BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Franken and Bartley
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIAk' Franken and Bartley by Benjamin J. Stein MONDAY 1 S USUAL, I AM ON AN AIRPLANE, this time leaving Northwest Arkansas, heading back to glorious Los Angeles, after a...
...And in broadcasts, they have said they will do as many more as they can...
...And my old econ teachers always taught me that in the long run, a nation should pay attention to its consumers rather than its producers...
...Time passed...
...No, seriously, we just cannot evacuate Iraq...
...That all came to a crashing halt the next day when Al Franken appeared...
...But I think Bartley's three finest acts were, first, when he granted the highly talented and courageous Dorothy Rabinowitz a platform to fight against the totally fake mass child sex abuse cases that were being concocted by sick minds in Washington State, Southern California, Massachusetts, and elsewhere...
...Maybe that was it...
...He was a friend to me, but that was insignificant, although not to me...
...For my sins, I had come to debate the redoubtable comedian and political activist, Al Franken...
...Obviously, the Kaiser had no such aims in World War I (although he did want Mexico to invade Texas as a diversion...
...FEBRUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49...
...But on this night, this glorious Saturday night, I saw so many captivating women I could hardly believe my eyes...
...The Japanese never planned any serious attacks on the U.S...
...They are theaters in a war the enemy would far rather fight on Liberty Street or LaSalle Street or Scottsdale Boulevard...
...Wal-Mart is a huge bonus for the consumers of the nation, and it is that simple...
...That's why I can't be president...
...Seems like a nice way to live...
...I do think he goes too far in his attacks on certain personalities, but again, Al was not truly the main problem...
...The Islamic terrorists are the first enemy we have ever had who has actually begun a war against us that has been waged largely on our soil...
...Bush and Ms...
...So, why is Iraq not the same as Vietnam...
...I went to bed dazzled by what a happy, pleasant place Fayetteville is...
...We differed extremely sharply about the Milken/Drexel junk operation (he was for it and I thought it was not a good thing at all), about trial lawyers in the securities class action field, about laws protecting investors, about taxes, about the gold standard, about immigration, and probably about many other items as well...
...Second, Bob was a great supporter of Israel when the beautiful people in New York and in the chattering classes everywhere had totally abandoned this brave bastion of the best in the human spirit...
...The third greatest hit in Bob's life, as I see it, was when he took to the ramparts when the Democrats tried to steal the election in Florida in 2000...
...For now, I'll just go back to the Sigma Chi house and be a fraternity boy at the University of Arkansas...
...In no war that the U.S...
...I saw more pretty girls in that one night in Fayetteville than I do in a year in Beverly Hills...
...A withdrawal from Iraq is just a surrender to terrorism in that area of the world that sucks the terrorism closer to the heart ofAmerica again...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, and economist in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...The main problem was that the people who came to hear Al and yours truly debate were wildly stacked against my side...
...Here it is, the biggest company in the world at this point, and it operates out of Spartan quarters (Spartan but immense) in Bentonville, Arkansas...
...The problem with Al is that he is just amazingly smart and a brilliant arguer...
...On these trips, generously paid for by Bob Bartley and the Journal, I saw up close and personal how Hollywood worked as a political loudspeaker for the Left, but also how fabulously well people out here lived...
...No way...
...They never had any plans so far as is known to disrupt life in the United States or to seize California or Oregon...
...Third, I was in an office where the prevalent mood, aside from Jude's laughter, was extremely quiet...
...He studiously kept me away from all discussions about economics but he gave me free rein to travel about the nation researching the political biases in mass culture...
...I'll hang out at the Sigma Chi house instead...
...The grim truth is that withdrawal would solve nothing for us, but would bring the war here—where the terrorists want it...
...I said, "Are you kidding...
...However, through all of that, I retained the keenest imaginable respect for Bartley's work as a defender of freedom...
...It just gets closer to America again...
...BEN STEIN'S DIAk' Franken and Bartley by Benjamin J. Stein MONDAY 1 S USUAL, I AM ON AN AIRPLANE, this time leaving Northwest Arkansas, heading back to glorious Los Angeles, after a fascinating morning visiting Wal-Mart's headquarters...
...But really, AI was not the main problem...
...could always withdraw and leave Southeast Asia to the Communists and the war would be at an end...
...When in 1974 Mr...
...I can no longer look for Bartley as the sword and shield of the Constitution...
...They do business at meetings sitting on plain chairs at folding tables...
...He wanted us to stop helping England and Russia, but had no plans to bomb New York or Boston except once war had been declared, and these plans were largely fanciful science fiction pipe dreams...
...While Al did not, in my recollection, use the words "another Vietnam," several audience members who came up to me during the day's festivities asked me if I did not think that Iraqwas in fact another Vietnam quagmire, and if so, should we not just get the hell out sooner rather than later...
...They all wanted photos with me, and that was fine with me...
...But Bartley treated me right...
...Bush is in for even in the South...
...It was on these trips that I met the people in Hollywood who would later become my dear friends, including Norman Lear and mybest friend, Al Burton...
...That loon also applauded when I talked about Saddam killing the Marsh Arabs...
...It is a grim truth, but it's the truth...
...Wal-Mart is the new town square for the nation...
...It was in that capacity that I found probably the greatest find in my life in terms of writing talent, an astoundingly talented and funny woman named Manuela Hoelterhoff...
...I think Bartley's unflagging support for Eretz Israel has been a major pillar of that nation's survival...
...He took on the Clintons mercilessly and established a leadership position in fighting against the Clintons' thug-like way of governing...
...Maybe more than in a lifetime in Beverly Hills...
...The men and women who guide the destinies of this company work at plain desks with small partitions, if any, between them and their colleagues...
...Hitler was said to have his heart set on world conquest, but scholars now agree that Hitler, as evil as evil can be, had no designs on North America at all...
...The time came for me to leave 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2004 BEN STEIN'S DIARY the Journal and try my wings out here, and Bob was wonderfully supportive, giving me a contract to write many freelance pieces from Hollywood for the Journal's edit page...
...Bush in Kuwait, the first known effort by a foreign enemy to assassinate a president or former president...
...Everyone is a consumer while only some are producers...
...The head of North American operations, an amazingly well-informed man named Mike Duke, operates out of a tiny office with no windows...
...This was Bill and Hillary country in Arkansas...
...But they never bombed America or had any serious plans to dominate American life...
...One totally nutty man in the audience applauded when Al rightly and angrily pointed out how the Sudanese had murdered two million Christians...
...One, I was in an office and that kept me away from my dog, Mary, all day...
...Then we went to a huge party at the Sigma Chi house...
...It does not scare me at all...
...But the Islamic terrorists started this war with a series of attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C...
...The very first series of writing gigs I ever had were at the Wall Street Journal back in 1973, banging them out while I was a hippie junior faculty living in a dorm at UC Santa Cruz...
...I cannot believe it...
...I can't think about it for very long...
...In a nutshell, the working conditions were not for me...
...Bob Bartley and I came to a parting of the ways, in fact, many partings of many ways...
...Iraq, and Afghanistan, are not Vietnam...
...There I was surrounded by stunningly beautiful young women...
...The pay was dismal, but I took the job and moved to New York...
...On my last day at the Journal, Bob took me out to a lunch at the India Club and told me that I was the most fluent, lucid writer he had ever seen and he was sorry to see me go...
...Unfortunately, the answer is that Iraq is not another Vietnam...
...One startlingly lovely young woman named Kimba asked me to sign her breast...
...There is no easy way out this time...
...The stakes are civilization and decency themselves...
...Terror expert Laurie Mylroie believes and has written that Saddam was implicated in the first bombing and the second bombing of the World Trade Center, and maybe of the Oklahoma City federal building as well, and her documentation is blood curdling...
...Rabinowitz, whom I have never had the pleasure of meeting, said they were all a fake and a crime against humanity in big bold letters and Bob backed her to the hilt...
...I can well recall reading one of these editorials at the Boston Logan Airport in December 2000 and getting so overwhelmed with gratitude that I called my florist and sent Bob a major arrangement...
...I had thought I would have a really friendly audience in Arkansas, but, no, no, no...
...It showed me how hard a fight Mr...
...Because in the case of Vietnam, the U.S...
...I thanked him and then I left...
...Normally I'm here to visit my in-laws in Heber Springs, Magnolia, and Little Rock (and some of them are buried in Prescott...
...Now, the war cannot be ended by a withdrawal from Iraq...
...Bob and I went back a long, long time...
...It was a crowd that you would have expected on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but not at all in Arkansas...
...In most of the small towns I visit—and there are a lot of them—the Wal-Mart is where sober people gather late at night, where they see their pals, where they gossip, where they get their groceries...
...If we withdraw from Iraq (a highly tempting scenario, to be sure), the war does not end...
...If Bob had done nothing else in life, he would still be blessed...
...Once,when he and I were riding in from Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan on the horrible subway, I asked Bob why this was so important to him, namely, standing up for Israel...
...The terrorists have already shown that they will follow America and Americans to America and fight and kill here as much as they possibly can...
...Plus, I am wildly impressed at how frugally the people at Wal-Mart treat themselves...
...My pieces were about the political content of movies, TV, and music, and Bob loved them...
...I would write a weekly column about TV and music, occasionally write editorials, and edit freelance pieces about the arts...
...And he is very, very angry...
...First let me tell you a bit about Fayetteville...
...And now, Saddam Hussein was making clearly common cause with al Qaeda...
...Ted Olson argued it well, and James Baker organized it well, but the main force of nature was Bartley and the Journal's editorial page...
...has ever fought until now did our enemy have the basic goal of wrecking life in the continental United States...
...His editorials during the horrible Carter years and the great Reagan era and then during Bush I were the leadership pieces defining right and wrong in a pivotal era...
...But to get back to the debate (actually three debates during the day): Much of the talk was about Iraq, with Al taking a critical tone towards ourinvolvement there and yours truly defending the president's handiwork in that troubled land...
...Again, if that were all Bob did, it would make him blessed, but he did far more...
...The Soviets had a major espionage operation in America, and controlled a vicious and active Communist Party here...
...FEBRUARY 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 47 BLN STEIN'S DIARY This was al Qaeda...
...It is because of what it says about us as a people that it's important," he said as the train rattled under the East River...
...The immense house was jammed with still more beautiful girls...
...It breaks my heart...
...I am telling you, this company is the new focal point for commerce and civic life in this country...
...We went out to a fabulous restaurant called Grubbs...
...Old lefties, teachers' union people, old-time nuclear disarmers, haters of George W. Bush...
...Then Bartley heard I was leaving and offered me a fantastic job at the Journal...
...He is also well informed, although I think he is mistaken in some of his facts, especially about education...
...He'll tan their hides...
...I can never again say to myself when I see the liberals acting up, "Wait until Bartley catches up with them...
...That's the real test of what the government does: what it says about us as a people...
...The fact that these grotesque crimes against decency have seemingly stopped is in no small part thanks to Dorothy Rabinowitz and her patron, Bob Bartley...
...Yes, I will let Mr...
...Anyway, why was I in Arkansas...
...To paraphrase a simply great editorial he wrote 30 years ago about a Britain in seemingly endless socialist decline, "Good-bye, Bob...
...He took many of them while I was speech-writing for Mr...
...He was a friend to everyone who believes in human decency and the Constitution, and he will be deeply missed...
...But he knew the price to the penny of the toaster I bought at Wal-Mart two days before...
...We'll meet you down the road...
...I always knew Arkansas girls were gorgeous because of my wife, an Arkansan on her father's side...
...Al is sort of a genius and he is far from alone in not liking Bush...
...There was artificial snow made from shredded plastic and a ski theme...
...I got to the airport at XNA (Northwest Arkansas) late at night and was met by two wonderful, and I do mean wonderful, state policemen (maybe one was a university security policeman, but I may have that wrong...
...It seems revitalizing to have a place where people can gather purposefully at any hour and save money...
...It is far worse and more serious than Vietnam, and a look at what led up to it is terrifyingly instructive...
...Now, he is with the eternals in the pantheon of great journalists...
...There were also loonies talking about Israel's supposed oppression of the Palestinians...
...They did it...
...How can this be bad...
...That company is unstoppable...
...But Saddam Hussein got into the act by his funding of terrorists in Israel and his connections through Mohammed Atta with al Qaeda (plus his clear effort to kill George H.W...
...I have heard the same point of view from various Democratic candidates for president and "pundits" and it's a good line of questions...
...They did not just talk about it or say they would do it in retaliation for this or that...
...Nixon and sort of made me a tiny bit famous by running them so prominently...
...They cheered whenever there was any mention of Hillary, booed when there was any naming of Bush...
...Anyway, then we walked along the main street of Fayetteville into various bars (jammed with happy people because Arkansas had just beaten Mississippi State at football...
...But that's far south of the pretty university town of Fayetteville, where I was last week...
...Two, I was in an office with a man named Jude Wanniski who talked very loudly on the phone all day and drove me crazy with his laughter about various arcana about taxes...
...He was a friend to everyone who believes in human decency and the Constitution, and he will be deeply missed...
...When they mobilized their goons in the ethnic community, tried to use their control of the media to bludgeon the judicial community, sought to create a steam roller of Beautiful People opinion to wrest the election from the voters, Bartley and his men and women turned out one great editorial after another demanding that the law be obeyed and that Bush get the prize...
...No, really, I said, "What do you 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 2004 BENJAMIN J. STEIN want me to write...
...They drove me a long, long way through the night to my hotel, explaining all about the local political geography and making humorous asides, and then we rendezvoused with Stoney and the other students who were my hosts...
...itself, and attacked Pearl Harbor to keep us out of their schemes and invasions of China and the Southeast Pacific area...
...Rice worry about these big things...
...This is whythe Howard Dean promise to leave Iraq is so frightening...
...THURSDAY Bob Bartley dead...
...I cried real tears this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that Bob had succumbed to cancer...
...Nixon left office and Donald Rumsfeld was encouraging me to leave, I found several jobs in Washington...
...I am no longer sure exactly why, but it makes sense to me...
Vol. 37 • February 2004 • No. 1
