Ben Stein's Diary
BEN STEIN'S DIARY I stood behind a starlet named "Logan,'' new to town, shining bright, Impossibly tall, impossibly thin, condent and deeply, richly tan, lovely and utterly...
...More autograph seeking.The cashier, a lovely woman named Katrina, told me she was surprised that a "TV star like you...
...Denman in my life, and all Americans are blessed to have had this rugged, hand-some fellow, still amazingly handsome at 80, in our Army...
...And I would not have handled myself anywhere near as well...
...I bought a heaping shopping cart full of stuff undershirts, batteries, food, toiletries, and headed to the cash register...
...shops atWal-Mart...
...His grades are improving and his whole attitude at school is fabulously better...
...On a lonely road in a broken car late at night in bitter cold is not where I want to be...
...We all tumbled into our beds and slept...
...The snow was truly falling like special effects in a movie...
...China sells terrorists states arms.And on college campuses, it is "cool" to support terrorists.Yes, in America...
...Then they go on TV with broad smiles.They are not the sulking, guilty faced SS men in the dock at Nuremberg.They are happy, exulting in the blood of the innocents...
...They did not allow cameras...
...No photos of mommy or me around but lots of his cats and his dog, Susie...
...This is what life is about...
...Even the Nazis did their killing in secret, in back lots, in hidden-away concentration camps and death chambers...
...Many of the kids asked for autographs, and I enthusiastically obliged.As I told the autograph seekers, I am in trouble when no one asks...
...where we would go as children with our father to buy deli on Sunday mornings and what happens when one tries to capture feelings of the past...
...I flew in last night and rendezvoused with my wife and my nephew, Matt, at the fabulous Capitol Hotel in Little Rock...
...Again, the weather is bitterly cold and the wind whistles all around my room.Wow, it is s000 cold...
...They are the same people who killed Danny Pearl solely because he was a Jew.These are worse than Nazis...
...They are Nazis without any embarrassment about it...
...In the days long past, from Sligo Creek, near Mrs...
...this sh***y little country...
...The drive was spectacular: forests, snow, lakes, old lovely frame houses...
...I won't bore you with every last detail of my visit with my son...
...They kill without any shame at all, for a cause that has long ceased to be anything other than worship of death...
...The first building I saw was a perfectly shaped chapel with immense windows and then Tommy's dorm and then other buildings...
...I, for my part, went to the sporting goods department where many men were buying camouflage, immense plastic containers that were waterproof to carry around clothing and food for duck hunting and maybe also deer hunting...
...TUESDAY Malibu J have always loved poetry poetry...
...And again, as always, the only country to stand up for what is right is beloved America...
...Pound, of course, was a notorious nut and fascist and anti-Semite...
...and I cannot readily think of a better way to spend $49...
...They send a bomber to the front steps of a synagogue and blow up the bomb.They hide in bushes and kill every young man and woman they can see...
...Oh, I was scared...
...He spends week- ollr ends with his pal Mac at Mac's home inVermont, and Mac's parents treat him like their own son, which touches us beyond words.The combination of all of this has worked wonders...
...It's called "Poetry Speaks...
...Irreplaceable loss...
...The women were stocking up on groceries at Wal-Mart's super bargain prices...
...That's my poem and I rewrote it about five times, which tells you the writers among the readers out there, that it might be a good idea to know that words addressed to the public are rewritten and not written, unless you are Shakespeare, who never rewrote one word...
...Denman's friends and relations on hand, all dressed in suits and medals and pearls...
...Here it is...
...It's about a delicatessen on the line between Silver Spring, Maryland, and D.C...
...We were told we would catch Route 16, but we had to do many twists and turns to get it, and then Route 16 turned out to be a highly twisting and turning road, with no gas stations, no all night 7-l1s, no Waffle Shops...
...Cockerill, the amazingly brave man who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day, and who has died since Col...
...He is still doing a lot better and I thank Cardigan Mountain School, my new heroes.At the Boston airport, I had a queasy feeling about my US Air flight...
...But I thought that if I die right now, I die happy because I believe I have seen a good future for my boy and his future is the future...
...Kay's, In Silver Spring, by the morning's chilly and early rays, On a Sunday, my Pop would drive my sister and me, To Ho/berg') near the District Line, in a light blue Chevy...
...He was a star of courage in World War II and in Vietnam...
...I gave a lengthy toast to Col...
...He is so smart and so funny and so sweet, and now it is all coming out for the good...
...But totally unassuming and modest...
...6i'e bought, as I recall, a quarter of a pound of each, lox and corned meat, Carried it home like gold or like nitroglycerin, on our laps, cradling it sweet...
...His dorm counselors, Matt and Jessica, showed me where Tommy had cleaned for my arrival...
...Then back to my room to rest, and then down to a party room at The Red Apple Inn for a BIG PARTY It is my father-in-law's 80th birthday and wifie and I are throwing a party for him...
...Maybe I have forgotten what the taste even should be...
...He actually lived in Rome during the war and made pro-Axis radio broadcasts.Yet his poetry is mighty and lasting...
...I cane to have lunch with Tommy (I have been staying at The Hanover Inn in Hanover, and it is a great place with fine views over a large square to Dart-mouth, for which I have new respect...
...And at the delicatessen, near Georgia and Alaska, long ago, There would be lines of our fellows passing cruelly sloe...
...I miss Col...
...I like these people a lot...
...And how blessed we are to have him in the Oval Office...
...I call it "Hofberg's...
...How could a man of such genius have been so wrong about so many things...
...Then, into town to shop at the Wal-Mart...
...Many of them also had weathered Bush-Cheney stickers...
...I love the fact that every-one is polite and well behaved, knows how to make conversation, asks about my family, especially my son...
...What if I were outside and someone was trying to kill me...
...I never thought I would live to see the day when organized killers would cheer the murder of Jewish children.These are the brothers of the men who killed thousands of mothers and fathers at the World Trade Center...
...Let me start a few weeks ago...
...There are about sixty of Col...
...Last night, forty-five years on, at a grocery in Beverly Hills, And she bowed out of my way because she is a starlet and I ant a star, And I studied the deli food with an eye forty five years gorse too far Beyond Hojbergs, and I ordered a had pound of corned beef, "thinly sliced," As I used to hear my Pop say Sunday after Sunday, in the voice of hopes sliced and diced...
...The folks at the desk and in the lobby and in the dining room were spectacularly warm and welcoming...
...I will say that every teacher and every counselor and every coach and every administrator I saw was kind, competent, devoted to the boys...
...God help poor Israel...
...He even started calling us on occasion just to say hello, which he had never done...
...Many of the men greeted me cheerily and said how much they loved The Spectator, which made me happy...
...I immediately spotted Tommy because although the temperature was about 40, he was in a T-shirt and shorts...
...My rented Caddy up in New Hampshire did stumble and stutter on a lonely road late at night, but we finally got to safety...
...As you can guess, I was in ecstasy...
...Sailors are a hardy bunch...
...His life is saved, as far as I can tell, and taking it one day at a time...
...A guide took me down to the field by the gym where Tommy was playing la crosse...
...Anyway, we left Little Rock at about 11:30 p.m...
...Then the guests left and we in the family visited for a while, and then to bed...
...It is a lovely place from the videotapes set in mountains and by a large lake...
...When I took it home to our house, my wife asked me what it was, what it could be, In that waxed paper...
...They go to nightclubs and blow up young people waiting in line to dance...
...Denman and Sue at a table high on a hill, but inside the dining room, overlooking the immense lake they call Greer's Ferry Lake...
...When I got to my house in Malibu, I sorted through my mail—endless piles of statements and bills—and then I decided I would write a poem about childhood...
...He spends time with this one extremely well-behaved lad.This same lad, by a miracle, dislikes computer games...
...I am very blessed indeed to have Col...
...Why would anyone who had the chance not shop at Wal-Mart...
...These people, the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, the Hamas, the PFLP, are worse than war criminals.They are mass murderers who aim specifically at children...
...Then we drove down some smaller roads, and there was Cardigan Mountain School...
...It's catered by The Red Apple Inn, which does a fabulous job in both foodand service and at a fair price...
...When they were caught, they denied it or blamed it on someone else...
...I told her that I would have to be insane not to shop at Wal-Mart when it was nearby...
...For Christmas, wifie gave me a set of discs of famous poets reading their work...
...How well I also recall those days, reading Pound and Eliot and then going over to the Alpha Delta Phi house to have lunch with my beloved fiat brothers...
...A few days ago, he asked me if I would ever come visit his school...
...And we thought ourselves lucky to have such a feast, In the land of the free, in Silver...
...No one at Holly-wood parties behaves as well as the men and women at that party: no boasting, no attempts to humiliate me by telling me how rich they all are, just genuine good spirits and politesse...
...Today, after a two-day clear spell, snow was falling in blizzard conditions...
...If there were a Sam's Club near-by I would go to that, too.These Wal-Marts are the new beating hearts of rural America, and the heartbeat appears strong...
...in public...
...He was smiling from ear to ear...
...And many nations in the world protect them, defend them in international tribunals and fund them...
...I had been scared...
...I studied poetry in college, under great geniuses like Chiappe and Dupee at Columbia...
...Treating the customer right is what business success is all about, period...
...Now, the Palestinians blow up Jewish children coming out of temple—toddlers, children holding their mothers' hands, childrenin cribs—and then they smile in front of the cameras and say how proud they are of themselves.They send machine gunners into a Bat Mitzvah and kill everyone they can see...
...So Igave it to my dogs, my Brigid and my Susie, two big hungry hounds, And they ate frantically as if inhaling it, in rtivo even mounds...
...A moment later we came to the EZ Mart, where a beauMARCH/APRIL 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 77 tiful young clerk sold me some sweet rolls (food is my drug and so are dogs), and then we drove a little more and we were at the Red Apple Inn on Eden Isle, the very lovely planned resort community where my father-in-law lives with his lovely wife, Sue...
...Sure enough, the plane had to do a "touch and go" and abort its landing at Reagan because of a mix-up whereby two planes were landing at once...
...Denman (then a lieutenant) was like in France, Czechoslovakia and Germany in World War II...
...And what is the future of mankind if evil is still so commonplace and smiles so broadly into the camera...
...Inside the bustling and immense Wal-Mart were grizzled men with quilted hunting jackets, their devoted wives, and their tow-headed kids...
...What if I were outside in this weather...
...Everyone smiled and beamed and said how happy they were to see me, and it was swell...
...He still has an immensely long way to go in terms of sociability and general charm, but he is making progress in a big way...
...Well, I would be like what the twenty-two-year old Col...
...Hesmiled broadly when lie saw me, shook my hand, and then (for about the first time ever) enthusiastically returned my embrace...
...Now,Tommy works out like a fiend, wrestles very well (wins tournament match-es) and does his homework faithfully without having to be much nagged...
...I was impressed...
...Lately, he made friends with several boys and one in particular...
...But he had a gift for words that haunts the imagination...
...Many of them had religious bumper stickers...
...And it shows...
...She's from a small town called Prescott in Arkansas and site Would not have known Hojberg's and anyway, corned meat is not on her diet, So she went upstairs to read and I slid a slice down arty throat in our hacienda all quiet, Except for the rustle of the palms in the wind blowing off the sea And it did not taste right...
...the world acts as if the victim, trying to defend itself, is in the same league as the killers...
...As you can imagine, I was in paradise.Then he took me to his wrestling room and showed me his prowess at wrestling as he wrestled his dear pal Mac...
...Kay's, not least, Because we were in America, not Poland, not Russia, alive and well fed, Not ashes in the wind in East Europe, transported, tortured, dead, But alive and savoring as I said, each drop of freedom and life and corned beef and lox, Then reading the paper or watching the Redskins play on a large, heavy, _flickering box...
...Denman, who deserves all the encomia he can get...
...I think I bought a half a pound, just for the dogs as it turned out last night My parents would cry if they knee...
...What if it broke...
...76 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • MARCH/APRIL 2002 WEDNESDAY Hanover, New Hampshire MIRACLEP...
...I felt as if an angel had visited me and the person of my reborn son...
...Nor did I see any foreign cars, not even one...
...And when Israel strikes back (What else can it do...
...He is a good man...
...So I thought, maybe it's not to be eaten alone, without Morn or Pop, Maybe it's too fit, or maybe it doesn't taste good down to the last drop, If you are by yourself on Crescent Drive, by the pool, in a Spanish-style dining room, Far from Hofberg's, jar from the bargaining crowd, far from Sligo Creek as far as the moon...
...I told Tommy, whose only response was to ask if I could come even sooner...
...Suddenly, "Prufrock" simply reached out and grabbed me and threw me back in my seat and said, "Pay attention...
...They wrestled each other powerfully and then Mac put Tommy "in a stack" which hurt his neck, so they stopped for the day and then Tommy showed me his dorm room...
...TUESDAY Beverly Hills They are doing it again.They're killing Jewish children...
...After about 25 miles of twists and turns, we finally saw a sign for Heber Springs, where Colonel Denman, my father-in-law, lives...
...But there are other brave and hearty souls, all still hand-some and still decorous...
...Spring, near Mrs...
...France's ambassador to the U.K...
...I never thought I would see the day when human beings brazenly killed Jewish children, then bragged about it on world- wide TV...
...And what cause is worth the planned murder of children...
...What if my rented Caddy had a flat tire...
...The lot was filled with trucks, mostly pickups...
...Wow, did they look impressive...
...I felt like kissing that sign...
...Or so they say...
...Take a number and wait, and wait, and wait, and sometimes hate ITitile the guy in fraontstudied the lox and then had to debate About whether it was fresh enough or pink enough inside Until we thought we would slowly, surely lose our mind...
...I have such hopes for him now, hopes I never dared to have...
...Think of it: George W. Bush, who hardly got a Jewish vote besides mine, stands up for Israel far more than Clinton ever did.Why...
...I am so proud of being related to him I can hardly get it across, but I do try...
...I have seen it...
...And then when our turn carne, our precious moment at the wheel, would choose lean, extra-lean corned beef and some lox, and steal A look at our celebrity of the Sunday morning, a sports-writer named Povidn, A landsman who had made it, who knew Clark Griffith and all the big fish...
...Russia intercedes diplomatically for Iraq, sponsor of these killers...
...But he has hated it until just lately...
...Now, for the first time, our son has ambitions to go on to a good high school (Cardigan stops at the end of ninth grade) and then to a good college...
...I took him over to the chapel, deserted except for its Spartan brass cross.The snow swirled around its immense, perfectly pro-portioned mullioned windows and the sun came through the white and lit up Tommy's face...
...But the words shine through...
...They know nothing at all of Silver Spring or Mont or Pop, They only know they're starving down to the last drop...
...France, where Americans died by the tens of thousands in World War I and in World War II, openly sides with the forces that hate Israel...
...called Israel...
...I was terrified...
...Rain was pouring down and a bitter wind blew.Amazingly, there were still boats on the lake, and sailboats at that...
...Iie would hear about Ike and the Suez Canal on the news, And sometimes hear Carl Perkins and Blue Suede Shoes...
...Then we would sit at our table, overlooking Sligo Creek Park and the trees, And eat the quarter pound slowly, my another, my father, my sister and rue, So caref illy, each slice spoken for, hungered for, savored and re-tasted, Until it was gone, every drop, every sliver, nothing wasted...
...Denman last had him to dinner in my presence...
...78 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • MARCH/APRIL 2002...
...I could feel the poem explode in my chest the way I feel about a perfect moment with my son or with my wife or with my dog...
...Now it's Saturday...
...if they were alive, if they had seen the sight Of the dogs wolfing it down.They would talk about waste and money badly spent And losing the best, and I, alone on the hard, shiny Spanish tile, would know what they meant...
...To make a long story short, I flew to Boston and took a car to his school, about two and a half hours away...
...When Tommy asked the lad to play some virtual reality game with him, the lad said, "I like to play in real reality...
...Should I say pretension...
...This now is a week after the previous entry and I have to tell you that my prayers have been answered...
...and headed off up Route 67...
...I think he was truly sad and even angry to see me go, but he never can show that, so he just looked sullen, but I don't care (well, really, I do...
...Tommy put his game away and joined the wrestling squad along with his friend...
...I don't pretend that it's anything but doggerel, but I do think that hearing greatpoetry (which mine is not, of course) instructs the heart in how to see and how to recall...
...I did not see one Gore sticker or one "Pro-Choice and I Vote" sticker...
...The boys are polite, call me "sir," wait on the tables for their pals, and joke good-naturedly with each other...
...Some of the poetry (especially Gertrude Stein) is simply horrifyingly bad, and almost all of the poets have voices of suffocating pretentiousness...
...Our beloved Tommy, angel of my life, is at a boarding school in mid-New Hampshire called Cardigan Mountain...
...I mean, this guy is tough...
...They take their athletics seriously and their studies...
...This is what life and frustration and disappointment and resignation and still a small smoldering ember of hope are all about...
...Even under the covers it's cold...
...BEN STEIN'S DIARYI stood behind a starlet named "Logan,'' new to town, shining bright, Impossibly tall, impossibly thin, condent and deeply, richly tan, lovely and utterly polite...
...I will never go to another hotel in Little Rock as long as I am treated this well by the Capitol, and the same applies to where I buy my groceries and where I buy my cars...
...Great products, great bargains, great service...
...Today, for the tenth time, as I drove out to our drafty, tiny house in Malibu I listened to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock...
...We had lunch with Col...
...SATURDAY Heber Springs, Arkansas Here I am in Arkansas...
...I took this as an invitation and made plans to fly there at once...
Vol. 35 • March 2002 • No. 2
