Ben Stein's Diary
SUNDAY Beverly Hills S uccess," said John E Kennedy~or whoever wrote it for him, maybe Richard Goodwin~ "has a hundred fathers. Failure is an orphan." I think he said it about the...
...If you start feeling grateful, that means you're weak, so forget it...
...I think he said it about the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs...
...Boo-hoo...
...And it is a longer version of a story about two Jewish producers who scheme to defraud women of their money by producing a bogus Broadway musical about the most horrific subject they can think of~ an encomium to Hider and Nazism...
...If I feel old and fat, I need only look at the engine of this beautymmuscular and squat and irresistible...
...And if it doesn't go right, that's someone else's problem...
...Start down the road to envy and you won't come back.You'll just get more and more envious until you disappear right up your own exhaust...
...Seclude yourself and plan to be bigger than Microsoft...
...In any bookstore there will be dozens of tides on how to succeed, many with the same advice only different typeface...
...Jews singing, "Heil Hitler" and making Jews thieves, and Hitler a nice guy...
...7. Envy everyone.That neighbor has a better lawn.The other neighbor has a better car...
...8. Be a perfectionist...
...He'll change.Just keep nagging and nagging and you'll surely get it done...
...When I am in it, if I am restless, I press a button and a phone connects me without dialing to anyone in the nation--maybe in the whole world: I haven't tried that yet...
...Plus, some weird urge in you tells you to knuckle under and treat the people who are bad to you really well.Just stick with truckling to them, and all will be well...
...Don't just do it well enough to get by" torture yourself until it's perfect, and torture everyone around you, too...
...Don't be satisfied with yourself or anyone else unless what you do is perfect (if this conflicts with "no responsibility" above, blame the imperfections on someone else...
...Have a relationship with someone with a lot of problems and believe in your heart that you can change them.Yes, you will hear over and over that people can't be changed...
...Stay up as long as you want...
...It is ready at a moment's notice to take me anywhere I want to go...
...Oddly enough, I have not heard of many of these authors...
...Hey, I'm going to write a book of these...
...The boss who's a nasty, unfeeling creep, year in and year out...
...1. Don't learn any useful skills.Just coast by on your wits and good looks.Avoid getting any education.You'll get by somehow...
...I am sure there are other ways to ruin your life--and those around youII!--but these are a good start--and damned good ways to stay a long way away from.Take them to heart and if you see yourself doing them, pause, laugh and do something else...
...It can lift great weights, go long distances without a murmur, even jump (small) spaces.This car is not only my best friend, it's a better version of me: the me I always wanted to be...
...What if they don't bow low enough?There's plenty to moan about...
...My father-in-law, the brave Col...
...Why should you...
...4. Never accept any responsibility for anything going wrong...
...The story has a strutting, cheerful, loveable Fuhrer, goose-stepping curies in a chorus line, and, again, two Jewish swindlers as the main characters...
...I called my son...
...Just wait.Tomorrow, he'll be a pussycat...
...It only demands an occasional bath of gasoline...
...11.Treat the people who are good to you badly They're your doormats.They have nothing to say to you that's worth hearing.They're your servants...
...And the world is a crappy place anyway, right...
...A relative who was there was supposed to see if there was any damage to my apartment at The Watergate, but I haven't heard from her yet, and I am worried...
...There is something wrong with everything if you look closely enough, and by God, you'll find it first and complain about it loudest...
...Now, I know very well that the standard answer to this is that "only" by making him funny can Hider be attacked and defeated...
...A couple of miles from the house we used to rent in Sandpoint, Idaho, was a white supremacist church...
...My Caddy...
...Don't just be happy spending an afternoon with your kids...
...In hot weather, I press a button and the inside of the car is cool and dry...
...Sick, put upon, nobody helps me, nobody appreciates me...
...I can listen to CDs...
...Don't spare the criticism either.You're the important one, and people have to pay attention to what you say...
...People like to be treated meanly, and it'll help you in the long run...
...Suppose the play also had a loveable, even adorable Hitler character, and made Nazism seem like a good thing...
...I don't think so...
...It's based on the throwaway Mel Brooks movie that I never could stand...
...This is particularly strange, since their books are such a mine of good advice...
...Sure, she's been this way for fifteen years, but you can fix it with a few choice words when they occur to you...
...As I am watching, there are men and women in the cast, some I know, mostly Jewish, singing with great gusto, "Heil Hitler...
...I wonder if it could be any more distressing that Jews are doing this cosmetic work on the worst enemy the Jewish people have ever had...
...All of it is gathered from observation of men and women (and children) who have done it in spades...
...Maybe if you look at it through the right lens, Hitlerism really is funny...
...Sure, you have great cars and air conditioning and a comfortable place to live, but there's still lots to be angry about.What about today's music...
...I think it was called something like Church of the White American or something vaguely like that...
...And I own it, just as surely as I own this old, sagging body...
...It is never in a bad mood...
...Treat the people who are bad to you well.They'll soon change and start being really, really good to you...
...Hey, come to think of it, there's almost everything to envy and almost nada to be happy about...
...And don't give up trying until you actually do make that change...
...2. Don't learn self-discipline...
...That one's kids got into Harvard.That one's wife has a better figure.That one's husband has a better job than yours...
...Don't people in the movies...
...Now, tonight, for example, on my local PBS station, KCET, they are showing a special about the making of the sound track for The Producers, a gigantic hit Broadway musical comedy...
...Somehow I doubt it...
...I called my wife, who was in town, still sleeping off a party she had been to the night before...
...But it certainly applies to "How To" literature...
...He saw men blown to bits by Nazi shell fire.When an SS unit overran a forward position of his regiment, he could see with binoculars the SS shooting the Americans after they had already surrendered...
...And they'll always be good to you because they sense you are permanently superior to them...and they're right.They have no feelings.Just use them and abuse them and toss them away when you feel like it.They'll always be more of them...
...Sure, you live in the richest, most free, most beautiful country in the world...
...9. Have enormous, unattainable goals...
...Of course, people in New York would be screaming and rightly so at the thoughtless racism and contempt of the people who could make such an evil message come alive on the stage...
...The small enjoyments of life are far too trivial for you...
...My dog, my other best friend, lies on the 94 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 SEPTEMBER/OCToBER 2001...
...I felt awful...
...Your morn didn't raise you to get yelled at...
...Maybe it's relief that Hitler is slain and we can laugh about it now, but is it ever going to be funny...
...Get it straight...
...Don't make yourself work when you'd rather play...
...That wife who never gets out of bed until noon and then spends the whole day spending your money and never does anything for the kids...
...you get it...
...But that doesn't apply to you!Yes, you, alone in history, will be the very first human being ever known to change anyone else.You can do it where everyone else fails...
...Maybe at our synagogue's next (pitifully poorly attended)Yore Hashoah service, memorializing the victims of the Holocaust, we would have our fine cantor and choir sing, "Springtime for Hider and Germany" Maybe the sad old people with tattoos on their arms in the congregation would think it was funny...
...Yet, as any parent knows, you can learn just as much by studying the people who fail as those who succeed...
...It's been fascinating to me to observe that while successful folks have all different routes to triumph (some as simple as luck and inheritance), failures have a lot in common...
...Another friend called to borrow money...
...Good work, but work, nonetheless when I felt tired.A neighbor's child was making an incredible racket with a tricycle...
...3. Assume that you are the center of the universe, the only one who matters in any situation.Why bother listening to anyone else's story?You're the dude who counts, right...
...So what if after a while no one wants to talk to you?You just take your marbles and go home...
...So, offered to you with the sure knowledge that you will not see in these tidbits anything of yourself or anyone you know (yeah, right), herewith some guidance on "How To Ruin Your Life...
...Generally, the show makes light of Hitler and Nazism and implies they were somehow cute...
...But here it is on PBS, and there it is at the Tony's and there it is on Broadway...
...It's just around the corner.That husband who drinks and lies and wastes your money?Yes...
...People have got to know the terrible crimes sacrilegiously being waged upon you.You deserve it, whatever it is...
...His regiment was so enraged that they charged fortified positions and routed the SS...
...People really do change---but only for you...
...Hang around unlucky, failed people 92 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 SEPTEMBER/OCToBER 2OO...
...Why hear anyone else's troubles?Your problems are the ones that make the difference...
...Eat anything you want...
...Or, instead of simply enjoying an afternoon breeze, read in the financial magazines about people who have made billions starting with selling T-shirts from the back of their car.Then make plans to be even bigger than they are and richer, and completely avoid enjoying the loveliness of the moment.You're a world beater, a conqueror...
...Still, there are a lot of these books, so they must do some good for someone (maybe for the authors).They teach how to succeed, and that's a lot...
...In fact, this car is part of me and it works great, like a world champion athlete...
...13...
...My car...
...Ever...
...This is a surefire guarantee of misery and paralysis and ever more imperfection...
...On a moment's thought, no...
...And if you can avoid the ways and means that losers take to wreck their lives, you won't necessarily be a huge success, but you will avoid dismal failure-at least the self-inflicted sort...
...In cool weather (rare here) I press a few buttons and my seat warms up miraculously and my the car is suffused with warm, dry air...
...Dale Denman, fought against the SS hand-to-hand in France and Germany and Czechoslovakia...
...Well, I am probably being too harsh...
...Get up whenever you feel like it...
...and "Springtime for Hitler and Germany...
...If I want to hear music, I have dozens of stations, plus some weird thing I don't quite understand that gets music from satellites up in space...
...I wonder what they think about prancing curies shouting "Heil Hitler...
...Only my dog cares about me, and she's busy chasing lizards.But wait.As I passed by my garage, I saw something that stirred my soul...
...Suppose, I thought to my silly stupid self, that said church had, about ten years ago, put on a play at a local auditorium that featured as its main themes, two scheming, soulless, self-promoting Jews who think that taking money from innocent elderly ladies is a good thing...
...There had been a titanic rainstorm in Washington...
...12...
...And the air was unnaturally humid...
...10...
...One thing I agree with my sister about...
...What about other people who don't bow down to you...
...What about the environment...
...But then how explain the phenomenon of The Producers?How explain its worship in NewYork and nationwide...
...And then suppose that a network TV news person got hold of that story...
...Don't let gratitude even enter your mind...
...This, I am told, is what Mel Brooks says...
...It had armed guards and swastikas and portraits of Hitler...
...To this, an answer comes to mind...
...I awakened out at my house in Malibu, slightly dazed from a stomachache...
...SATURDAY am endlessly fascinated by my fellow Jews...
...My gleaming new car...
...And when an SS officer was wounded and taken before a Jewish army doctor, the SS man spat in the doctor's face...
...In a word, I was unhappy...
...What is there to be grateful for...
...Maybe she has bad news, and she doesn't want to scare me...
...And a pleasant female voice thanks me for making the call and says, politely, "good-bye...
...5. Always be the caustic critic...
...My best pal, A1 Burton, called and had some work for me to do...
...In fact, don't work at all if you don't feel like it.You're a big loveable baby, and everyone will always adore you for it, even when you're a middle-aged fella or gal...
...6. Never be grateful...
...He was too busy playing his online games to talk to me...
...I guess it's because I am Jewish, but I just find Jews amazing...
...Where you want to eat, where you want to go on vacation, what neighborhood you want-that's all that matters...
...It's always someone else's fault or else it's just bad luck.You didn't mean to do it wrong...
...They exist for you to trample upon...
...Human character may be totally immutable to most people---but not to you...
...If I feel slow and weak, all I have to do is press my foot ever so slightly on the accelerator, and the car goes a hundred miles an hour uphill...
...SUNDAY Malibu l had a great breakthrough today...
...I think this is how the Nazis and Hitler were beaten and not by a play or a movie, and I think this is the essence of what Hider and the Nazis were and it doesn't strike me as funny...
...Well, the steering makes a weird sound, but only sometimes...
...In fact, I am at the Brentano's in the Beverly Center looking at shelves of them, by one famous and then sometimes obscure writer a~er another...
...I wonder what men and women who were in death camps or slave labor factories think about"Springtime for Hitler...
...SUNDAY Beverly Hills S uccess," said John E Kennedy~or whoever wrote it for him, maybe Richard Goodwin~ "has a hundred fathers...
...I can hear The Weather Channel...
Vol. 34 • September 2001 • No. 7
