Ben Stein's Diary: Among the Sane
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Among the Sane by Benjamin J. Stein TUESDAY A BIG, DEPRESSING AND AT THE SAME TIME uplifting day. My father-in-law, the magnificent Colonel Dale Denman, Jr., of...
...Denman and Bob's heads...
...They definitely don't live in Beverly Hills...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...Jenna Welch, the First Lady's mother...
...Then I saw one about eight years ago and it was terrible...
...My hostess, the lovely Retha Hunnicutt, waited for me and took me on a dusty road into town...
...Reline _ n, The first of its kind...
...Now, for the first time ever comes the ultimate guide to conservative thought on the Constitution...
...Why don't we just have recreations of battle scenes like the one Bob Denman just told me about...
...The group of us went to the Ritz Carlton in Georgetown for drinks and I was so overwhelmed I had to go home and sleep...
...They deserve some documentary time, too...
...What a day...
...THURSDAY E W LL, I HAVE FOUND IT...
...Denman and Bob and the family...
...How sad can you get...
...An Eagle Pubiisbinx Comp,, r ' krcabtnRtnn...
...We got up, got dressed, had a hearty breakfast, then headed over to Arlington in our rented Cadillac...
...We owe them everything...
...Or maybe just Bob Denman and the millions like him talking into the camera...
...Den-man's ashes were placed in a compartment with his first wife's, my mother-in-law's, Norma Jean Warmack Denman of Idabel, Oklahoma...
...He ate it with relish and seeminglyenjoyed it very much...
...Denman's brother, Bob, who looked extremely weary and sad, to Bob's handsome sons, Bob Jr...
...I called Bobby and put her on the phone with him and they had a lively conversation...
...She greeted me warmly...
...The greatest poet of my lifetime and a great musician, too...
...I was especially taken with one woman who told me she had "the maddest crush" on my late father-in-law, Col...
...They don't smile back when you smile at them...
...I'm usually a vegetarian," he said simply...
...It was from DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth), and a man at the gate said, "You'll like Midland...
...But I was too young for him," she said...
...The young Dylan is a miracle...
...I may buy a home here...
...A band played patriotic songs, especially "America the Beautiful," and the sky shone bright and hot over the endless fields of crosses...
...I looked out at the magnificent cemetery, then across the river at the Washington Monument, and I thought, "How closely these dead are tied to the glory we Americans have in living...
...I ordered him a steak...
...I love Midland and I am going back soon...
...IX a1,x...
...Where do the sane people live...
...She is very pretty and it's easy to see where Mrs...
...How I wish, though, that there were more time given to soldiers, Marines, Air Force personnel, Navy men and women, Coast Guardmen and women, who actually risk and lose their lives for us...
...So, this is America in 2005...
...Confused about defense contractors, whom he vilified and who actually saved us from war, but all the same a genius...
...The event was about ten times what we expected it to be...
...How I wish we learned more from Col...
...That night we went to dinner at the Sequoia in Georgetown...
...What on earth are we going to do without his generation...
...But we have to cherish the young Dylan of our dreams...
...And he would have just been an ash...
...Attorney General Edwin Meese has chaired the most impressive conservative legal editorial board in history, in conjunction with the nation's preeminent conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, to release The Heritage Guide to the Constitution...
...There were about one hundred men in immaculate uniforms, a lowered flag, muffled drums, six horses pulling a caisson, an Army chaplain who gave a short eulogy which mostly said, "He honored the flag and now the flag honors him...
...A number of the men were on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan...
...In Midland, a man told me, the people are the trees...
...no legal library...
...They don't care if you live or die...
...ANYWAY, IT'S FUNERAL DAY...
...They definitely don't live in New York...
...I hated to leave the country club, but I had to get up early the next morning to fly back home before the hurricane...
...and Stan, and to my sister-in-law's family, including her sister, Dale, her husband, Greg, their three super successful children, Matt, G.T., and Amanda...
...We're headed for oblivion, and the sunflower seed-eating Chinese will take over...
...NOVEMBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 61 B E N S T E I N ` S D I A R Y think this is a demeaning job, but it isn't, because it put food on the table for Col...
...TUESDAY I T ERE I AM AT MY HOUSE in Rancho Mirage, watch-- ing the Bob Dylan special on PBS...
...But people in Midland are playing it cool this time...
...From what I gathered, there had been a huge boom in Midland when oil was spectacularly high in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then it all collapsed...
...He was fantastic...
...Well, maybe he can...
...They really are fantastic people...
...We had a fabulously good meal at the Watergate Hotel dining room, the Aquarelle, and before the dinner, Bob Denman did something so "Denmanesque" it could hardly be believed...
...He said that his father was on the road a lot because he had a business putting peanuts in vending machines in theaters and then picking up the pennies that had been put in...
...Denman saying good-bye, but maybe it was just the climate...
...Anyway, as I drove our Caddy around the country roads, I came to a memory of something Bob Denman had said last night...
...I bet I have spent more of my life listening to Dylan than doing anything else but sleeping...
...Not as many private jets...
...Haunting...
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...Be prepared...
...Just a spectacular genius...
...How blessed beyond words we are by what these men and women did...
...I want to re-mind you, gentle reader, that Bob Denman was the one who took out a North Korean machine gun position by himself and saved his company and refused to be cited for a Silver Star unless his entire unit was...
...The sky turned a glowing pink for a long time, and I could not help think it was Col...
...Wow, is he great...
...The place where the sane people live...
...I saw a concert of his, actually three of them, in the early '60s...
...It was grand and I kept thinking that if Col...
...law office...
...An insult...
...I studied this exhibit for a long time and about half a dozen young women came in to tell me about it...
...And then Col...
...Afterwards, we all milled around the Columbarium for awhile and then Bob Denman did the most touching act I have ever seen...
...The Denmans are amazing people...
...There aren't any trees...
...Probably what got us going the most was the beauBENJAMIN J . S T E I N tiful black riderless horse with a sword and stirrups reversed...
...The whole thing reminded me of a field marshal's funeral...
...A few men and many women volunteers hung around and smiled at each other and then at me...
...At another part of the table, there was a discussion going on of reality TV shows...
...I listened to them for a moment and thought, "Why do we need any reality shows...
...I asked him...
...But I guess it's too late...
...Friendly, well-dressed men and women...
...Too much fluff about his changing from acoustic to electric, but great all the same...
...Midland, Texas...
...Without the sacrifice of Col...
...Not an interior decorator with his own Lear 35...
...We played host to Col...
...I was so moved I begged him to do it again so I could take a picture...
...Then off to the Midland Country Club for a lavish steak and lots of talk about oil and gas...
...He did it when he thought no one was looking and he did it so movingly that it was as if he were brother, honor guard, and nation all saluting at once...
...Those people walk down the streets with grim looks on their faces...
...My father-in-law, the magnificent Colonel Dale Denman, Jr., of Prescott, Arkansas, is to be laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery...
...WEDNESDAY LEX AND I DROVE down to Upperville and Mid/ dleburg, Virginia, to get our minds off Col...
...Beyond great...
...Friendly...
...Former U.S...
...Now, it's coming back like gangbusters as oil and gas skyrocket...
...My wife and I stayed at our apartment at the Watergate the night before...
...Oh, now I remember...
...Denman, when they were both high school students in Prescott, Arkansas, in the 1930s...
...Oh, Colonel Denman, how will we ever get by without you...
...He was so without self-involvement about his meal that he not only turned over the eating to us, but he ate something he normally would not have, enjoyed it, and made no comment about it until asked...
...I flew in here this morning from, well, where was it...
...Nothing at all but ashes and despair...
...Everyone there was not just friendly but enthusi62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005 astic...
...Now, you see...
...That was extremely Denmanesque in its lack of ego, but what came later was even more perfect...
...In my generation, we have an insane sense of entitlement...
...Great audience, great questions...
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...60 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2005 "I think it was night fighting," he said...
...They have a great exhibit in many areas, but above all, a super exhibit of nose art—pinup girls from the noses and fuselages of bombers in World War II...
...The gate was right next to the USO Club...
...I asked him about what life was like in the Denman family during the Depression...
...In the front row was Mrs...
...Then I went back out to the waiting area, where a woman of a certain age had a poodle with nails painted pink...
...B E N S T E I N ' S D I A R Y Among the Sane by Benjamin J. Stein TUESDAY A BIG, DEPRESSING AND AT THE SAME TIME uplifting day...
...I went in there to give them a donation...
...One time our position was overrun by the Chinese...
...He stood, trying to stand as tall as he could for his 78 or so years, and he slowly and solemnly saluted his brother's ashes...
...What was the scariest moment...
...He passed away on September 4, 2004, but because the crush of World War II veterans waiting to be buried at Arlington is so immense, his ashes have had to wait all of this time to be interred at the "Columbarium" at Arlington...
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...We drove up to the Commemorative Air Force Museum and went in...
...They are the real super men and super women...
...Without them, we would not have the free country that Bob Dylan sang about so beautifully...
...Denman saw it, he would be so proud...
...1 Denman, and the towns worked their customary magic...
...He looked at the menu of this great restaurant, obviously concluded it was too much for him with his spartan ways of living, and said, "I wish someone would order for me...
...At home, women have their dogs' nails painted, and a few feet away, men are sent off to fight the terrorists...
...I really love the Hunt Country...
...Denman and Bob, we would have nothing...
...By the way, the scene at the gate at DFW where I started from was eye-opening...
...I thought I was going to be bayoneted at any time, and they went past our position, but then I figured I was going to die anyway, so my buddy and I stood up and started shooting at the Chinese with our carbines, and we hit a few of them, and they retreated back to their own lines...
...I call him a saint...
...Bush gets her stunning beauty from...
...Then off to a reception at the Racquet Club for my arrival...
...I was in school with his brother, Bobby...
...Think of how we live and how the North Koreans live and suffer, and the difference is the men and women under the ground and in the Columbariums here...
...Anyway, the Midland Airport is lovely, new, airy, spacious...
...Not a Rolls Royce dealership...
...I went back to our apartment with my head swimming of thoughts about the heroism of the Den-mans...
...They still were when I gave my speech at the Chaparral Center an hour later...
...To make conversation with this highly reticent man, I asked him what he usually had for dinner...
...He told us about his horrifying adventures in Korea in 1951...
...I will never forget that image...
...They were so close I could have reached out and touched them...
...or personal library is complete without a copy of Tin' Guide...
...As I say, it's where the sane people are...
...Zero...
...What can I say about the funeral...
Vol. 38 • November 2005 • No. 9
