BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Home Sweet America
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Home Sweet America by Benjamin J. Stein TUESDAY ERE I AM IN NEW YORK CITY. I am here doing publicity for my newest book, 99 percent of it co-authored by Phil...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...But the glorious restaurant, best place in D.C...
...No, they are taught to whine and moan and bitch...
...Many of the homeless don't have these basic virtues...
...The waiters overheard us saying it was Marina's birthday (Aram's, too, by coincidence) and brought us a birthday cake with intricate writing...
...The fliers over Ploesti...
...I have a lot of speeches to give, houses to buy, dogs to love...
...How sad the life of the people of that region have been, and yet they manage to pro-duce amazingly good-looking girls like Marina...
...I fell into a fascinating conversation with a professor from the University of Pennsylvania...
...Howgrateful we must be all of the time for God's messengers in fatigues...
...And, never for Stalin, but always for the super-stars of the Red Army who beat Hitler at Moscow BENJAMIN J S T E I N and Kursk and Stalingrad and Seelow Heights...
...Ronald Reagan ran on basically the Wallace strategy arriving at it, I think, at least in part on his own...
...Never mind, it's U.S...
...When I get to a heated sidewalk, I am so grateful you cannot imagine...
...I went to sleep in my little bed with my Christmas lights (yes, I know it's March) all around me...
...I am so scared...
...But he understood that the working American was sick and tired of being pushed around by the "pointy headed intellectuals," that they were sick of being condescended to by college students whom 54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005their tax dollars supported, of being spat at in the face by the hippies in the streets and the college professors who ran the Democratic Party...
...But then they taste so good...
...How on earth do they get the sole out of the ocean, keep it fresh, bring it to New York, cook it deliciously, put it on a lovely plate with string beans, make it taste delicious—and still have it cost just a few dollars...
...I told him I guessed that was because of the sneering anti-Americanism of the teachers...
...I often wonder why I love the South so much and always have...
...Jimmy Carter pretended he was one of the boys (but was in fact the worst kind of snob, the sanctimonious kind...
...The merchant seamen who froze to death when their ships were sunk on the Murmansk run...
...Clinton pretended to be Elvis but was really Abby Hoffman (whom I also liked, by the way...
...I wish he were right about (what I assume was) his point: that spending more money would cure poverty and homelessness...
...America, my family, the heroic men and women in Iraq, the police and firemen, the brave men and women in Afghanistan...
...I also love South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and above all, Arkansas (also Louisiana...
...George Corley Wallace is justly denounced for his stand against integration and for standing in the school-house door to block a poor black girl from entering at Tuscaloosa...
...By the way, it is impressive indeed how much Aram and Marina know about Eastern Europe and the Balkan states and races...
...Not much, I guess...
...Young people go zipping by and I realize how fearless they are in their young blood and ignorance and how fearful I am in my age and "wisdom," What a disaster it would be if I fell and broke something...
...As I am lying here in bed, I keep running through my bons mots I thought of decades ago about Los Angeles: In L.A., and only in L.A., • The rich are more terrifying than the poor...
...The streets are really icy and slippery and I am praying, just praying like a monk, that I do not fall and break my ankle or hip or something bad...
...I just finished speaking at a great college here on top of a mountain...
...B E N S T E I N ' S D I A R Y Home Sweet America by Benjamin J. Stein TUESDAY ERE I AM IN NEW YORK CITY...
...I told him I guessed that was because of the sneering anti-Americanism of the teachers...
...Oh, well...
...Never mind, it's racism...
...Richard Nixon learned from him in 1972 with his Southern Strategy...
...I had the John Dory and it was perfect...
...I always think of a small thought: Dear God, let it start with me...
...It is called Yes, You Can Be a Successful Income Investor...
...So in my idiocy I decided to walk from the Yale Club at 44th and Vanderbilt to my hotel, the Essex House, at 59th and 6th...
...Not at any one time, but always when we are rightly grateful...
...Wow, I spend a lot of my life being scared...
...Thank you God for every second of it...
...Delicious filet of sole...
...And for Nixon, who was above all a peacemaker...
...I got a huge double standing ovation but then a young (and very smart) fellow named Webb wanted to argue with me about how Bush is causing poverty and homelessness...
...There I waited while my train arrived late from Boston...
...I would be happy to spend more...
...I TI j ust finished speaking to a lovely audience of persons interested in education...
...The Jews are more frightening than the Gentiles...
...Follow who the Gatlin Brothers are singing for and there you find the heirs of the Wallace legacy—and the winning candidates...
...Time to go to bed and be thankful that I did not slip and break my leg...
...What else do I have to be thankful for...
...When Wallace said that if a demonstrator lay down in front of his car, it would be the last car he ever lay down in front of...
...Again, perfection...
...Bad enough for those of us who own apartments at the Watergate Apartments just because of the noise...
...The women are more violent than the men...
...What a mistake...
...But are kids taught any of this in school...
...WEDNESDAY Tow I AM IN D.C...
...And what value do we place on the life of the poor sole...
...Still, he was a sincere man, and he has a huge future in the Democratic Party...
...Now, here is a tragedy in the making...
...Is the black man freer and possessed of more opportunity than ever in history...
...It's about how to squeeze the most income you can out of your savings...
...Yesterday I was up before dawn to do Fox and Friends and then on and on and on, and then a long nap, and then down to Greenwich Village for dinner with my old pals at Chumley's...
...And these are what mankind has always wanted, died for, cried for—and we have them in abundance...
...The whites are angrier than the blacks...
...Then I had layer cake and I thought of how safe I felt in the South...
...FRIDAY A! BUT NOW I AMl N NAPLES, FLORIDA, AGAIN...
...I took the train down here this morning...
...It's called Birmingham Southern College and it has the sweetest, nicest people on the planet...
...There is just something genuine and loveable about Southerners...
...for eating, will soon be closed, too...
...I am here doing publicity for my newest book, 99 percent of it co-authored by Phil DeMuth, who is unbelievably generous to me, and it is selling like a banshee...
...It takes sanity...
...Is the river system of America cleaner than it has been in decades...
...Oh, well...
...Bush 43, of impeccable Connecticut lineage, made himself into the totally non-racist George Wallace in his folksy appeal to the working man...
...I love Alabama...
...God bless you, RN...
...Is real personal income up by three times since World War II...
...They gave me a fine dinner (roast beef and crumbly apple pie) and we talked and then I gave a speech...
...Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama" Well, here I am in Alabama, at the Tutwiler Hotel in rather empty downtown Birmingham...
...MAY 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 53 B E N S T E I N ` S D I A R Y ficient appreciation of what we have got...
...Glory, glory, glory to the men and women who keep us free...
...Maybe he's right, but I think the negativity of the professors has a lot to do with it, and their smarty-pants attitude that nothing is as it seems and below the surface it's all treachery and capitalist exploitation...
...And I feel desperately sorry for them...
...I often ask myself how I get to live like this...
...I don't even remotely understand how badly the people who do this work must be paid if I get the sole that cheaply...
...My wife, whose family are from Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and southeastern Oklahoma, is exhibit A. Exhibit A...
...The main new point I made is that Alabama should be studied carefully as a primer about how politics is to be waged in postwar America...
...I am stepping slowly like the old man I have become...
...The soldiers of Normandy...
...It has to be more than luck...
...Wow, are we lucky...
...Never mind, it's the environment...
...52 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2005 Anyway, by some miracle, I made it back to my room and lay down with great gratitude in my bed...
...Life is upside down in L.A., or at least in Beverly Hills...
...Then there's Beverly Hills, where life is so lush and the women look so tough...
...I liked the tiny Tutwiler Hotel more than the grand Naples Ritz-Carlton...
...Or are there some economies of scale at work...
...There was a fire at Penn Station so I had to abandon my car about a slushy block away and lug my suitcase through the ice to the door...
...I told them how the main thing we are lacking in America is sufThey have basically found that students are far more optimistic and civic-minded as freshmen than as seniors...
...The Marines of Guadalcanal...
...Freedom, plenty, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, self-government...
...The elderly are more dangerous than the young...
...But it takes spiritual commitment and inner discipline...
...This restaurant has a quiet...
...Just in the past few days I have been to a magnificent tiny desert resort called Borrego Springs, California, a really well-guarded secret garden, to Fresno to speak to some fine people about America, and how right things are here, to Portland to speak about retirement planning...
...What a life I have...
...no music atmosphere, great service, great sweeping Potomac River views, and amazingly good food...
...He said he thought it was a global phenomenon and was due to the extreme competitiveness of school...
...imperialism...
...And how do we start to teach gratitude...
...He was super aggressive and well informed...
...And now, here in my bed in New York, I rested and got up and had dinner with my pal Wendy at the hotel dining room...
...It is sort of sad that animals have so little value placed on their lives...
...I was going to go there again tonight but it has snowed and sleeted...
...They have basically found that students are far more optimistic and civic-minded as freshmen than as seniors...
...I don't really know much about places like Bosnia and Montenegro and Croatia and Serbia, but Aram and Marina know names and places and trends and tragedies that I never dreamed of...
...I had dinner with Aram Bakshian and Marina Malenic at the Watergate Hotel Dining Room...
...Instead of those paltry returns the banks and money market funds are paying, we show how you can get six or seven percent with fairly impressive safety...
...It is just the unearned blessing of God, but God working through the millions who fought and bled to make this country safe for me and Marina and Aram...
...I came back to my hotel—which is a jewel of the South—and had a fabulous salmon cooked by a great chef named D'Andre in a quiet, lovely dining room served to me by a lovely server named Connie...
...He is working on a study with David Eisenhower and others about how the experience of higher education affects the public-spiritedness of students...
...MONDAY In Birmingham, they love the governor boo-boo-boo Now we all did what we could do Now Watergate does not bother me Does your conscience bother you...
...Gratitude for men who fought and died in the Huertgen Forest so I could lie here and be safe...
...Now, tell the truth...
...when he said he was sick of the mugger getting out of jail before the victim is out of the hospital, he spoke to what was in the American heart...
...Gratitude for the great views out of my window here at the Ritz-Carlton...
...Who laid the foundations for the end of the Cold War, and even when the leftists were machine gunning him, brought peace to the Sinai...
...Some wicked capitalists have bought the Watergate Hotel and are planning to close it down and remake it as condos...
...Mankind is amazing...
...Joy to the world...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 4
