Ben Stein's Diary
Stein, Ben
BEN STEIN'S DIARY of my wife, with clean, straight features. We talked for a long time about how lonely she was and how she could feel her husband's presence in her house after his death. I found...
...MONDAY Here I am in NewYork again, at the National Right to Life banquet, as honorary Master of Ceremonies...
...It is really about expressing some extremely deep rage...
...Ask questions that are interesting, but not too personal...
...I walked for about two hours on the campus, but it has lost much of its charm...
...Down by the majestic frat houses and the president's house, we came to the lovely Jewish students' center...
...He offered me his barf bag as a back-up...
...Why make killing the baby the school's responsibility, but not providing housing and day care for babies that mothers "choose" to keep alive...
...Really, how could this have happened...
...But this noise, movement and fear is not helping...
...There are lots of open places elsewhere.Why chop down trees...
...For some reason I cannot fathom, she is planning to move to a small town—make that a small city—in New England...
...Anyway, it was a lovely function...
...We ventured up to a hotel called Twin Farms just to see what a place where the rooms are twelve hundred bucks a night, two night minimum, booked until 2005, was like...
...I hope they like the law better than I did...
...Jewish kids lounged about studying and looking totally unafraid...
...There was a lost Weimaraner of stupendous size.We brought him into our apartment...
...We went on to a little party that Comedy Central had been kind enough to give for us at a hip nightspot...
...I felt as if I had been kicked in the solar plexus...
...I wished I had been able to video-tape the dinner...
...JULY/AUGUST 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 71...
...I really never meet any clinkers, except behind counters at airlines, and even they are rare...
...We went out to the college courtyard...
...I was Valedictorian and when I finished, my mother apologized to the dean for my complaints, assuring him that I was inclined to make inflammatory statements all my life...
...What had been the Garden of Eden is just a dirty lot...
...Maybe they think it will discourage al Qaeda...
...If we really want choice, let's offer a few shekels out of the billion-dollar endowments to keep the babies of these women students alive...
...THURSDAY Hey, here's a nice touch.The Spectator is now being edited and put out again by Wlady and Bob, with vital co-operation from George and Spencer...
...My wife smoked cigarettes, her new vice, like a madwoman.And then it was time to go back to the best hotel in NewYork by far, The Essex House...
...They greet me and talk to me as if I were a famous ancient mariner...
...SUNDAY Washington J is getting better and better...
...Small, but no so good...
...There are just hideous stumps.And building supplies piled up, covered with dust...
...I love public speaking and I love the University of Cincinnati...
...Really, really barf-bag sick...
...the ground for fifty minutes until they could find us a gate...
...I started to get nauseated and panicky...
...A half hour in the plane, and then, mercy of mercies, the rain stopped.And out we went...
...And, yes, maybe a certain astounding courage can redeem even some bad causes...
...She is not working as a lawyer any longer, so she is free to travel with me.That is a major benefit because I get to be with the world's smartest, funniest woman with the best personality and the absolutely most beautiful face on earth, and beautiful auburn hair...
...I am up in San Francisco doing an event for Oracle...
...Four hours...
...My emotions are very close to the surface...
...I found myself crying on and off all through the dinner...
...What a great girl-friend she was, lo these 37 years ago...
...I love doing it, but I miss my little wifie.This time, however, I am with family...
...UCSC, College V, its forests, its magnificent architecture, are all elements of the ultimate in "Shelter From the Storm...
...Before the display, we had a dinner with the dean of the law school, Aussie David Partlett, his charming wife and several faculty members and their wives...
...Still, I was extremely upset that we had not won...
...I am nominated for the latter honor along with my former co-host, the lovely Nancy Pimental...
...Ispoke, signed autographs, got broiled in the sun, had a milkshake of fabulous Graeter's ice cream, and then to bed...
...Plus, the flights were on America West, which kept us on...
...I love the hotels I stay in...
...It was breathtaking, as if the heavens were an immense bucket that had just been emptied on Chantilly,Virginia...
...Olson drove me to my old stomping ground, my refuge, College Five of the University of California at Santa Cruz...
...Perfection...
...She described her mother's pain-wracked face...
...I passed by the law office of my old college girlfriend, Mary, and saw her gaily painted sign in the window...
...I told him howproud I was of him...
...In Israel, Jews are getting blown up every day by murderers who are eaten alive by envy...
...What better way to mark a blazing moment in a young lawyer's life than to light up the sky...
...Let's just say I was inspired by the conversation and the fireworks...
...What was his name...
...And again, about grief...
...That is the lesson of the day...
...I felt horrible...
...Mimi Elrod, the widow of the late president ofWashington and Lee...
...No, you'll never guess...
...70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JULY/AUGUST 2002 Naturally, I began to cry...
...Never in all history have any people been as good to the Jews as the American Gentiles...
...Come in, she said, `I'll give you, shelter from the storm.' "A great Bob Dylan line of utmost importance...
...However, my ordeal was not quite over...
...The man across from me, whose name I never learned, was also amazingly kind to me...
...At long last, we landed and taxied to the gate.The rain was falling as hard as I have ever seen rain fall...
...The driver was a rugged, handsome, cheerful, strong guy who told me his father had been middleweight champion of the world...
...Why...
...I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have been a Civil War soldier marching or trying to sleep in that kind of Virginia rain.That made me feel like the wuss I am for complaining...
...What insanity can this be...
...In Hollywood, people can only talk about themselves and only can either brag or criticize, but always with completely boastful self-reference...
...By the way, I have fallen madly in love with the New York Yale Club...
...Yet another possibility for our little boy, should he ever learn to study...
...Panic, distress, terror sick...
...Again, the conversation was gracious and flowing, and I felt as if I were with true gentlemen and ladies from ancient times.The beautiful part is that if I told this story to people in Hollywood, they would all assume that there was some racist tinge to it...
...I am losing my cool all too often these days...
...Wow" said I, "wow, wow, wow I can well recall watching him on the TV in the fifties with my father...
...Later, his giant feminist owners came to claim him, but after that I was hooked on German sporting breeds...
...These charming towns, even in the rain, were laden with tourists, swarming about the greens and the Civil War statues...
...Financial planners associated with Securities America, a company that is part of American Express...
...What a delightful situation...
...A plane is well grounded against lightning, but a human is not...
...Circling is always hell on my brain, but circling in bumpy, loud, flashing lightning and thunder is misery...
...I walked around getting recognized and smiled at, then headed on my usual path through an emerald, breezy forest path and over a long glorious footbridge...
...Many of them are going to be court clerks and many are going to big law firms...
...Oh, well...
...Display knowledge of an area without showing condescension about the discussion...
...Halfway to Dulles on our little Dash-8—a prop plane with maybe 25 passengers, of whom about 10 were young couples necking and copping feels—a thunderstorm opened up...
...On a large lawn in front of the law school was a spectacular fireworks display.The sky was filled with rockets, flares, glowing neon like brilliant lights that rose into the sky like immense blazing banana and grape, orange, blue and red Popsicles...
...I kept thinking that if anything happened to my wife, I would just lie down and die, and again, tears came to my eyes, but then I pulled myself together to make conversation with these extremely well-behaved people...
...And now, I hear, she is a legal superstar...
...The rest of the world is torturing the innocent and here the innocent are protected and loved (except for unborn babies).And we, our lovely selves, our unworthy selves, get to have our neighbors whom we never met before pat us on the back as we are throwing up and tell us to be brave, that it will all be over soon...
...Some airlines seem to train flight attendants to be unhelpful and cold...
...Her talent was breathtaking...
...Montpelier was only drizzly, not pouring rain...
...I can describe it in a few words: I would pay twelve hundred a night not to stay at it...
...I asked...
...So, as I say, a treat for me...
...I sat there across the table from my wife and simply marveled at the friendly, guileless, charming, non-bragging, non-self-congratulatory conversation about history, about geography, about literature...
...Life has been stormy lately, even in this beloved America, and I like being in huge rooms with columns and portraits ofTaft, and then in tiny library cubbies...
...He was so nice, so reassuring, so encouraging, so sympathetic that I think he must have been an angel sent by God...
...That made me feel better.TheYale Club, as always, was a little oasis of peace and calm...
...He was a great man," said my muscular driver...
...Surely, surely, surely this is yet another stretch of paradise...
...It is hard to explain why, since they were fighting for such a questionable cause, to put it mildly...
...There was so much lightning that it was not safe for us or ground employees to be out in it...
...I keep thinking that Santa Cruz means "Holy Cross" and now the uniquely beautiful landscape has been crucified on the altar of vote-getting and people-pleasing...
...I gave my speech, got good response, listened to a fine talk by the dean of the law school (a marvel of good manners), and then Alex and I were whisked to the airport in Roanoke by a lovely woman named Krista Willim...
...Then he shrugged...
...We sent him there as a total mess, an undisciplined ragamuffin...
...All over the world, especially in Europe, Jews are being set upon, tormented, beaten, fire-bombed...
...Then I got back into the car and headed "home" to Hanover.When we got back, I met Neil Brier, the dean of students at Cardigan...
...But how nobly they fought...
...Even the Jews themselves in Biblical times were not as good to their fellow Jews...
...My wife, as always, stayed perfectly calm...
...Mighty thunderstorm while in Dash-8 = torment...
...To take the most beautiful spot on the campus and destroy it...
...But alas, no Emmy for us...
...No stonings, no beheadings, just kindness and openness and a level playing field...
...Anyway, even as I was sick, I kept thinking, WOW, Americans are kind people...
...I have just been to the smartest function in the history of any graduation I have ever attended...
...FRIDAY New York Well, here I am at the Daytime Emmies...
...And this insanity was done by the state of California, which is supposed to be protecting the environment, not destroying it...
...I asked...
...Now, we are back competing for best show and best host...
...We watched the young people dance and show their lithe thinness...
...Almost as good as sleeping next to Brigid...
...I am deeply proud of what he has done...
...Why can't the state build its campuses there, instead of murdering the forests God planted and nurtured at Santa Cruz...
...In that case, why do colleges and universities make free abortions available through their health plans—but not free prenatal care and free maternity care...
...It is not my kind of building ( far too stark and plain, and no full-blast air conditioning, for a few things) but I was glad it was there...
...It got worse.The pilot announced that for some reason I could not make out, we would have to circle for a while...
...And so we did, and I slept as if I had won, with the sound of the rain on my window...
...MONDAY D isaster.Today I spoke to some of the most pleasant people on earth...
...She is a startlingly lovely woman very reminiscent in that room, although his official residence was two houses away...
...But the atmosphere reminds me of my youth, and I have a sheltered feeling there...
...After-wards, again, I went to the Yale Club and considered the day, and the day before, which I had spent with some of the nicest folks on earth, at Syracuse University...
...It is great for design-freaks and snobs, but give me the plain but comfy Hanover Inn any time...
...I am so impressed with what Cardigan has done with this boy...
...This country is the Promised Land...
...Why chop down perfect, beautiful trees...
...Then, disaster...
...Later in the day, I took a ride with my driver up to Montpelier,Vermont, just to see the scenery...
...But the night before, at a restaurant on Riverwalk, I had foolishly eaten a crabcake...
...Now, just as an example, we talked about the Civil War, about the difference between Tidewater and mountainous Virginia, about how our parents got us interested in reading, and then about various authors...
...Then I was mobbed by teenagers wanting autographs...
...I am in my usual fabulous digs, the Tiburon Suite at the Fairmont.This hotel is what a hotel should be: great rooms, great service, great location.The view over the Bay, over the Bay Bridge, over Alcatraz, over the Golden Gate, over to, well,Tiburon, is amazing...
...I kept opening my case and taking out anti-anxiety medications, holding them in my fingers, then putting them back, like Captain Queeg with his roller bearings...
...The idea of life as an end in and of itself, greater than almost any other ideology is making headway...
...When you are asked a question, show some interest in the other people at the table by asking them questions...
...Smart, kind, good-natured...
...Today before the graduation, we had a luncheon at the President's House.The acting president of Washington and Lee, Larry Boetsch, and his beautiful wife Elizabeth, gave a luncheon in the very dining room where Lee had dined hundreds of times and where his cot was laid out in his final days so he could see his beloved mountains as he fell into immortality...
...A man in a dinner jacket had passed out under a portrait of William Howard Taft.The library was its usual storied place of bookshelves and atlases and delicious nooks and crannies like a Thomas's English muffin...
...Long ago, I had an assistant named Mary Beaudoin...
...The face of a mortal," she said...
...Killed it dead to put up multi-family housing that could have been put in a Fedco parking lot...
...Be personal and open without being embarrassing...
...To build apartments...
...Pickett said, "That old man murdered my division...
...However, for those who like Twin Farms Inn, good luck to them all...
...I slept in delicious air conditioning under an immense portrait of Robert E. Lee...
...FRIDAY Hanover, New Hampshire Here I am on the road again.There is a line in some song that says,"I sure hope the road don't come to own me, there's so many places, I've yet to go .. I think the rest of it is, "But you're so far away I guess the road has come to own me...
...Maybe they are...
...SATURDAY Cincinnati Here I am giving the graduation speech at the University of Cincinnati...
...Why, in the "pro-choice" world of the university today, is there only a Hobson's choice of kill the baby or drop out of school...
...The whole world is sliding back into a kind of archaically horrible anti-Semitism...
...But some of the scenes of the wildest days are now gone...
...Oh, you cannot guess just how wild, I felt like saying...
...This is our fifth time here...
...The men and women at Oracle are capable, polite, super hard-working...
...After the fireworks, there was a champagne hour that my wife really liked, and then a dance to 1940s songs from Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and then a short walk "home" to Washington House.At the champagne session, I talked to dozens of grads about their plans...
...That night, as I walked by myself near Dartmouth Hall and the library, I had a feeling I often have: HOLY GOD, IT IS GREAT TO BE AN AMERICAN...
...I also got an honorary degree, the first I have ever gotten, and I am truly honored beyond words...
...It is sogreat there is no way to even start to describe how great this country is.There are not even any adjectives big enough...
...Wow, was I sick...
...Then we went to a lavish after show party for Therhung and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful at a far larger nightspot called "8 1/2," on 57th Street near Fifth.The rain wascoming down in sheets...
...Oracle offered me a car and driver to get over to nearby Santa Cruz, and I gladly took both...
...I am already severely claustrophobic and probably should not be on such a small plane...
...I wonder what became of her...
...And then, CATASTROPHE...
...Just to give you one example, one night my girlfriend Pat and I had been talking about buying an Irish setter and had not reached a plan yet...
...I think this Washington and Lee has got something amazing going, in being a little amber-preserved gem of elegant grace...
...I wish we had enjoyed them at Yale all those years ago...
...You should have resigned rather than allow those saws to start cutting down those trees...
...The people I meet in my travels are kind, thoughtful, amusing folks, and I love every JULY/AUGUST 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 69 one of them...
...Disaster...
...How does it feel to have the old gang back...
...The teachers were so good at making conversation that I felt as if I were at a drawing room of witty, arch, but ultra-polite noble-men and women from a distinguished salon...
...Its doyenne had questioned the "pro-choice" group's claim that it's not against life, but simply for "choice...
...I cry all of the time...
...It was a frosty encounter at best, for obvious reasons.When it was over, Pickett walked angrily down the hall and spoke to—I think—General James Longstreet...
...But in America, the blessed, kind, tolerant, good-hearted angels I call Americans are still so good to us...
...Cavalry at 15—was sleeping in Lee House under a portrait of Robert E. Lee...
...He looked at me as if I were the maid arrived to clean up our room...
...Eight months ago when I was there, I could see the flames and smoke of the bombed out World Trade Center...
...Back in my bed at the Watergate, I fell happily asleep, imagining that my parents were there to protect me, and you know what...
...Why wreck a spot God made perfect...
...There are more college kids than ever, which is a good sign.And from Ivy League colleges and universities, which is also good...
...Next time you hear Gray Davis talking up his environmental record, consider that he and his ilk murdered the most perfect spot at the University of California at Santa Cruz...
...I am back in New England, preparing my soul for my son's leave taking of eighth grade and right after that my speaking to the graduating class of his Cardigan Mountain School...
...Great, pretty much flawless people...
...What a country, where the grandson of a mechanic at Ford Motor—an immigrant from Russia who ran away to join the U.S...
...Is he in eternity...
...Outside the window, I saw all too much lightning...
...I was starting to feel sick...
...Maybe I have died and I am in heaven...
...This is a great event...
...Spell checker on my computer does not recognize either Popsicles or tempora...
...I was excited, but I fell asleep with good thoughts...
...I got violently sick on the plane coming home...
...She wrote a long, book-length essay about her mother dying of cancer...
...When he grabbed your hand, you knew it...
...I am really proud of him...
...Now, there is peace, even though we are at war...
...Cancer...
...Carl `Bobo' Olson," said my driver...
...God bless her, she was helping in the best way she knew how) Unfortunately, the fireworks hardly pre-pare the students for how dreary and miserable most law practice is, but they will learn...
...I stopped at a bookstore and bought a book of photos of New England...
...That campus is a holy trust, and you have sacrificed your trust on the altar of political correctness and bureaucratic planning...
...I often think of my late Weimaraner, Martha, whom we used to call "The Ultimate Creature" because she looked so much like every other living thing, every other being, every other mortal...
...The luncheon was elegant, on ancient china with ancient crystal, and modern delicious food...
...The trees before the bridge have been cut down...
...And now, the woods are gone...
...I have been planning to offer seminars to corporate executives on "how to make a conversation," and the evening would have been a perfect case in point: • Don't brag...
...The good part was that I was seated next to an interesting man named Gordon Stengel, yes, a distant relation of Casey...
...God help you for the harm you have done to a sacred spot...
...Someday soon, I will write an entire essay just about my eight glorious months there in 1972-73, when I had the most astonishing times of my life in terms of adventure, dogs and romance...
...I dream of returning here and restoring my soul in the shade of the oak and madrone...
...But unlike any social event I have ever been to in Hollywood—at least any small one—there were black people beyond the number "one," present not as waiters but as guests...
...Really, really sick...
...Dartmouth was known for anti-Semitism and racism for so long that it is a pleasure to see how that has all changed...
...Of course, they all became immortal...
...Anyway, Mr...
...He was a man who loved life, had a great time, was a lot of fun to be around...
...MONDAY San Francisco Now for something not so good...
...Now, he has some sense of pride in himself...
...In fact, everyone in my cabin was really kind except the stewardess, who was nowhere to be found...
...It all really shows just how phony the "pro-choice" argument is.That "pro-choice" is like the gun-control argument...
...He was still powerful even in the hospital...
...I was privileged to sit next to Mrs...
...I love New England, but she is going to be mighty surprised by the weather...
...There were explosions, lights, glory...
...I think of how hard it must have been for him to be away from home, how lonely he must have been, how cold it was out on the lacrosse field, how bitterly rainy and chilly it must have been when he got up in the mornings, without his dogs and cats.And now, he triumphed over all of it...
...Again, my wife came with me, and we were hoping and praying...
...Then we went to a tiny hamlet called Barnard and ate a hamburger at the general store...
...I am giving the graduation speech at the law school commencement tomorrow My wifie Alex has come along with me for a rare treat...
...I was impressed at the jobs they had got-ten...
...Olson let me out of the car...
...It is a real treat because I get to visit with the trustees, the students, the faculty, the president and his very helpful colleague, Richard Friedman...
...I have never been this sick on a plane.Yuck...
...I love it...
...To which Longstreet replied eloquently,"He made them immortal...
...The wind coming through that oak and those vines is the best smell on earth...
...Yes, he died last December," he said...
...That night we were awakened by the baying of an immense hound...
...We had a nice talk and I got asked for a whale of a lot of autographs...
...Last week we won the Emmy for best directed daytime game show and we are happy, happy, happy about that...
...Once again, it was raining cats and dogs.We stopped in lovely Queechee and also in Woodstock, Vermont...
...Our poor little craft bounced up and down, bucked forward and back, hesitated and then raced ahead...
...I am traveling more or less constantly, speaking and hosting events...
...And by the way, what Syracuse lacks in climate it more than makes up in friendliness and intelligence...
...That very nice Bob Barker won for best host and Jeopardy won for best show Well, it is a long way from the cafeteria at the Federal Trade Commission, and all in the right direction...
...I often think that there is no clear line in my mind between the conscious and the unconscious, or the past and the present...
...The students are delightful...
...Someone told me that Lee had often been 68 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JULY/AUGUST 2002 SATURDAY Guess where I am...
...It was a revelation...
...Soon we realized we were not being allowed off our tiny plane...
...I gave a little speech that had been suggested to me by some very smart women from Feminists for Life...
...I feel as if someone is going to blow up a nuclear bomb in some peaceable American spot at any moment, and it leaves me on edge...
...After the Emily show, my executive producer, Andrew Golder, and I walked up to theYale Club of NewYork...
...She talked about his presence in such a warm, matter of fact way that it was as if she were writing a book about grief...
...A few weeks ago, I was at a magnificent resort called La Quinta in the desert east of Palm Springs.The desert has been landscaped and planted and made beautiful...
...I am basically just all one big mess, one big creature of vulnerability, passion, fear and determination...
...And it is all a pleasure...
...And, yes, they were as gracious and talkative in the best way as everyone else...
...She had aspirations to be a writer and she had talent like no other talent I have ever seen...
...They were smart, committed to their clients, attentive, even writing notes, just great people...
...I remember a walk with a very pretty co-ed named Jan Looney (yes, real name) in a grove of woods and smoking a Pall Mall as we walked...
...It was about 20 blocks, in the rain...
...We hear things were pretty wild in those days," they say...
...I really understand why environmentalists will consider violence to preserve something beautiful...
...I was reminded of an encounter that General George Pickett had with Lee after the Civil War...
...We went for a long walk around the now dry Dartmouth campus...
...I am sure of it...
...I am at Washington House at Washington and Lee University in lovely Lexington, Virginia...
...I feel vulnerable...
...Washington and Lee = elegance, grace, history...
...My son, to my total shock, was all neatly packed and ready to leave campus...
...I kept imagining Vermont farm boys and artisans mustering in the town square to take the train to Washington, then marching to Seven Pines or Fredericksburg or Manassas or Antietam or Cold Harbor and get killed.What a catastrophe...
...0 tempora, o mores...
...I think it has to do with all of the upset in the world about terrorism...
...He just fairly jumped into my car to get to the Hanover Inn, a hotel with a charm unknown in hotels that cost five times as much.Then he actually behaved himself well, not torturing me, just playing his cursed computer games and then actually going to bed at a reasonable time...
...He curled up on the bed and went to sleep...
...There were adorable hors d'oeuvres and drinks and we all were quite cheery, considering the rain and the fact that we lost...
...And a few days after that, more wonderful people and an ultra-hip audience at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea (suburb of Cleveland ), Ohio...
...It's not that anyone there is an old pal, and in fact the people there pretty much ignore me, which maybe is how it should be at a club...
...Marcie Greenwood, chancellor of the UCSC Campus, if that is your name, how could you have done it...
...It is sad to think that probably people like these lost their jobs in the tech collapse.Well, I doubt if they can be held down for long...
...Then on to Montpelier, the state capital...
Vol. 35 • July 2002 • No. 4
