Ben Stein's Diary: Sucking Up Pride
Stein, Benjamin J.
E N ST E/:N " i S :DI:AR-:' by Benjamin J. S t e i n Sucking Up Pride Sunday W r hen I was a small child in Silver Spring, Maryland, I used to give my father pipe tobacco for Father's Day. I...
...There are no crickets in Beverly Hills at night...
...Then he would fill it with tobacco and light it and deeply inhale and say how grateful he was...
...Worse, there are no fireflies...
...It's amazing how much they have accomplished in their time in New York, so they should be proud...
...But it was where he always was-with our family, always there to talk to or to ask for help...
...Is it just a "let's take the sucker" mentality...
...Will the payments into the system have to be increased...
...This morning, the morning after, so to speak, I let him sleep and got in my car to get some groceries...
...You cannot imagine how good they were to me and how much I idolized them...
...I called and screamed at the manager...
...Monday ~ 'm in Washington now (it's two weeks since my last entry), and I had an interesting little bit of by-play with Avis rental cars...
...That means they need to be paid more money than their premiums and earnings on them have generated...
...It would not start...
...So she is next to me calmly comforting me and being the angel of God she is...
...It was Puerto Rican Pride day here in New York," he said...
...Now, here's the little moral of this story...
...Then for being an American, the closest you can get to heaven on earth...
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...I usually start with thanks for my family, parents, wifie, sister, son, dogs...
...Now, Pop lies next to Morn at King David cemetery...
...The woman gave me a long string of pathetic excuses why we could not have a Cadillac...
...Scull's family had been vital in ending slavery...
...The whole catalogue of these consequences will presumably unfold forever...
...I think of them as what perfect Americans should be...
...I got in and turned the key once...
...Did A1 Gore lie about tobacco and his school record and his fundraising...
...Genome...
...Their home was the Garden of Eden...
...Pay to order of PNP...
...That must have been when I was ten, perhaps in 1955...
...On small, wildly inadequate highways...
...I notice that many of the cars have Puerto Rican flags on thern...
...Give me the Versed right now," I said...
...There are no candles in the hotel," she said...
...It's supposed to be very uncomfortable...
...Don't bother," said a helpful fellow...
...We're totally sold out of cars...
...If Social Security actuarial tables presumed a time of roughly fifteen years between retirement and shuffling off this mortal coil, and if this calculus in turn yielded a surplus, what will happen when this span of retirement bliss becomes forty years...
...It was a big night for me and I wish I had known more of them...
...GENIUS...
...Those are great meinories...
...Please bring me some candles...
...David also had a lovely sister named Betsy, whom we both teased...
...E.V., Nebraska "Cataracts gone after 3 months...
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...Down the memory hole it all goes while we happily eat our McDonald's...
...As capital compounds and grows, the take from the capital gains tax may well soar...
...Well, my room is horrible," I said...
...That was when Dwight Eisenhower was president and seemed like our national grandfather...
...Now Bill Clinton is president and seems like our national baby boomer Peter Pan...
...My heroes, in a word...
...She cheerfully switched it for my pitiful Mercury...
...That night, Tommy, despite having his own room, would not, not, not sleep anywhere but with me...
...Box 549, Arlington, VA zzz16...
...He is a lawyer and a leading expert in estate taxation, as well as a major outdoorsman and athlete...
...I see what it does to homes when the Dad leaves--and I now know what an incalculable gift he gave me by just being there, reading his economics articles, but always just being there for us first and foremost...
...Hmmm...I guess I really am getting delirious...
...Then time passed...
...One drop inside each eye at bedtime will draw toxic accumulations outside of the eyes...
...However, brave wifie is here keeping me company...
...What did I find at the Avis counter...
...Garth Wood...
...The climate is terThe American Spectator _9 September 2000 55 rifying...
...Then usually for my childhood friends, the Sculls...
...Whaam...
...I started to count to three and next thing I knew I was back in the recovery room with the needle still in my elbow and Alex holding my hand...
...At night, he would sit outside with the fireflies all around his pipe and listen to the Senators on the radio and I could smell the tobacco smoke in my bedroom...
...Beautiful, good natured, unimaginably witty: a goddess...
...Anyway, I could hear other colonoscopy patients moaning and groaning next to me (really, just inches from me...
...p. 6 Fannie Mae p. 5 Forbes p. 3 Haverhills p. 41 Hoover Institution p. 83 Judicial Watch p. 27 Musicmaker.com p. 1S Santa Lucia Eye Drops p. 53 Sarkes Tarzian Inc...
...Maybe it's time to move the government to Santa Barbara...
...It's dirty (yes, after a few years of cleanliness, it's filthy again, especially after Puerto Rican Pride Day...
...Yes, I love women 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...
...Easy the way it's supposed to be...
...Yes," he said...
...Yes, indeed...
...Way over a million people in Manhattan for the parade...
...But there is a certain wayward energy about New York City that simply makes me sick...
...Shipping $5.95 for 1-6 bottles and $9.95 for %10 bottles...
...It's far too crowded...
...The human genome is a great thing to map...
...Anyway, when I got home, I realized I had absolutely no memory at all of the procedure...
...Power corrupts, but then so does humidity...
...Yes, I surely gave him my little gifts, but he gave us the gifts of a house and stability and a family that was an intact shield for my sister and me to grow up behind...
...I'm the housekeeping manager," she said...
...We don't remember...
...In a minute," he said...
...Scull died far too young in about 1979 . They were saints on this earth and ifI am really about to die here in my bedroom at the River Inn, I hope I get to see them...
...I found a woman and begged her for one of the dozen empty Cadillacs they had in a circle around my poor pitiful Mercury...
...Therefore, it is considered a purifier...
...So, maybe I am already in heaven...
...In this way, I thought, they're Iike the national media...
...Scull died horribly young in 1968, I believe, of a stroke...
...And when I started to write about financial fraud, he did stand up for me against people in high places who were part of the fraud...
...Imagine how much better everyone would feel if our government worked in the perfect balmy days and nights of Santa Barbara than in the hellish swamp of D.C...
...So, I'll have to provide it...
...In my humble experience, when you're in Washington, you are more likely to get one than when you are in New York...
...So it's bumper to bumper and frustrating...
...I drove it toward National (Reagan) airport to replace it...
...I had been forced to fast the entire day before...
...When I got into Manhattan, the traffic was less dense, but occasionally cars filled with young men in T-shirts roared by, beeping, with Puerto Rican flags flying in the air...
...Something will have to give or the predicted surpluses will become a cruel ioke...
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...Of course, I see his chair that he sat in for years after Morn and Pop moved to the Watergate from Silver Spring...
...Pop would take the pipes, still seated in his chair, put aside his copy of the American Economic Review or the Economist, and study the pipe, pronounce himself happy with it...
...Did he lie under oath...
...Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania...
...He kicks and turns all night and plus he is a wild insomniac, so I got very little sleep...
...Scull's maid when she was a child...
...Far more than any of the other parents on the street (who probably saw me as competition for their sons), the Sculls were impressed by me, encouraged me, and sheltered me...
...Well, what the heck...
...Government will also have major adjustments to make...
...After much pleading, they took out the IV, told me I was fine, and sent me home...
...This is just a generalization, of course, but it's true...
...This has been suggested by the English physician and ethicist, Dr...
...attitude that takes place even when you're paying $8oo a night for a hotel room...
...generally...
...As usual in this situation, I prayed a long prayer of thanks to God for His goodness to me...
...Luckily, however, the companies that sell annuities are sometimes, no, often, the same companies that sell life insurance...
...She asked for an autograph...
...ping out these few words on my laptop, I just up and die...
...Here I am in New York City...
...She wished me well...
...My lungs ache...
...Tell the people on the shoreline we must be, very flee and easy...
...I cannot quite figure out why it's so bad here when, a few hours south, in Washington, D.C., people are so friendly...
...No luck...
...To me, they were everything good and gracious and elegant and down to earth about America...
...reading or watching TV...
...Pat was a lively thing, and [ was mean to her and I regret it a lot...
...Let's just say that life with her works and without her it would not work...
...Count to three," he said as he put something clear and liquid into the IV tube...
...On the other hand, he will need to have a far larger sum saved, so he might need to have more invested year by year...
...I just flew in on a lavish American flight that I really could not find fault with even ifI wanted to...
...Heaven is that little boy's smile...
...Then he put in a larger needle and I started to get really sick...
...It would be almost impossible for me to put into words how vital she is to my life...
...The mighty surpluses that now loom will shrink drastically as the years when Social Securi~ must be paid grow from a precious few to dozens and dozens...
...That's an obvious lie," I answered her...
...Then I got to the Essex House...
...None of them made any sense since I had reserved a Cadillac...
...When Bill Clinton announced it a day or two ago, he said it would add a minimum of twenty-five years to the life of Leo Blair, Tony Blair's new sou, and others have said it would add even more years of healthy life...
...A huge lightning storm started outside...
...It was where he sat to symbolize to us that the family was intact...
...Address: The American Spectator, P.O...
...Would not start...
...It started...
...Still, my main memory of Pop on Father's Day is him sitting in his chair and then maybe later in the day having hamburgers or maybe a steak from the barbecue of our backyard overlooking Sligo Creek Park and later sitting at an ancient picnic table digesting his steak and smoking his pipe...
...The mother was a Lee, scioness of Light Horse Harry Lee...
...PNP (Physicians Natural Products) P.O...
...Anyway, by then I am usually much calmer...
...Yes, Tommy is my little angel...
...I decided to chance it and went there...
...There will presumably also be immense opportunities in stocks that are involved in leisure time activities and some involved in geriatric care-although if the genome mapping makes humans healthier until SANTA LUCIA EYE DROPS The amazing Santa Lucia Eye preparation is made of two types of plants...
...I forgot about this...
...I bought a few candles...
...Oh...
...Tommy has gone offto lacrosse camp...
...This product can be used safely in anyone including infants and people with illnesses and it has no contraindications to its use...
...Occasionally, you get a helpful person who really wants to help the weary traveler...
...54 September 2000 _9 The American Spectator Tommy politely said, "May I ask something...
...These are only a slight hint of the coming effects of genetic research and success...
...He didn't take me out biking or to throw around the football or baseball except maybe once or twice...
...David and I are still in touch...
...It can be used when there are cataracts, glaucoma, pterygium or irritations...
...Where did that word 52 September 2000 _9 The American Spectator come from...
...No, I'll be throwing up in a minute...
...Did Clinton gut the finest armed forces in the world...
...It's been giving America a huge dose of amnesia about Clinton and his pals for years...
...She left in a huff...
...As far as I recall, he only once took me out to a movie with just us, long, long ago at the Playhouse on Eye Street, NW, where we saw an astoundingly fine double bill of Breaking the Sound Barrier and High Noon...
...So far, so good...
...But it's more than that...
...But it's important to start realizing right now that for individuals and for societies, the map is going to show some shoals and narrows, and the beginning of navigating them is to realize that life--especially a much longer life--is not only about "how" but about "how many" and "how much 7 Now I can go back to thinking about how to pay for the renovations on my house...
...No recollection...
...I have not thrown out one thing and I often find unopened various shirts and sweaters and even that high-end watch my sister and I gave him...
...I called Avis roadside assistance...
...Come to think of it, never mind...
...We left in our Mercury...
...Scull talked to me as ifI were a lucid adult from the time I was about 11...
...She went on with her gibberish...
...They had a maid who had been Mrs...
...This must have really given Clinton a thrill, to be able, God-like, to promise longer life...
...This includes the mapping of the human genome, this brave new phenomenon that is supposed to greatly lengthen human life...
...Great...
...Lots of talk about the success of mapping the human "genome" (what can that even mean...
...Yes, he did help me with my homework, and later when I became a trial lawyer, he thought of ingenious arguments for my hopeless cases...
...His wife is a leading figure in social welfare in Montgomery County...
...It's too cold...
...Then I thank God for Pat Kane, who brought my dog Mary Margaret into my life...
...But the greatest effect will be on the government's consolidated budget...
...All right...
...Gosh, it's humid out here on M Street...
...I feel exhausted...
...I had reserved a Buick Park Avenue or a Cadillac...
...It's Sunday in the summer in New York...
...It smells...
...Sunday W r ooden ships o11 the water, very flee...
...D i s c . The American Spectator . S ep t e m b e r 2 o o o 53 they die, convalescent care may be a dying industry, so to speak...
...That woman's mother had been a slave...
...This will help the traffic a lot...
...But she saved my life by giving me Mary, the perfect Weimaraner, and opening my life to Weimaraners and German shorthaired pointers...
...I think I'll just sit in my chair--actually lie in bed-and watch TV with my 12year-old son, and gladly take whatever gift he cares to give me and later maybe take my son for a walk...
...This whole subject of greatly increased longevity makes for deep spiritual and ethical concerns, which I will leave to Wlady, but it also requires serious thought about economics, fiscal policy, and finance...
...Then they wheeled me in and an anesthesiologist gave me a little shot of lidocaine in my elbow...
...As I got a bit older, I would chip in with my older sister, Rachel, and we would buy him an actual pipe, or maybe even two, also bought at the drug store...
...Plus, when needles get stuck in my veins, I start to throw up and faint...
...What ifI die here...
...Phone: 7o3-a43-3733, ext...
...She is indifferent to needles and pain generally and she is fearless about blood...
...I forgot my copy in L.A., so I must have it...
...Puerto Rican Pride Day...
...I just know it gives me the creeps...
...They will have many more years for their paid-in premiums to compound before they have to pay out what will seem to them like laughably small benefits...
...Scull gave me cookies and cake and Tru-Ade, food and drinks either forbidden or strictly rationed at home...
...After all, their tables of life expectancy have become obsolete, and their clients will live longer and collect annuity checks far longer...
...I think I must have pneumonia again...
...It's Sunday night...
...But I am just in bed moaning and groaning...
...Ten minutes of trying...
...Not only did I have a paralytically slow desk clerk, but my room reeked of cleaning fluid...
...We don't remember...
...Those lucky people are going to have money coming out their ears...
...That doesn't sound familiar...
...This could result in renewed interest in NASDAQ and other risky plays...
...Puerto Rican Pride Day...
...The driver met me at the gate and it's all just super except, what's this...
...Did he force his attorney general to protect his ass from many different prosecutions...
...He listened and respected what I had to say...
...First stop, McDonald's...
...What was I thinking...
...It can be used as part of the nutritional management of all types of eye conditions...
...Send to Address [isled above...
...Here I am, lying on a gurney in a doctor s office, awaiting an examination...
...What if, after tapPop was at his station and the little Stein ship of family sailed on forever...
...Small wonder everyone's edgy all the time here...
...Will the initial payment time have to be changed...
...As far as I recall, he would accept all of these while seated reading and then later watching the baseball or the basketball on TV...
...she asked...
...N 56 S ep t e m b e r 2 o o o ' The American Spectator...
...Was his wife ever involved in hiding files, making fake profits in commodities, and firing and prosecuting innocent travel office people...
...This is a sort of examination that we older people are supposed to get to make sure we don't have colo-rectaI cancer...
...When I contemplate how lonely my father was without my Morn and how lonely I am even when Alex works late, I understand why marriage, despite its many infuriating qualities, works...
...Thursday ~ am in Washington still, and feeling miserable...
...In just a moment," he said...
...There will also be immense effects on the general distribution of wealth...
...And my father is in eternity with my mother, ending his earthly visit on September 8,1999 , at the Washington Hospital Center...
...My sister loves it, but then she and I disagree about almost everything, even though she and I are very close...
...Eurasia is at war with Oceania...
...To me, that chair has taken on Rock of Gibraltar significance...
...And a flock of dogs-- Daisy, Pup-Dog, Duchess, others I have long since forgotten...
...Oh, yes, yes, yes...
...No, I think you already sprayed it with something," 1 said...
...Tin checking on your room...
...Anyway, Mr...
...That is because the drugs they gave me--Versed, Fentanyl, and some others, have a powerful amnesiac quality...
...Her basic thrust was that all of the other Cadillacs were already reserved...
...Again, it was the People's Drug Store, long merged out of existence, and it had every kind of tobacco I could imagine...
...I started to buy him shirts and sweaters and nay sister and I even once bought him a fairly high-end watch for Father's Day...
...I called Avis on my cell phone to tell them I was coming...
...Why don't you just give us the Cadillac and say all of these excuses to the next guy...
...And when you are in Washington, the blacks are far, far, far more helpful than the whites...
...Personal checks please allow 3 weeks for ddive~y...
...There's a nastiness in the air, a F.U...
...He was full of fun and merriment and told us ghost stories in the warm summer nights of endless fireflies and crickets...
...Nothing is immune from the law of cause and effect...
...Major, stupefying traffic everywhere I look...
...No, now...
...Unbearable...
...But I reserved one, too," I said...
...Ahnost as good as predicting the futa~re of the stock market...
...It was pret b, good...
...But Alex is the center of the universe...
...I hardly had a bad teacher until I went to law school...
...He would sit in his arm chair and thank me and promptly take some tobacco out and stuffit in his pipe to smoke it to show how much he liked it...
...What tastes better than McDonald's...
...At an airport...
...So would the government rake-off from the death tax, if it stays in effect...
...As the generation presently alive and young and first able to be affected bythe genome gets older and older, its wealth will compound to the point that it controls an ever greater share of the national wealth, which might have effects on wealth holding that cause social unrest...
...I think he threw away the pipes after his first heart attack...
...It is processed with distilled water and no preservatives for the specific use of eye washing...
...I opened the windows, lay in my bed and watched the lightning storm...
...I would usually wait until the day before, then walk over to the People's Drug Store in Four Corners, Maryland, and buy Douwe Egbert Amphora or another brand I had seen him smoke...
...My son came with me and we landed at Dulles airport...
...You want me to spray it with something...
...Clinton must have been thrilled to be able, God-like, to promise longer life...
...Who are you...
...I mean, literally sick...
...Then I thank all of my teachers from college and high school and elementary school and even some in junior high school...
...And I could hear the doctors telling them they were all fine...
...I wonder that I lived here so long in this godforsaken climate...
...His horizon for risk aversion will be far greater, so he will not need to be conservative in his investments for many years...
...I don't even want to tell you about the cab driver I had yesterday morning...
...They lived in a comfy old house up the street from me when I was young...
...A vastly fat woman wandered in and looked at me suspiciously...
...A lovely African-American woman named Betty...
...Avis Clerks Pride Day, perhaps...
...And then I'll just be there near him for as long as I can, at my station, letting him know that the schoolwork may be a drag, and he may hate me for limiting his video games, but Dad is at his post, and the little Stein family sails on intact...
...I asked my driver what that was all about...
...For example, if human beings really are going to live much longer, the companies that sell annuities are bankrupt right now...
...I was still really scared of that needle...
...Santa Barbara is fine as it is and probably the quality of government has more to do with what human beings do when they have power over other human beings than with the climate...
...The ordinaly investor will also have a longer time horizon for his equity plays...
...But I don't really fear that part...
...I own their apartment now, his and Mom's...
...That means he can afford to have many more March-April of zooo type episodes of drastic corrections work their way through the system and still come out in profits...
...I fear the needle they're going to use to put me out...
...Tuesday H mmm...
...The woman looked at him sweetly...
...I want it right now...
...Estates of more than the minimum needed to incur the tax will become commonplace, not as rare as they are now...
...Likewise, the political pressure to abolish the estate tax will become overwhe]ming as it hits more families...
...I often think about what heaven would be like: frankly, just like the way I live back in California with wifie and dogs and trouble-making but adorable son...
...I asked...
...They could not spare anyone to bring me a new car...
...It seemed to me, in fact, that he was pretty much always seated BENJAMIN J. STEIN is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Hollywood and MaIibu...
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...No other rooms available...
...Hot and humid with rain about to fall...
...There might be arguments (and there were) but Pop was at his station and the little Stein ship of family sailed on forever--or so it seemed...
...Friday W ell, well, well...
...Even there I had some great ones like Larry Simon and Bob Bork...
...That means every soul who has been out on Long Island is coming back in...
...Not good...
...When we got to Avis, they had a Mercury Grand Marquis for us...
...No, it was not the bridge of a cruiser or the cockpit of a fighter plane...
...R.G., Florida YES...
...And, now that I think of it, he did help me get every summer job I ever got in college and high school, and every good job I ever got in Washington until I went offto Hollywood...
...Mrs...
...I finally dragged myself out of bed and headed for a bookstore to get The Battle Cry of Freedom, a fine history of the Civil War by Professor McPherson of Princeton...
...But not much about cause and effect today...
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...The very best teacher I ever had was Lowell Harriss of Columbia, who made economics as easy as breathing in and out...
...She found me a Cadillac...
...It's being under siege to be here with this humidity...
...Was Clinton ever involved in killing innocent people in the Sudan to distract attention from Monica...
...Please leave...
...Is it the crowding...
...The father was a war hero, extremely progressive and far-seeing local Republican politician, descendant of a distinguished Philadelphia family...
...It's $8oo a night and it smells horrible...
...I think that's what Pop would want...
...Nevertheless, she would not budge...
...I have an extreme fear of needles...
...I can go visit him, but what can I give him on this, the first Father's Day I have ever spent without him...
...I'm not sure...
...What...
...You know, it would take a book to tell how much I loved the Sculls...
Vol. 33 • September 2000 • No. 7
