Ben Stein's Diary: Just Peachie
Stein, Benjamin J.
I E N S T E I N ' S D I A R~ by Benjamin J. Stein lust Peachie Saturday S o the worst has happened and the Clintons have gone in and taken away poor little Elian at the point of an INS storm...
...I actually had fun anyway...
...I crossed the street and also headed west...
...All because the weather was so bad between Chicago and New York and especially in New York...
...Could it be military officers...
...After the ceremony we had a little party right across the street...
...This was before Diet Coke...
...It is processed with distilled water and no preservatives for the specific use of eye washing...
...We are in a very bad way here...
...I asked some passersby if they thought he was the real thing...
...But I am a lot older than she is...
...The stay was not that bad, though, because we were able to stay in the first-class international United Lounge...
...Too dangerous to talk in midtown Manhattan, I guess...
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...If we elect George W. Bush, it won't be apparent for a long while...
...There was a search warrant--that allowed only a search for guns, not seizure of the c h i l d - a n d in daylight only...
...Now, the nation has a picture of the Cuban Americans as criminals and lawless thugs...
...Who pays for the captured Elian to be flown to Maryland...
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...I think I know...
...I do not think so...
...The truthful answer was that though I liked them all well enough, I did not identify myself as the owner of these acres and objects...
...she said enthusiastically...
...It can be used when there are cataracts, glaucoma, pterygium or irritations...
...My cousins, Joe and Steve, used to teach school in New York where many of their students were Albanian...
...At lunch, there was a lot of arguing about Israeli politics, some talk about my show, and then some more talk about my show, and then some reminiscing by my cousins, who are sixteen years older than I am, about my mother when she was young...
...I should know because I was briefly among them...
...I hope he's part of a larger trend...
...You go around a few times and then you stop...
...In every era, in every nation, people have risen up to slay us--except in America, and that exception is because of the goodness of the American people and also because of the Constitution...
...It was lovely, with its lavish shops and prosperous-looking shoppers...
...She was courteous but obviously a bit nervous...
...The man looked at it carefully, took it and stuffed it in his pocket, got up, and walked away down 57th Street in a westerly direction...
...22-23 EL.A.M.E...
...I often think of the soldiers bitterly fighting against the Germans east of Bastogne, desperately trying to flush out the tough soldiers of the Wehrmacht, in below zero temperatures, sick, exhausted, freezing, with the enemy shooting at them and trying to kill them...
...And they were having a sale on briefcases...
...He's condemned universally for his human rights violations...
...Where else did most Americans even see Cuban Americans...
...I took out a twenty and gave it to him...
...And her football star hubby...
...Then we boarded the plane and sat on the runway for three more hours...
...As a nation, we have gotten so lazy and so ignorant that we do not even bother to think about where we will be without a Constitution or what the general history of mankind has been without the protection of law...
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...Then I would go back to the hotel and to a warm bed and my mother, smelling of perfume and a drink and maybe even cigarettes, would nuzzle me and kiss me good night...
...After all, if the citizens were awake, the disasters would n o t happen...
...And I did something tiny that was right...
...I want to go home...
...It was subdued because we did not win, but still there was a good atmosphere of fellowship...
...It was a colossal air traffic delay...
...We know, in a word, he's not above murder to save his skin...
...How sweet do they think it's going If I were a historian, I'd say the Constitution ended the day that Clinton seized Elian...
...In fact, ifI were a historian, I would say that the Constitution ended on the day the Clintons seized Elian...
...She did not cut me dead as she did last year...
...In fact, she greeted me cheerfully...
...The federal government can explicitly violate a court order, take a child away from his home, and get away with it...
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...I am not in war...
...I looked at him...
...The only problem was that when we got to JFK at 4 a.m., the car was not there to pick us up and our luggage was not there...
...But he sounds pitiful...
...What a wonderful thing it is to slide between the sheets of a warm, clean bed in a safe place...
...I have noticed that when beggars put a specific sum they need on a sign, they're usually phonies just as anyone 64 July~August 2000 _9 The American Spectator who pretends to know exact numbers usually is (the "analysts" on CNBC who say where the next "support level" for the plunging stock market is...
...Here's twenty," I said...
...So this is what it feels like to wake up and realize that once again, and this time right in front of TV cameras and still photographers, the Clintons have raped the Constitution...
...It won't be apparent for a while...
...The room would be dark with horse racing ribbons all around the bar...
...By the way, who is paying for all of this...
...When I see young people now, they look as if they have struggled long and hard to look awful- casual, unkempt, slobby...
...And how can we ever repay them...
...My two cousins, Joe and Steve, are there from Monticello, small-town home of my mother's family...
...That image was reinforced by a movie about Cubans who become powerful drug dealers...
...Phone: 7o3-z43-3733, ext...
...I hope it was right...
...Joe and Steve are remembering her doing it, as well as recalling that she had a car when she was 15...
...to be without a Constitution to protect us...
...Could this have anything to do with preparing the ground to cut them offat the knees...
...I was around a host of celebrities, many of whom were thin, beautiful, and very large-breasted...
...But he never did these violent acts with a court ordering him not to do them...
...Well, I guess the Jewish people are a small people and yet there are a lot of us in New York...
...So that if the worst were to happen and a local armed militia were to descend on me and drive me out as a Jewish alien, their offense would mostly be against the Jew, not against the landowner..And in such a case my concern would be for the U.S...
...By the way, it's no small feat getting in and out of New York...
...How sweet do they think American life will be without a framework of laws to guard our civil liberties...
...One drop inside each eye at bedtime will draw toxic accumulations outside of the eyes...
...Or the Civil War soldiers encamped in winter, freezing, fighting in mountainous Tennessee without decent clothing or food or shelter, with disease everywhere...
...They ignored me, too...
...She was the youngest girl in her neighborhood to have a car...
...Then my sister's brother-in-law talks about his World War II service, and it's really scary...
...It can be used as part of the nutritional management of all types of eye conditions...
...But now the stock market is a mess and everyone is still asleep...
...In that movie, Scarface, there was nothing good at all about Cuban-Americans...
...My sister and her husband are there for a wedding...
...If he does not, he should...
...He's talented and funny, but what a ride he's had this last year...
...Wifie and I are offto the Emmies in New York...
...My cousins are not well, but they keep up a lively banter about casino gambling in the Catskills, and talk more about my mother and how someone else in the family once pretended to be her...
...Naturally, the thought of my mother, so long ago when she was young and lively, brought tears to my eyes and I had to leave the table to cry...
...It's possible...
...And then there's another huge question: How does the government rationalize 60 July/Aug~s t 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator making the child a prisoner anywhere, for that matter...
...In Miami, tile federal and state courts have both said that there have to be hearings and processes before the Elian case can be resolved...
...And the very witty brother-in-law of my brother-in-law and his wife are there from (I think) Larchmont...
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...I need $18 to get home," was a man doubled over, seemingly in pain...
...He must account himself about the luckiest man on earth...
...Now that I think of it, as I stand here in my mountain of briefcases at Brooks Brothers, I recall how much pleasure we used to take in college in looking nice...
...The American Spectator _9 July~August 2000 65...
...The main thing is that I can recall meals like this not terribly long ago when my Uncle Hy and Aunt Sophie were there, and my sweet cousin Berniece, and my Morn and Pop, and I was just a kid and my cousin Berniece called me "Peachie" because my skin was so soft...
...He looked pitiful too...
...Could the government take my son away and hide him from me...
...He moaned and cried, over and over, "Help me...
...There are a lot of women out there who abuse the law and, as I have said before and will say again, we are lucky for prosecutors who show a lot of suspicion of complainants in rape cases...
...I iust knew that it was "Millionaire's" year...
...This was at dinner at a Sheraton near the Radio City Music Hall...
...She and i are from Montgomery County, Maryland...
...It's just an idea...
...But we all tried to look neat and attractive and wore ties and jackets and combed our hair and tried to look like young lords and gentlemen...
...None of us in my fraternity--well, maybe a few of us, but not me--was rich...
...Then I glimpsed my handsome Peal loafers and By 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...
...Maybe the child BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and l a t e r living in Hollywood and Malibu...
...But if we lose the Constitution-and we're losing it fast under the Clintonsit's all chaos...
...My humble idea is that there should be a huge tax on cars in New York-but I got to sit next to the lovely Kathie Lee Gifford...
...Things are fine...
...It was peaceful, quiet, and not at all overpowering...
...Constitution, not for my investment...
...Disc...
...How well I recall sitting in the utterly dreary' gray law book stacks in the Sterling Law Library looking for some case, feeling utterly miserable and lost...
...He sounds heartbreaking...
...Lullaby and good night, when you awaken, the Constitution will be out of sight...
...Hi, Ben Stein...
...Without the Constitution, our lives are precarious at best...
...Oh, well...
...I wonder how long until young people take pride in looking sharp again...
...There is no right for the INS to beat to the ground lawful citizens in their own homes...
...It's all an extremely powerful reason to vote Republican, if elections still matter...
...Small wonder that Americans have such contempt for these people--who have mostly been ideal immigrants-if Hollywood is on a mission to humiliate them on the screen...
...But I wonder why Prof...
...Maybe soon, because my son is obsessed with looking great...
...And her football star hubby...
...We took pride in looking as if we were going to amount to something...
...What if he really needs $18 to get home to be with his family and find some rest and warmth...
...What court said he could not be seen by anyone but his Castro lawyers...
...Long ago in college, the "tweediest" boys carried Peal briefcases and wore tan handmade Peal loafers...
...The roads just cannot handle as many ears as there are...
...Joe and Steve then looked like movie stars...
...But Comedy Central has graciously sent us, so offwe go...
...That seems like an easy choice...
...We all know Clinton has lied to federal judges, refused to obey their orders, lied under oath repeatedly...
...Dershowitz thought that Clinton, a man who has shown nothing but contempt for law since he took office, would have any other feelings about civil liberties than contempt...
...I was tired when I got there but I wanted to buy a new briefcase, so off I The American Spectator ' July~August ~ooo 63 went on my quest...
...I think they then cost about $32, which might as well have been $3z,ooo...
...The nth Circuit in particular said that Elian could not be taken away without full hearings...
...He was a handsome man in his thirties or forties, with sandy reddish hair, rather neatly dressed...
...Now, Castro is a bad joke to most people everywhere...
...then I don't have a car in New York, so easy for me to say...
...But that's law and the Clintons do not believe in law when it contravenes their purposes...
...Life is like a merry-go-round...
...My smart friend Daniella said it best...
...The traffic at the airport was hellish...
...My roommate, David Paglin, a Zebe, looked even better with his array of handsome suits and jackets and ties...
...It's bad when the law is used illegally, and worse when it's ignored...
...Dozens, maybe hundreds of people passed by without stopping...
...How do they have the strength...
...Everyone would be drinking Scotch except for Berniece, who would be drinking Pink Ladies...
...How can such a small country have so many people in New York...
...But, I thought, if he's a cheat and a fraud, at least I did my tiny little bit...
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...How do they do it...
...I thought, "Now, this guy is almost surely a phony...
...The weather was cold and damp, but as soon as I got rolling I felt great...
...Now we see it again, and this time it's not Sudan that's being bombed-- it's Florida...
...She regaled us with stories of women who falsely charge rape when the boy does not call them back or does not ask for another date or their other boyfriend calls and finds them missing...
...The press (except for wonderful Fox) is falling over itself to say it was at most a public relations gaffe...
...Because of bad weather near Chicago, we were stuck at the airport for three hours...
...He runs a vast, brutal, totalitarian prison state...
...We rapidly got to our category and I did not win...
...62 J u l y / A u g u s t 2 o o o " The American Spectator After dinner we all walked down a red carpet to the Music Hall, and then we walked past a phalanx of fans who screamed for the soap stars and went absolutely berserk for Regis Philbin...
...I found a nice briefcase at a place called Grouch & Fitzgerald, and then I found a sanctuary on the 6th floor of the Brooks Brothers at 346 Madison Avenue...
...I used to think the booming stock market had lulled everyone to sleep as We don't expect to win because this year the nation's heart is clearly with "Millionaire...
...How much is $18 nowadays...
...I am not homeless...
...the Clintons tied up and raped the rule of law...
...I felt a huge wave of fatigue come over me, as it always does when some bad thing is about to happen...
...The law is a scary animal...
...My driver, who took me through deathly traffic to reach White Plains, is Albanian...
...For us Jews in particular, the end of the Constitution is a catastrophe...
...In fact, not many Americans anywhere are noticing...
...That makes me happy...
...Therefore, it is considered a purifier...
...That is a little slice of paradise, with comfy chairs, far too much good food, and ultra-polite help by the United staff...
...Still, Dershowitz has a powerful voice and so does Tribe and [ am very glad to have them on board...
...Then I got to stand around with Barbara Walters while she waited to get her lifetime award...
...In this case, the bad thing was not my father's death or my mother's death or even being robbed...
...On Friday nights and Saturday nights, party nights, we all looked great in suits and tuxes...
...The Hillary and Bill types looked on with envy...
...Talking about a conversation with the late genius of what made civilizations great, Bellow goes on about his home in New Hampshire: "Ravelstein [the pseudonym for Bloom] asked me ifI had any proprietary feeling for the fieldstone house, the old maples and hickory trees, the gardens...
...Saturday A n d now, the Well, I mm,cs knew I wouldn t win...
...Several of the bellhops at the Essex House are Albanian...
...What ifhe's really sick and needs help...
...Everyone would be laughing hysterically, usually at some joke my father had made...
...Another half hour and that was sorted out, and then onward to the mighty Essex House, and fast asleep...
...But now we know the worst...
...The dedicated ones went off to work in the sugar cane fields of Cuba in "The Veneeremos Brigade...
...How long until we're not there either...
...I hope we're not secretly ruled by a deity who wants us to be mean and awful...
...As Bloom said, we ice skate on the thin sheet of ice of the now, failing utterly to know what lies beneath that fragile tissue...
...IfI were to lose it, I'd live on elsewhere...
...It's eerie because last night I read the following in Ravelstein, Saul Bellow's wondefful new book about Allan Bloom...
...Then at 57th and Fifth, something caught my eye and ear...
...Wednesday ~ see that Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law professor, and Laurence Tribe, ditto, both big-time civil libertarians, have come out saying that the seizure of Elian is a catastrophe for civil The American Spectator _9 JuZy/August so o o 6 I rights...
...Anyway, he did leave when he got the twenty and he probably did not get into a Town Car...
...Let's see now: Who else does Hollywood debase and smear on screen every day...
...I came across a letter from her about how much she loved to ice skate as a child...
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...Even that warrant was issued by a magistrate unfamiliar with the case in a slimy late evening application that the iudge in charge of the case would never have granted, There is apparently no precedent for federal armed intervention in a child custody case...
...In that case, there is no more Constitution...
...Could the Clinton government take away anyone for any reason...
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...We're at an Italian restaurant run by Albanians...
...When I looked back, I thought I saw him get into a Lincoln Town Car and be driven away...
...I walked back to the hotel in the cold and mist, and I actually felt pretty good when I got back...
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...Of course, everyone who has eyes and ears knows they violated the law in a huge way in Waco...
...cases will be hard to get...
...Thursday T ravel hell...
...I love their tan cases especially, even though I have never carried a tan briefcase...
...She read her speech carefully and then she walked off stage looking distinctly sad...
...It's just agony...
...She was happy because she was in her hometown...
...Who pays for his many thousands of dollars a day stay at the very elegant Wye River Plantation house on my beloved Eastern Shore (oddly close to various CIA facilities poorly masquerading as training schools and wildlife areas...
...People are saying that this election doesn't matter, that it's tweedledum and tweedledee...
...Dinner that night with Linda Fairstein and her husband...
...felt as ifI might actually have some merit even ifI could not find that one case...
...Thursday S till on Topic A, I have a theory about why the nation as a whole and the media in particular, are so critical and disdainful about Cuban Americans that they allowed the Clintons to seize Elian against the Constitution...
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...I thought, "What if God is looking down right now testing my generosity and charity...
...They must have been about 38 and they too would be drinking Scotch, as I recall...
...Could it be businessmen...
...Saturday U p far too early to take a car and driver to White Plains to see a family gathering...
...New York has its flaws, but just getting around in it offers marvelous opportunities for exercise...
...We know he killed innocent people in the Sudan and in Afghanistan to get the national eye away from his lies about Monica Lewinsky...
...I guess the whole world is turning Albanian...
...He actually has learned to tie a tie and wears a suit to the legions of Bar Mitzvahs he goes to...
...E.V., Nebraska "Cataracts gone after 3 months...
...But if the Constitution, the legal foundation of it all, were to be destroyed, we would return to the primal chaos, he used to warn me...
...At 5:30 a.m...
...We all had steak without regret or fear...
...I guess those days are all gone...
...That was in the blessed Alpha Delta Phi house...
...That must have been wrong...
...Where is the law that protects us in our homes and our persons if the federal government can burst in with machine guns and take a six yearold from his family against a court order...
...Berniece would give me a sip of the Pink Lady and the room would swim...
...He sounded deeply pitiful...
...But guess who still idolizes him...
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...The problem is whether the Clintons would let the legal system decide in a child custody and immigration issue-or whether in classic Clinton fashion, they would use brute government power to abrogate the law...
...Personal checks please allow 3 weeks for delivery...
...Yes, that's right...
...How can soldiers fight in the cold and rain and sleet and snow with people shooting at them and trying to kill them...
...We do not expect to win because this ?'ear the nation's heart is obviously with "Millionaire...
...keep wondering why the Clintons were so red hot to break the law and seize the kid...
...With tears in my eyes, I headed back to New York City...
...I was drinking CocaCola...
...I have a good idea: Now that we have a surplus, why don't we reduce the taxes on veterans by some large amount...
...It looks to me as if it's more like one party, the Democrats, who believe in the naked force of government and no individual rights and one party, the Republicans, who still believe in individual rights under the Constitution...
...We would eat at a restaurant in Monticello called the Paddock...
...would be better off with the dad who abandoned the boy before he was born...
...Really super polite...
...Back when Bill, Hillary, and I were at Yale Law School, Castro was an icon to the lefties on campus...
...Our boy, Bill Clinton, is violating the law, trampling on the Constitution, at the behest of a Communist dictator--in a desperate rear guard attempt to rewrite history and make the dictators and killers the victors...
...It was drizzling by then...
...I am not in the hospital...
...And to the Clintons, it's toilet paper...
...Now they're all gone except for Joe and Steve and my sister and me...
...They are the ones who make it possible for fools like me to sleep in clean sheets and I think I should be taxed at a higher rate than they are...
...Linda is the sex crimes prosecutor for Manhattan...
...I guess I've mixed metaphors here...
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...I bought several because who knows when nuclear war will break out and real Peal & Co...
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...Then my cousin talks about his service in Korea, which sounds unpleasant but not terrifying...
...The father seems like a creep, but one never knows...
...I have my faculties, at least some of them...
...I think this is standard for when nations slide into disaster...
...Maybe four...
...She drove it all over, to the general amazement of the people in Monticello...
...A whole eon of man's cruelty to man, from which we are shielded only by two centuries of good will and a slender document, "the greatest ever struck off at one time by the hand of man...
...In fact, I got to sit next to the lovely Kathie Lee Gifford...
...On the southwest corner, across the street from Tiffany, right in front of Harry Winston jewelers, behind a hand sign that read, "I have AIDS from a transfusion...
...I E N S T E I N ' S D I A R~ by Benjamin J. Stein lust Peachie Saturday S o the worst has happened and the Clintons have gone in and taken away poor little Elian at the point of an INS storm trooper's assault rifle...
...On that show, one of my favorites to be sure, night after night we saw Cuban &nericans who were murderers, dope smugglers, arms smugglers, subverters of politicians, unable to do an honest day's work...
...Kathie Lee looks almost unbelievably good...
...Spitting on the court, showing his true Maoist principles--power grows from the barrel of a gun--Clinton sent in the Gestapo to seize the child anyway...
...Apparently they now can...
...ly bought a pair of them when I began law school at Yale...
...Well, the little boy breaks my heart...
...But how could all of those people have ignored him...
...Anyway, I walked out of Brooks Brothers and marched at top speed up Fifth Avenue...
...Anyway, it's a sad, sad time for America and sadder still that so few in the media community seem to be noticing...
...We all know he framed the poor Travel Office employees...
...Obviously, they wanted to kiss Castro's rear, but why...
...They completely ignored him without even looking or listening, as far as I could tell...
...Finally we took off and the rest of the flight was fine...
...I have my immediate family...
...The problem, as everyone knows, was never really whether Elian belonged with his father or with his relatives in Miami...
...I notice that many of the people defending Clinton on the air are talking about the sweetness of family life...
...I think it began in Hollywood with a show called "Miami Vice...
...I finalIn college we took pride in looking as if we were going to amount to something...
...R.G., Florida YES...
Vol. 33 • July 2000 • No. 6
