BEN STEIN'S DIARY: True Confessions
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN DIARY True Confessions by Benjamin J. Stein SATURDAY UESS WHERE I.M. No, you'll never guess. Well, yes, you might guess. No, you can't guess. I am at a huge old Miami Beach hotel...
...Movies are a mess...
...No bathroom, for one thing...
...If you think it's bad here, look at China, where there are supposedly about 200 million unemployed or underemployed...
...And you land at a deserted air strip in Kissimmee and a vastly long stretch driven by a young woman with blonde hair meets you and whisks you to your hotel where you have—a rayon sheet that gives you an allergic reaction and you cannot sleep until five in the morning...
...I miss them keenly...
...He is our only child, and we worry constantly about his being well set up in life—constantly...
...I don't see what government can do to bring them back...
...In a way, it is the analog to what my son does about his homework...
...My friends are growing old, some of them very old...
...What is this about Kerry having worked with Jane Fonda to portray American soldiers as war criminals in Vietnam...
...I have the feeling this is going to be a big story as the campaign wears on...
...It does little good...
...It used to be just the Fontainebleau...
...He is a strong leader in the war against terrorism...
...BEN STEIN DIARY Bush makes me happy, if I am honest, none of it means a lot to me personally in my daily life...
...I used to eat here with Dr...
...Nothing, none of it, no private jets, no limos, compares with one simple word: home...
...Anyway, now I am back home for all of one day,and then off to speak on the same platform with Al Franken again...
...48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004...
...I don't see what government can do about it...
...Garth Wood, M.D., years ago...
...I don't want to die running through an airport late for a plane...
...He was a genius and a saint and a stand-up guy who gave the world the phrase, "A black and white in a black and white," about L.A...
...In other words, it may well be time to think small...
...And speaking of funerals, good-bye to John Gregory Dunne, who died last month way too young at 71...
...I think the Democrats are too critical and promise far more than they can deliver (my favorite is that idiot, Wesley Clark, promising to raise the average income by exactly $3,000, as if he could simply order it, Canute-like, and it would happen, like a battalion executing a dress right dress...
...He stayed a good pal all through his life, and sent me one of the kindest condolence notes I got when my father died...
...Then you fly so low you can see lights the whole time...
...I have alreadygiven him one sports car and promised him a far more lavish one if hegets allks...
...I wandered around the art deco hotels for a time, passed many people who said, "Hey, it's Ben Stein," noticed that it was a crowded evening, and then stopped at a restaurant by the name of "A Fish Called Avalon," on the south end of South Beach...
...Remember him...
...Oh, well...
...But something has occurred to me lately about Bush, and his Democratic critics and about the whole political process: none of it matters a huge amount in my life...
...It really did not help my mood to think about how much I missed him...
...No, thanks...
...So this is where I come out: life is personal and not political, and I have to work on re-electing Bush, because I like him...
...I do not see what government can do to keep us young...
...We are both middle aged still, but soon we will be in our "golden years" and from then into desuetude and infirmity and death...
...I can maybe leave him some money to take care of him, but he can always burn through that and find himself poor and without the real ability to work and support himself and add dignity to his life...
...TV reality shows are boring...
...But I do it, and I am very much afraid it will shorten my life still further...
...I sure hope it won't ruin my afterlife to eat it...
...Maybe if I did not do this, I would age more slowly...
...For myself, I just love bacon...
...TUESDAY OW, AFTER AN AMAZING TRIP TO ORLANDO, I am back in L.A...
...Anyway, it is good to be back in my little home with my big dog...
...I miss him every day keenly...
...There are plenty of other people out there ready to mix it over foreign policy and taxes...
...Would I want to invest in it...
...I eat too much and eat the wrong kinds of food...
...Our taxes are already so immense that if they were a bit higher it would not matter a lot to us...
...Although they were once smokers, and government could do a lot more to stop smoking right now so that millions of other children do not lose their parents prematurely...
...I don't think this is government's responsibility...
...What is this about Kerry having worked with Jane Fonda to portray American soldiers as war criminals in Vietnam...
...I will miss him desperately and so will everyone who knew him...
...To stop it takes moral responsibility and self-discipline, not government programs...
...I think Bush will be able to wrap that around his neck in a big way...
...Many of them have died...
...Government cannot offer him more incentives than I can...
...Too many memories...
...That is what the traveling life is all about...
...In just this one month, I have been to New York twice, to Australia, to Florida three times, to the most wonderful hotel in the world, The Fairmont, in San Francisco...
...Government could enact a set of standards that would declare us officially still young until we were 80, but we would still be older and have to get up in the middle of the night often...
...The tax cuts were a bold measure, and they have proved their worth...
...My cab driver was a Ukrainian immigrant who swore he had a system for always winning at race tracks...
...But while the Democrats anger me and MARCH 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 47 What counts in my life and the lives of people I love is not government policy but our own policy towards ourselves...
...No, it does no good...
...You really cannot imagine how I loved Garth...
...Please, if you are a maniac about not eating bacon, please do not bother to write to me...
...His wife, Joan Didion, and he helped me beyond what I can even recall when I first started my career...
...Maybe it's about how much they wish they could have some bacon...
...Tonight I went down to South Beach, about a ten-minute taxi ride from my hotel...
...A Department of Culture would not improve things, but would only mass produce the garbage that is modern art in most cases...
...What government can do about this, I have no idea...
...We would talk about stocks and about women and pass the time laughing like madmen at how clever we were...
...And, I love Bush because he believes in protecting life at all stages, from the very old to the handicapped to the unborn, and that I especially love...
...What counts in my life and the lives of the people I love is not government policy but our own policy towards ourselves and the people we love...
...If jobs are not being created as fast as we would like, that is because of a worldwide revolution in industrial productivity, over which Bush essentially has no control...
...They won't miss me if I am occasionally absent from the fray...
...And I want George W. Bush to come to my funeral, about 40 years after the end of his second term...
...His memorial dinner, thrown by his lovely wife Pat, was at the Tides three years ago...
...Anyway, he committed suicide roughly three years ago...
...My English doctor friend...
...My largest problem is that my son has a rather careless air about his school work and about discipline of any kind generally—except, miraculously, about football and wrestling...
...I'll think about that tomorrow, as Scarlett says...
...I want to die at home with my Brigid next to me, and not until she is the oldest dog in the world...
...Anyway, I am here (speaking of bacon) to speak to some endovascular physicians and the nice men and women who supply stents and catheters to them...
...He is now sixteen and his carelessness continues unabated as it has all of his life, despite heroic and dramatic changes in his life, such as sending him to boarding school...
...Great writer, wit, great friend, immense help to me and simply fabulous guy...
...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004 This restaurant is out on the veranda of a cute art deco hotel (called the Avalon...
...The reason I say the trip to Orlando was amazing was that I chartered a little jet airplane, a "Lear 35," to take me from Miami to Orlando...
...I got a cab and headed back to the Fontainebleau...
...Y OTHER MAIN WORRY is that my wife and I are growing older...
...Time to praise the good...
...I doubt if government will offer him more than that...
...I did not like being in that little tiny plane a lot...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, and economist in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...But I did love the fact that you do not have to check in, wait in lines, go through security, wait for other planes...
...Anyway, all of this emotion and nostalgia leads me to a whole different subject: a few words on politics...
...Plus he was hooked up with that Christic Institute, which was a genuinely wacky group of anti-American mind benders...
...Nothing, no drama, no achievement, no material good, no work of art, compares with home, family, dog, wifey, all here in America...
...They are wandering all around looking very sad and serious...
...police...
...I love George W. Bush...
...He was a man in a little boys' world...
...It is on a stretch of Collins Avenue that apparently is home j to lots and lots of Orthodox Jews...
...And it would not mean as much to him as if he learned to work productively...
...No matter what laws the government passed, our son could and would be himself...
...I like what he did to fight the recession and invenBENJAMIN STEIN tory and stock bubbles that burst upon the American economy in the waning days and months of the Clinton regime...
...Then I went to Johnny Rocket's right next door and had a milk shake, and then walked up to my favorite hotel in Miami, the Tides, and had several bottles of water...
...Likewise, I spend too much, and this cannot really be controlled by government, but onlyby my own sadly lacking self-discipline...
...I could go on but I won't...
...And I am not at home anywhere enough nowadays...
...I am at a huge old Miami Beach hotel called the Fontainebleau Hilton...
...He has a big bold, Wilsonian vision of transforming the whole Arab world from dictatorship, oppression, and terrorism by creating a democratic Iraq right in the middle of it as an example to the others...
...So, I won't think about that now...
...He is a smart boy (we parents of the careless always say that), but he simply does not pay attention...
...This is my main worry: that my son lacks the discipline to lead a satisfying life...
...High end music and art have basically ceased to be produced...
...But above all, I have to work on loving the men and women close to me while we are all still alive, just as I wished I had worked harder on Garth and somehow kept him alive to be my great friend and soul's companion, work on my own self-discipline in the hope that it will prolong my life and inspire my son...
...And to watch the election returns from New Hampshire...
...If the inheritance tax were eliminated it would mean something to our son, but by then, by definition, it will be of no account to me...
...All of that subject makes me a bit sick...
...I love Bush...
...First of all, because it reminds me of my father, who had a lot of those procedures and then soon afterwards died...
...A group of stewardesses flirted with me...
...The economy is now reviving rapidly...
...I saw something about that in the Wall Street Journal...
...I already know what I am doing is wrong...
...Second, because I cannot stand the sight of blood or even to talk at all about it...
...My wife and my friends are too old to have children, so right to life is not even a personal issue for us, although it is on the basis of basic evil (and I will keep on speaking out about it...
...My parents, my best friends in the world, have died...
...I had to do that to make my very tight speaking schedule...
...But I just smiled and shined it all on, thinking of how much I missed Garth...
...We would talk for hours on the phone night after night...
...I know it is a controversial position, but I embrace him for his courage in taking it...
...At this stage of it, unless government unleashes nuclear war, not much that they do is going to have a big impact on my life...
...I wonder what they are thinking about that makes them look so sad...
...You just get in and go...
Vol. 37 • March 2004 • No. 2
