BEN STEIN'S DIARY
Stein, Benjamin J.
Hooked On Power BY BENJAMIN J. STEIN SATURDAY I love electricity. I have been thinking about how many of my favorite things in life are powered by electricity and I am amazed. Just for starters,...
...I got back to the hotel and had a nightcap (non-alcoholic) in a bar surrounded by men smoking huge cigars...
...It was my sister...
...I personally feel as if we are short of Jews, too, and I don't need any anti-Semites sending me letters about the issue...
...What would I do without electricity...
...Pay attention...
...Their behavior to each other is not trashy...
...I am telling you, I am not well in the head when it comes to this game...
...Joe went to serve in the Army in Korea and then, if memory serves, went to Harvard Law School...
...That's also simple...
...We need higher electricity prices...
...Then they took me off to Camp Log'n'Twig for the rest of the summer...
...Let's hope we can learn from him...
...SATURDAY Why have I said nothing yet about the Clinton sale of pardons...
...The model of life with them not going to an office, riding around in a car and doing business in a conversation and with a handshake stuck with me for the rest of my life...
...White trailer-park trash behavior's worst elements have now become part of the national ethos of what's acceptable...
...When the president and his family embody stone-solid trashy behavior, naturally it's going to spread...
...Even the smartest human being cannot win every game at anything...
...These are the representatives of the 105,000 Arizona college students at the University of Arizona (neighbor of Dirtbag's Bar), Arizona State, next to Lake Tempe, and Northern Arizona University...
...They were like innocent children in a fairy tale, even into their seventies...
...Time to rock and roll down the market path and get that wattage flowing to us electricity lovers...
...I mean, how did anyone ever live without it and now how can we ever go back to those hot, sticky, smelly days of fans and humidity...
...At the gate, I met a charming fellow who is a doctor in the campus clinic of a large university...
...A steel drum band played too loud...
...So, maybe I'll stay home...
...They both had what had killed my mother, congestive heart failure...
...But I dread losing a lot...
...She had three children, a girl, Berniece, and twin boys in 1928 named Joseph and Steven...
...I was not getting yelled at or mocked...
...But it was fine...
...If so, maybe it's time to home school the kids...
...There's a Gary Cooper type in the White House, everyone...
...I was part of the family of confident guys secure in their oyster in Monticello...
...We went to the movies (I saw A Face in the Crowd with Andy Griffith, a super movie about the power of media), and we hung out at the Monticello Diner just shooting the breeze...
...Apparently Eric Holder, the acting attorney general of the United States, long-time deputy AG, had never heard of Marc Rich, probably the most well-known financial fugitive of the postwar era and tops or close to tops on the Justice Department's most wanted fugitive list...
...Well, maybe I'm wrong...
...But even though I was talking to mutual fund people, they agreed with me...
...Berniece called me "peaches" because my skin was so smooth...
...When did Eminem's type replace Nicolas Cage's type, or for that matter, whatever happened to Gary Cooper...
...They were both pleasant, except when the mouse told me that she thought that men could be trained as if they were dogs...
...Can this be true...
...What a disgrace...
...I hope so...
...I am lucky to be in America...
...And of course there's TV, on which I watch myself...
...It's a nice place although my room is a bit old and funkadelic...
...Next thing I knew, there he was with my food...
...After all, there is no game if I always win...
...Then, for two weeks, they took me all around Sullivan County as they checked on their gas stations and real estate...
...These were men absolutely unafraid to fight and win, but also unafraid to care and sympathize with those who loved them...
...I talked to a lovely woman from the mutual fund group...
...They left me in the care of Joe and Steve in Monticello...
...But I found a Cuban-American bellboy and told him I'd give him twenty bucks for six slices of toast and orange juice to go with...
...I have to have food nearby to sleep...
...Their kindness had not changed at all...
...I keep winning game after game on my show, but when I lose, I throw a giant fit...
...The reason I'm mentioning this as I write on this nice, cold, wet Los Angeles evening is simple...
...They were the handsomest little dolls you ever saw in your life...
...I had known them my whole life and I can say I never saw a more blameless duo...
...This was in stark contrast to the life I saw at my own home...
...I think it's largely what made me want to live in Hollywood...
...If I thought I could take the pace, I would do nothing but speak...
...I never can remember which is the Wildcats and which is the Sun Devils but maybe I can ask someone who'll know...
...I am an addict, a screaming electricity addict, and so are all of us...
...So was my Uncle Hy...
...Read about Robert E. Lee or Dwight Eisenhower...
...Of course Hollywood will trash him, but maybe a message will get through anyway...
...The measure of a man is not how stupid and crude he can be, but how kind and caring he can be...
...Her favorite was a sister named Sophie, who was a startling beauty in her youth, just a movie-star beauty...
...There is much I could learn from him...
...I imagine the warmth dilating my coronary arteries and saving my life, which is how much I love my heating pad...
...Even Kasparov and Spassky lose...
...Price controls almost always lead to market distortions and it's happening again...
...Here's why...
...We saw it in the world of the Clintons and When did this thug behavior become the norm in male-female relationships...
...Wow, do I hate cigars...
...Nixon, now cousin Joe, all of the good dogs, MaryTrixie, Ginger, Martha, Puppy Wuppy Susan...
...What Steve, as blameless and as kind, as good and as loyal, will do without him is anyone's guess...
...When my parents departed from what was then Idlewild Airport, Joe and Steve took me to a camera shop called Peerless...
...No teasing, no making fun, no belittle-ment, just comradeship...
...I am not really sure how it happened, but I think it has to do with preposterous price controls on electricity that are well below the cost of production...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 81 be away from my boy and my wifie and my doggie...
...The heat seeps into my soul and makes me feel better...
...His wife is not trash...
...Thus passeth decency...
...Their absolute refusal to ever do anything to upset anyone around them had not changed...
...Steve was the more serious, but also the more concerned...
...I am an addict, a screaming electricity addict, and so are all of us...
...They bought me a little 35 mm camera, an Olympus, with a range finder, and lots of black and white film...
...But when I lose, I go to my room, huff and puff, scream and complain, and generally act nuts...
...FRIDAY I have to be committed to a mental hospital...
...However, what stuck with me was that they never said a mean word, not a sarcastic word, not a harsh word to each other or to anyone else...
...And then there are my stereo systems...
...One of my pals travels with her electric blanket because hotel blankets are too thin, and she's smart...
...Then there's my electric blanket...
...Oh, and one other fact...
...Joe was the beefier (not fat at all) of the two, with a readier smile...
...Then their glorious sister Berniece, at whose wedding I had been a ring bearer, died about 1983...
...Room service was closed...
...Plus, I am only human...
...The tragedy of mistreatment of black women by black men in sad circumstances has now become an ideal, a sick, miserable ideal for the whole society...
...Then, in 1956, when I was eleven, my parents went off to Europe for a few weeks...
...What delight...
...Just angelic choir boys...
...But I only have room for my little heating pad, and what a difference it makes to warm my chest when I feel as if I am about to have a heart attack...
...The world in which women are just thought of as "ho's" is now the whole world, at least for the young...
...I can recall vividly riding all around with them in their 1956 Dodge with push-button transmission...
...Joe and Steve came to my Bar Mitzvah, to my wedding, and I visited them on rare occasions...
...We went to swimming pools and putting greens and driving ranges...
...WEDNESDAY I am in Phoenix...
...I think I had the best time I had "Our founders built this company on a certain set of principles...
...It was mostly about some ethical lapses as big as Mount Everest that have been going on in the mutual fund industry...
...Somehow I also had a stash of cherry bombs and I would set them off, too...
...Joe and Steve lost their mother in 1958 and then their father years later...
...I cover myself with it every chance I get...
...I just wanted to tell you," she said in a sad voice, "that Joe died this morning...
...It's sort of like price controls on apartment rents in Manhattan...
...When did it start that men stopped showing care and love for the women in their lives...
...Was I angry or what...
...So we were offered a choice at a good national exemplar, a clean-living guy, and that's what we narrowly got...
...I never spent longer than a few hours with them again, but I treasured those two weeks with Joe and Steve as if they were solid gold...
...And I am so sad about all of the people who have died—my Mom and Pop, Mr...
...It's that simple...
...By the way, I believe this is exactly why George W. Bush was elected...
...Wow, it was good...
...But they were used to small town life in the community of Monticello, New York, in the Catskills.They came back to Monticello from wherever they had been practicing law, and worked in the local businesses of their father, my uncle Hy...
...I make life miserable for everyone when I lose, and my crew are like sad, worried school children when I lose...
...Big-busted women and men with cigars slouched past...
...Because it's as unsurprising as that fish swim or birds fly...
...Too much dying...
...said (I am paraphrasing here), "is that the boys do not have the decency to care at all about the girls...
...Life, even for the most privileged among us, is just too damned hard...
...I need my juice...
...Motivation is everything...
...As far as I can tell, the problem would be solved if people in California would just pay national market rates for electricity, but apparently the dopes in Sacramento are too pussy-footed to tell us that basic truth...
...But since they're all dead and nobody wrote anything down, looks like we're screwed...
...And if I may say so, why can McDonald's make them so much better than the other fast food places for the same money...
...Joe went up and down, seemed to be rallying, fell back, and now, this afternoon, a call from my dear sister...
...Hmmm, I don't think so...
...SUNDAY I am back in L.A...
...So we are going to get huge state subsidies for electricity, and this will just create an even bigger crisis down the road...
...Then off to the clean, neat Phoenix airport to catch a plane to Miami...
...Hmmm, there's that subject again...
...and all night), get more electricity produced, and solve the problem...
...My aunt, Joe and Steve's mother, was very ill with a variety of diseases...
...I guess that makes me not only an electricity addict but a food addict...
...A sweet breeze blew through the palms to my table...
...In fact, War...
...That will encourage people to conserve (and, yes, I go around the house turning off the electricity all day there are a lot of kids right in front of me because I am speaking at a college gathering of the Associated Students of Arizona...
...But also I don't want to "Hard to believe we've been together for twenty-five seasons...
...Let's have Charles Murray tell us...
...What happened to the model of genuine caring...
...My mother was born into a family with four children...
...I got here at 1:30 a.m...
...But I don't think so...
...They just use them and exploit them and the women are angry and scared about it...
...She said, in a weary voice, "I'm fine but Joe died this morning...
...Nixon and Mrs...
...I am amazed at how badly men treat women in today's world—and how music and TV shows and movies validate this sort of sick sado-masochistic drama...
...But if you could train them not to smoke cigars, I would thank you...
...It's a cool place...
...That's pitiful...
...Clean...
...Then Joe got sick when Steve got better...
...Well, the season will soon be over...
...It's raining...
...But the real problem," he behavior...
...Tonight my pal Garth and I went into South Beach and had a fine chicken dinner...
...I travel with it and I love it a lot...
...Lots of kids...
...They and their sister treated me like a king...
...Or maybe I will...
...I am not feeling well...
...I am also addicted to dogs...
...I begged him to come live with us and maybe he will...
...Speaking of which, a fine writer named Jonah Goldberg sent me a piece about the course selections at Brown...
...How are you...
...I don't want to wake up some morning with my electric blanket cold, my CD player not pumping that old Mozart 626 into my head, and my room hot and fetid without air conditioning (yes I use them all at once, but I don't mind paying for them...
...And then there's my computer and the telephone and the microwave where I cook my bacon (you can imagine why I'm worried about my coronary arteries...
...He said the problems of abortion and sexually transmitted diseases at his school were overwhelming...
...I can see them nodding...
...And then there's my heating pad...
...I tell myself it's a mistake, but I keep doing it anyway...
...When did uncaring, cruel behavior become the standard, with men just getting drunk and trying to get women drunk and have their way with them...
...Anyway, I am giving these kids my ideas about life and telling them to make as good a connection as they can with their parents while they can, and they eat it up...
...Steve went to Harvard Law School too...
...Those dopes in the state government have screwed things up so badly that we are running seriously short of juice...
...About fifty courses on the mistreatment of blacks and about one on the American Revolution and about two on the Civil Time to rock and roll down the market path and get that wattage flowing to us electricity lovers...
...Too much going away...
...Scull, my saintly adult friends from childhood, Mr...
...I have about twenty of them scattered around my life, well, maybe ten, and I could not live without music...
...Not Jews, juice...
...They were young princes in Sullivan County, New York, with their gas stations and fuel oil business...
...The restaurant, a Fish Called Avalon, was right on Ocean Avenue...
...She was with her girlfriend, a woman who looked like a tiny little mouse...
...And the phone rang...
...82 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 Time passed...
...Where did this thug behavior come from...
...I gave a speech this morning about various aspects of finance and life...
...I think both the GOP and Gray Davis are implicated here, but let's have bygones be bygones...
...If there is a heaven, if you get there by the merit of kindness and foregoing even the slightest hurt to your fellow man, Joe Wahrhaftig is there in glory...
...ever had in my life until then...
...We talked endlessly about the stock market...
...So, now let me tell you about my cousin Joe, who is about as fine a man as I have ever known, and who died this morning after five months in agony in the hospital...
...I love speaking...
...I am like a big spoiled baby on my show...
...Just think what kind of face you want looking down at you when you are going in for cardiac surgery and you get my point...
...They grew up...
...What does McDonald's do to make them so darned good...
...I mean, if a college co-ed sees the way the president treats women, how can she be surprised if that is the way boys at her school treat her...
...Every time I visited them they had a treat of some kind for me: a transistor radio in the days when they were expensive (just a loan but how I loved it with its leather case), and decks of cards with the Gulf Oil logo on them...
...At that time, Monticello was the hub of many huge and elegant resorts, mostly for Jewish people coming up from New York to escape the heat...
...I finished speaking, signed about 150 autographs, and then my host, a fine young fellow named Steven, drove me about fifty miles to get a McDonald's cheeseburger...
...Sad for everyone...
...But she was also endlessly kind to me...
...And then she sees it glorified in videos, and movies, and she begins to think it's all she deserves, and the men think if Clinton got away with it, so can we...
...That's why...
...I wonder if their professors ever tell them that just as important as black history month and learning the history of Aztec women is learning to love their parents and their brothers and sisters...
...A really, really lot...
...Spread out...
...I want a study funded by the AEI...
...And as for losing, well, I am lucky to be alive...
...He told me he was pro-life but was not allowed to talk about it on pain of 80 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR ¦ April 2001 social and professional ostracism...
...This brought me to one of my favorite subjects...
...At Brown, of all places, which used to be ground zero for recruiting CIA agents...
...I usually lose when I am tired and upset, and I am very tired and very upset...
...I was in the company of two cool, debonair, well-regarded men constantly for two weeks and they treated me like a brother...
...I think it's the worst of black ghetto behavior glorified instead of rejected...
...Then Monticello declined dramatically as the resort business changed when people got air conditioning in their homes and apartments...
...He is not trash...
...and Mrs...
...When did Eminem's type replace Nicolas Cage's type, or for that matter, whatever happened to Gary Cooper...
...Just for starters, take air-conditioning, which produces those cool negative ions that I could BEN STEIN'S DIARY not live without...
...I asked...
...I am not proud of the way I act when I lose, and maybe it's not even losing because I have the show win or lose, at least so far...
...It's only in its blatancy that it's new...
...By the way, it's not only black bad we're seeing it still...
...Steve got quite sick about a year ago with heart problems...
...And I am not even remotely by any stretch of the imagination in that world...
...When did thug behavior become the norm in male-female relationships...
...WEDNESDAY Now I am in Miami, Florida, at a hotel called the Doral Golf Course Resort...
Vol. 34 • April 2001 • No. 3
