BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Stock Shock
Stein, Benjamin J.
Stock Shock BY BENJAMIN J. STEIN TUESDAY This has been a long day. I got up early to feed the dogs and kitties. (Why does cat food smell so horrible, by the way?) I looked in the mirror. My eyes...
...If we went to the Press Club and all of our friends were not there and had never existed, we would be lonely...
...As long as we stay out of war and Depression, daily life is not much affected by the government...
...Amazingly, when I awakened again three hours later, I felt much better...
...That's putting it mildly...
...We would have less regulation...
...It is hauntingly solid in appearance when you consider it's made to last three days...
...If he does not start to develop far better habits of self-discipline, what will he do to support himself...
...I took antibiotics, antivirals, echinacea, compazine, aspirin, rellenza, everything...
...The real answer is Corsica...
...The whole thing is a big issue these days, because some folks are saying that colleges should no longer require the SATs or even look at them...
...And for the ladies, how about reopening Garfinckel's at 14th and F? Or was it 14th and G? The best department store in D.C., gone but not forgotten...
...I felt sad, but I also felt glorious...
...This, I thought, explains plenty about why women pose nude in magazines, but my amateur psychology is probably worthless...
...To think that our perfect Constitution is still in force, still guarding every one of us from the richest and most powerful to the most humble-that's spectacular...
...Anyway, for the past several years now, I have been feeling a$luent.That's a good neighborhood...
...No," she said...
...I think that Jews live better here than we have ever lived at any time in the history of the Jewish people...
...A moment later, I asked her if her mother were still living and what her occupation was...
...Nahh...
...If we want those we love to be happy, if we want the poor to be fed and the homeless to be sheltered and diseases cured and the lonely given company, we have to do it...
...I cannot thank the God of all Creation enough for allowing me to earn my living the way I do...
...I never dreamed that I would be an heir...
...Even if the entire Bush legislative program passed, life would not change very much for most Americans...
...On the other hand, I do have some left and I did not lose anywhere near as much as many pals...
...to feed the dogs and cats...
...It was amazing...
...Everyone around me worked hard...
...I remember saying that to him...
...On a piece of paper...
...Of course, there is Geraldo, who seems to like controversy for its own sake, but his type is rare...
...We live mostly through our happiness-and sometimes unhappiness with those we love...
...A Democrat first said these words to me, but they're just as true as ifAbraham Lincoln had said them: "Here on earth, God's work must truly be our own...
...This is a uniquely powerful achievement for any nation, and to have done it in a generation and a half is stunning...
...It's a lot...
...I'll just turn on CNBC and squint at the board for an instant ...Uhhh, not good...
...One had me against three surfers...
...It was beautiful, haunting, eerily perfect...
...A homeless colony (maybe an oxymoron...
...They also did not know a whole lot of answers, which was great...
...And Nancy looks fetching in her bathing suit...
...92 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001...
...I really don't know what her occupation is," she said...
...We just took in, like air or water, the certainty that we would earn our bread by the sweat of our brow What luck...
...President Bush can make a small difference here by setting a The whole establishment of government and media can feel good about the fantastic achievements of our era, or at least my era, about what is still the big issue of American life...
...As far as I can see, the courage and skill needed to be a surfer is far more valuable than the ability to answer questions on a game show Then we did a "Steinvivor" satire of "Survivor"The sun had set...
...As a result, we learned work and at least a small measure of selfrestraint...
...It's at times like this that I recall my own childhood back in leafy green Silver Spring...
...For the past several years now, I have been feeling affluent...
...I felt so sick I thought for sure I would die before noon...
...But I am scared to death about it...
...I would go into that a bit, and then I would say that this is earthly paradise here in America, but to have paradise in this nation, we occasionally have to act like angels...
...So, hah, how bad can it be...
...After all, Washington is the nation's capital...
...In the final round, the producers had the three Playmates gather around me and stroke my ear as I tried to listen to and answer the questions...
...We have to make God's blessings come true for those we love by doing God's work...
...When I wore it out of my trailer and onto the boardwalk, passersby looked at me as if I really were a homeless man...
...I like the SATs because I think they help admissions officers standardize qualifications in a world where high schools have many different standards for how they grade and where grade inflation is a joke...
...I feel blessed...
...Of all the people whose names my mother would throw up at me because they studied harder, Jerry Akman, Stanley Sitnick, Jeff Burt, how many of them get to earn a living like this...
...Today's first show had yours truly versus three Playboy centerfolds, including the current one, Miss April...
...He told me his father had died when he was very young...
...Indeed, the whole establishment of government and media can feel good about the fantastic achievements of our era, or at least my era, about what is still the big issue of American life...
...Maybe not...
...I could afford it for a long time without any danger of being in the neighborhood of poverty," I said...
...Thus I could and did earn my living from an early stage...
...When I think that in my youth, Washington, D.C., the nation's capital, was rigidly segregated, with segregated advertisements in the Washington Post and the Star, with segregated schools in D.C...
...Then I want to say, but seriously folks, it's a big myth that the people who work at the White House are conspirators or the tools of the special interests or morons or spongers...
...Nothing at all complex...
...I am sure some Ph.D...
...Among the white walls, the gleaming maple veneer floors, the large windows, the yellow overstuffed couch, and the modestly stuffed Puppy Wuppy, I am hard at work on my speech for Mr...
...Dressed and off to the set on Venice Beach...
...Then she added brightly, "But I have a step-mom who's really nice...
...Then we played the final round and had more torches...
...They were sadly uneducated...
...And yuck...
...Had I lost money...
...Then a few weeks ago I started to study my stock brokerage reports...
...I mean, what is to happen to him...
...They were also all razor thin, with immense breasts...
...Anyway, we did a few shows...
...Mostly, overwhelmingly, they are hardworking, dedicated, resourceful men and women who truly work to serve the nation...
...has made a little shelter with a giant American flag right behind our set, but the camera apparently does not pick it up...
...Make back a little of that money...
...Then, after supper, up the stairs to my home office, the fabulous "Garage Mahal," above where my car sleeps...
...Now I have to get up and stir...
...I told him that "trash talk" is not allowed, and he apologized...
...The stock market crash has put that idea into question...
...So, you see, this is what I have been working on...
...Like my hero, RN, they just got in deeper and deeper with their lies...
...When I think how many dollars I have to earn to save even one dollar, my heart just breaks as I see them drifting away by the hundreds of thousands...
...People think someone...
...We all ate cheerily together until the subject of my son's impossibly bad study habits came up...
...and all its suburbs, with whiteonly drinking fountains within a stone's throw of Georgetown, it is hard to believe what has happened...
...We have a great super set made by Jimmy Cuomo, who did my set at the studio, and we have a fine audience plus many tourists who stop by...
...The sunset was perfect...
...Good," said my Pop, "because that's a neighborhood you never want to be in...
...I thanked the crew and bought them drinks, sat in a bar drinking 7-Up and watching the set get struck...
...They were all pretty and cheerful...
...That's a good way to go to sleep...
...After I beat him, he started to cry and his lip twitched with upset...
...They want to attract viewers, tell interesting stories, inform people, maybe excite them, and then come home to a feeling that they've done a good job...
...Bush and wish them well as exemplars for my 13-year-old son, and for all of the nation's children...
...Luckily, I never went on margin (whew), and I never bought stocks with credit cards, as some did...
...Life is personal, not political, and what we have to do to make life good for ourselves is mostly to make it good for others...
...Really...
...For this nation of the Constitution to be our nation-that is glory beyond luck...
...I think they left D.C...
...But I got to work for it in God's gift, America, and that made all of the difference...
...Indeed, so is the entire nation...
...Why shouldn't the people have a decent sports collection in their capital...
...The breeze, the palm trees (why are they so evocative...
...What is to become of him...
...There may be some bad apples, but overwhelmingly, those people you see coming in and out of the OEOB and the West Wing want the best for their country and try their damnedest to do right by the nation they honor...
...What happened to him...
...Today we are doing a show that has me wearing long matted hair and a beard like Tom Hanks in Castaway...
...How this can possibly be true I cannot even start to imagine...
...But mostly we have to do it-make our lives work-ourselves...
...Bush and the Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner...
...My Mom left me when I was one year I'm crazy when I tell them, truthfully, that Brigitte is my everything, but it's true...
...In the next show, I played against a guy who proudly claimed that he had gotten a perfect score on the aptitude section of the SATs...
...He did some bad things and wound up in jail," she said sadly...
...around 1960...
...It belongs to all the people...
...I plan to give the money I win to Friends of Animals and to National Right to Life...
...I felt bad for beating him, but trash talk is not allowed...
...The ink on the paper cannot see what color the test taker is...
...Should I turn on the TV and see the wreckage of my dreams...
...There will be exceptions, like Bill and Hillary, but even they mostly wanted to do right...
...For National Public Radio, this is Linda Fenderson with the Hillary Report...
...It would mean, "Day of America," and it would be a commemoration of the greatest event in human history-the creation of this glorious America...
...But daily life would not really be altered much...
...When I was a boy, we had the Senators, playing in tiny little Griffith Park...
...candidate has an argument about it, though...
...It's amazing...
...In any event, this creep with the supposedly perfect SATs said to me, as if to break my spirit, "Stein, you're going down...
...It is scaring me...
...I worry about it constantly...
...I didn't want to tell them that the floppy ears of my Brigitte Bar-Dog are far more sensual than the fingers of a woman who is being paid to appear on a TV show...
...Home to make a roast of beef for my wifie and my little boy...
...This morning I awoke at 6 a.m...
...Let's see what he can do with $1.6 trillion behind him...
...How sad it will be when the final set is struck for me...
...While he's at it, how about some few billions, hardly even worth mentioning, to buy Shaq and Kobe for the Wizards...
...There were no slackers except maybe Carl Bernstein, and he made up for it later in life...
...Hmmm...
...Maybe I should spend a day like that in Santa Monica and see how I was treated...
...Two of the surfers had no clue...
...Maybe not...
...We just took in, like air or water, the certainty that we would earn our bread by the sweat of our brow...
...And there is the special case of CNBC, which had a big role in bringing on the stock market crash...
...I have high hopes for Mr...
...old...
...My father asked me if I could afford it...
...Do some honest work...
...Then I want to talk about how a few years ago, in the glory days when my Pop was alive, I said to him that there should be a new Jewish holiday to be called Yom Ha'America...
...I asked the lovely Playmate who got to the final round if she had a boyfriend...
...Better to imagine the worst...
...None were as pretty as my wife, and not even in a league with my dog, Brigitte...
...Their problem came because when they did not do right, they could not admit it...
...Of course, they were also corrupt, but love of money is a common failing...
...For this, as well, both the government and the media are to be congratulated...
...TUESDAY But then there is the stock market.Yes, the stock market...
...Roasts, fish, very simple chicken...
...None of them was as pretty as my wife, and not even in a league with my dog, Brigitte...
...On the other hand, it's better than working in those fiberboard-walled offices at the FTC, with derelicts urinating on the wall of the building, and supercilious, officious, silly bosses who did not really deserve to have authority over an ant, let alone humans...
...Wow, did I look dreadful...
...I had better turn it off and go under the covers right now I did that and felt Brigitte's warm fur, and I felt better...
...I feel worried about the stock market, but I do know I can earn my living as long as I have a modicum of health...
...We had a ceremony and a procession and a council to kick the lowscoring player off the island...
...I won't be selfish about it though...
...Like the people at the White House, the correspondents want to do a creditable job for the nation they honor, and if they can-if they can really let the viewer know something important about his or her life-they can feel pride about it with every heartbeat...
...Anyway, I bought the roast at one of my favorite stores, Bristol Farms, and made it...
...It was sad...
...Then I want to say the same is true of the press.Yes, there are a few bad actors who really do try to stir the pot and upset decent people with falsehoods...
...Behind the set is a broad beach, and then the mighty ocean...
...the sand, the ocean's pounding surf, the lights, the fires, the cameras...
...One question was, "What island off the coast of France was annexed by France in 1796...
...90 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 them for the Redskins...
...So back to the TV Uh-oh...
...It could have been worse, but it was not good...
...Wow Had I lost money...
...I used to...
...My wife always says I worked for it, and I did...
...They see it as a calling and a duty like the priesthood or military service...
...I only have a few points I want to make: First, a good use of the federal surplus, if it materializes, would be to buy a new major league baseball team for Washington, D.C...
...So much of what I think seems blindingly obvious to me, but might not seem so at all to others...
...They work very long hours, for low pay, and they do it, yes, out of ambition, but largely out of ambition to do right...
...I fed myself and went off to do my game show...
...The calm pleasure I get from just looking into her eyes exceeds by far any store-bought thrill from the plastic world of Hollywood, even though Hollywood is my world...
...But still it hurts like crazy...
...If we did not see our kids' curly locks bent over the computer keyboard, we would be devastated...
...Even worse...
...It looks amazingly real...
...Then this would lead into my talking about an interesting little observation...
...There I sat at my tidy little oak dining table in Malibu reading the terrible news, account by account...
...Race...
...There is just nothing I have ever done to deserve such a fabulous gift from God...
...And maybe The Freak and Mr...
...I mean, it's a test...
...Race...
...My son is a very long way-even for a 13-year-oldfrom having any little work skills...
...We are taping this week at the corner of Rose and Ocean Walk in Venice, just south of Santa Monica...
...Everyone marveled that I wasn't very excited about getting touched by Playmates...
...Bush has shown his genius at getting professional baseball teams into cities...
...Then more work, and then a little walk along the beach with my Brigitte, who comes to the set with me...
...How can it discriminate against Today's show had yours truly versus three Playboy centerfolds-all razor thin, with immense breasts...
...But I took an armada of meds, and my two favorite foods, Kraft Cheese Singles and English muffins...
...But mostly, correspondents and writers and their producers just want to get the job done...
...We had immense torches and fire pits everywhere...
...However, some people believe they discriminate against blacks...
...And for families of all kinds, maybe re-start Woodward & Lothrop, a truly great mid-price chain of department stores...
...The weather was balmy...
...Bush and I salute him and Mrs...
...I once thought I would be able to provide comfortably for him upon my demise...
...Then a few weeks ago I started to study my stock brokerage reports...
...America has dismantled legal racial segregation and seen the black minority, once despised and powerless, become the fulcrum of political power in America...
...Years ago, I was considering buying an expensive piece of property I did not really need...
...I complimented him on his excellent THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 89 game and he looked better...
...Then the placid scene disintegrated into argument and Tommy stalked off to his room...
...In a way it's like mocking the people who really are poor and homeless...
...It simply did not occur to me as anything other than a plot of a movie or a book...
...All like that great beach scene in Fellini's 8-1 /2...
...It's really very touching, but neither of them will eat unless I cook for them.You might think it strange, but I like to cook as long as what I make is totally simple...
...My eyes were clear...
...I asked...
...One guessed Greece...
...We would have slightly lower taxes...
...And high tech was far less than half of my stocks...
...Bums and tourists walk by constantly and stare, but the guards shoo them away...
...But how deeply I thank God for the life He has given me...
...I have worked like a madman all of my adult life, always with at least two jobs at once, and sometimes more...
...My eyes were totally blood BEN STEIN'S DIARY shot and exhausted looking...
...Still, answering geography questions is a small part of life...
...Soon I was back asleep...
...That's a good neighborhood...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR May 2001 91 moral tone that makes life easier for families and allows our families to mesh with society instead of having to hide from a sick society...
...Then the season on the beach was over...
...Far more than any law or bill, how the nation's chief illustrates ethical principles makes him valuable to the nation, at least at this stage of our national life...
...With his usual insight, my father said, "Not only Jews, but each and every racial, ethnic, religious, and sex group has it better here than they did anywhere else on earth...
...Maybe they will come, and certainly I lecture him about the subject constantly...
...So what will he do with his habitual sloth when the world requires that he work and compete with young men and women who do have good study habits and work habits...
...However, if we woke up one morning and our wives or husbands were not there, our lives would be miserable...
...Or is it that old canard about how the questions are biased against blacks because they ask about white things like the speed of sailboats, as if that were not a math question, as if it were a question that only a member of a yacht club could answer...
...Better to just lie in bed and sweat and feel terror...
...The set looks like a castle moved to a beach...
...I don't want to be poor...
...Warner and a few like There were no slackers except maybe Carl Bernstein...
Vol. 34 • May 2001 • No. 4
