballs can only be watching one thing at a time...
...Dinner with celebrity sex-crimes prosecutor and novelist Linda Fairstein and her husband Justin Feldman...
...This time, my doctor is telling me that because of my age (.55) I have to have a colon'oscopy...
...She was in fatigues and her hair not done, but she still looked well and seemed quite cheerful...
...And I need a place to read their words, imagine them saying the words, and sob...
...Or maybe it's just because I have a cold...
...The problem is that in the last 2,o00 years, the islands have been known for their adorable little serin finches, also called "canaries...
...Working gets that bad attitude of entitlement right out of you in a big hurry...
...Hence "canis aria" or islands of dogs...
...I had every kind of humiliating and painful examination...
...A very lovely Asian woman who is working her way through law school by waiting tables at the Polo Lounge waited on us and flirted...
...The American Spectator _9 May ~o o o 63 Then a long rest...
...While I stood there or sat there wondering why I was there, the woman went on saying that education was a "right" and why shouldn't she be paid for studying so she could buy a house when she was done with ten years of higher education the way a woman in the work force could do...
...The worst culprit at doing that long ago, Gary R., is now married to a Jewish woman, and as far as I know, works for her father...
...Delta has friendly flight attendants, a little tiny but delicious meal, a huge comfy lounge where you can actually sit down 64 May 2 o o o " The American Spectator instead of being rounded up in a pen, and it also has my high school pal Robyn Warren, with whom I went to the Senior Prom in 1962 , on the job...
...Now I am about to have another one...
...There were no friends of Bush in the room as far as I could tell...
...Why can't I just have all my expenses paid by the taxpayers and study for as many years as I want, any subject I want, at taxpayer expense...
...The audience applauded her and suddenly it dawned on stupid Ben Stein: Of course these kids want the state to subsidize their existence...
...I suspect they will ifI throw a big enough fit...
...Linda regaled us with stories about the legal process and about the very serious task of making sure that when rape claimants appear, their claims are genuine...
...Like all other special pleaders, they come to believe their own propaganda about their moral superiority and just deserts...
...So I "lost" on that strange "Canary" question...
...No problemo...
...I went to rent a car with a large black man helping me with my luggage...
...They all have needles and they like to use them...
...God bless that great school which brought us so much love of free markets and free men and women...
...They all have cold examining tables...
...Regis Hotel at 55th and Fifth...
...Maybe they're right and I'm wrong...
...What is the serln finc that gives its name to an island group in the Atlantic...
...It's shameful and so, in the middle of the night, I called the Bush camp to volunteer my services...
...Most of them are requests for photos...
...On our way back, we stopped at the St...
...Those walls have heard a lot of crying in the last few years...
...The last day of taping this season of my show...
...Phone: 7o3-2.43-3733, ext...
...He's not thin, which I really, really like a lot...
...Anyway, Prof...
...Then on to a hotel for an interview with Jamie Gangel of NBC for a profile they are doing for me for the "Today" show...
...He includes blacks and Hispanics in everything he does...
...Right to sleep in a big, comfy bed...
...Then a teacher asked why teachers were paid so badly and on and on...
...and New York, [ strongly recommend Delta rather than US Air...
...I really did not want these championship games and they sort of tricked and cajoled me into them and now I am extremely apprehensive...
...The silliest answer I ever get to that question is that people are watching the Net and TV at the same time...
...Jonathan and I went into the King Cole Bar, much smaller than it once was, but still with its famous mural of Old King Cole and his fiddlers three and all his minions...
...Man does not like to be alone, and e-mail is a great weapon in the War Against Loneliness...
...She was extremely pleasant and smart but the room was boiling from lights and lack of air conditioning...
...Then a cab ride with my pal Ronnie Gill from Newsday up to New York Presbyterian Hospital...
...Compared with being put in gas chambers, name calling and fist-fights are pretty puny stuff...
...We ate at one of my very favorite restaurants, the front dining room facing the park at the Essex House...
...The event was at a medium sized hall mercifully near a parking garage...
...A1 Gore was imitating a black street preacher's cadences and rhythm...
...I also said he wanted to bring people together, not divide them on the basis of race, and I felt sure that he was a healer...
...Potential heirs want cuts in the estate tax...
...The one bright spot was that our super production executive, Meredith Fox, and my beautiful co-host, Nancy Pimental, gave me a Palm Pilot with a color screen...
...Nahhh...
...I have been i going through a fair amount of stomach medicine lately, and he's worried...
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...PNP (Physicians Natural Products) EO...
...He's from Greenville, Mississippi, where my wifie also has relatives...
...He really is extremely charming...
...I like them, too, because I have an easy time of it usually...
...My parents' spirits need a place to watch TV...
...He told me about his trip to Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary and then showed me photos...
...So is getting shut out of St...
...I am so happy I don't have to deal with those particular kids all day...
...This is really sickening racism...
...I am always impressed that a man from the deep South who has grown up with extreme racism in his life, even inside an oasis where the racism is outside town limits, can be so cheery and friendly...
...p. 49 Forbes.com pp...
...That means if they are watching the Internet, they cannot be watching TV...
...However, in the final round, we hit a big pothole...
...To make matters worse, the producers have made this a "championship" show where the contestants are all people who have beaten me in the past...
...A young woman stood up and asked me a long question that she read for page after page from a small white pad...
...He told me life in Greenville, even in the fifties, was not too bad...
...Bush never tries to stir up whites against blacks...
...Not one bit...
...But [ get scared at doctors' offices...
...That was beyond kind of them...
...Taxpayers and voters had made a decision that they would pay for some of it but because the benefit went mainly to the student-graduate, he or she should also pay for it...
...Bush is the least racist man on the national scene...
...The only thing that I need to say is how grateful to God I am for my family...
...Oh, well...
...Sure sounds to me as if it's none other than our boy Gore...
...Well, anyway, even when it happened, I was always extremely happy about living in America, best place on earth...
...There was not a sound in that apartment except yours truly sobbing, and I could well imagine just how hard it must have been for my father alone there without her after she died...
...Shipping $5.95 for 1-6 bottles and $9.95 for 7-10 bottles...
...Our last show today finds me exhausted, fluish (as usual), and very edgy...
...Plus extremely miffed...
...At least not right away...
...Well, back to my car...
...Harriss was and is not only a great fan of capitalism and free markets but a lucid teacher...
...I have to check my e-mails and answer them if possible...
...Therefore, it is considered a purifier...
...Now ifI can ever figure out how to use it I'll be all set...
...R.G., Florida YES...
...That George Bush was a racist and a divider of men against themselves on the basis of race...
...She's a pretty young blond woman who never gets upset, never gets rattled, is always kind and always gets the job done...
...The woman had hideous, matted hair and a snarling look on her face...
...Decorum precludes telling all about them, but they were horrible...
...I don't get no respect...
...The outlying areas were scary, but Greenville, was, as he said, "an oasis of goodwill...
...to go to speak on behalf of the governor, and with Yaniv, my bodyguard, in tow along with my investment guru, Ken Hensley, offwe went...
...Or she would write an entry that brings tears to my eyes even as I write it now...
...He agreed but he said it was still sad, and it is...
...Thursday H ere I am in New York at the Essex House...
...I can barely tolerate any discomfort at all at this stage...
...Anyway, I awakened a few nights ago and turned on the TV...
...But blacks are also afraid of blacks in terms of crime and violence," I said...
...Albans...
...Gore asked blacks to help him stern the tide of racism and Confederate flag waving white skin privilege evil that he, Gore-as-A1 Sharpton, saw coming from the Bush campaign...
...It can be used when there are cataracts, glaucoma, pterygium or irritations...
...Maybe I am losing my mind, but it's the way all Americans lose their minds: forgetting the glory that is ours just by virtue of being Americans in this blessed land, day by day and moment by moment...
...and they ran out of food...
...Now neither of us is thin, but women flirt with us like mad...
...He loved it and did not flinch when the dogs leapt all over him...
...He's a kindly, thoughtful fellow and I like him a lot...
...People want money from the state and they want someone else to pay for it...
...I was virtually suicidal...
...On the other hand, I grew up with a lot of racism and anti-Semitism directed at me, and look how cheerful I am...
...I learned economics painlessly from him-although I think I sort of knew it growing up...
...One drop inside each eye at bedtime will draw toxic accumulations outside of the eyes...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA 2zz16...
...I reached a man who, after several days, called me and asked me to speak at UCLA at a get-out-the-vote rally...
...Two pretty girls at the bar flirted with me...
...Then I got up at the crack of dawn to moderate a panel about the future of TV...
...Some are about Idaho...
...Double yuck...
...They looked great and I wish I were an intrepid lxaveler, as he is...
...But for now it's nice...
...Date _ _ Signature We also accept Money Orders and Checks...
...Why can't I be exempt from these things because I'm a TV star...
...It's not good to feel that way...
...Pay to order of pNR Send to Address listed above...
...IN The American Spectator _9 May 2 o o o 65...
...Very impressive indeed...
...Tobacco growers want subsidies...
...But if the stock prices for Internet stocks are even remotely correct (and one suspects they are not), then the market is saying that a whole lot of eyeballs will be watching the Web...
...It's too bad because he has a message of individual empowerment that they should hear...
...Albans and Harvard boy was trying to sound like A1 Sharpton...
...Sometimes, when I think of what real mistreatment is, and compare how lucky my life has been, I start to laugh at myself, even in bed, even in the dark...
...He had a slight hematoma, only it was in his brain, which makes it more than slight...
Vol. 33 • May 2000 • No. 4
