BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Until Death
Stein, Benjamin J .
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Until Death by Benjamin J. SteiM SATURDAY MORNING DISMAL E-MAIL FROM MY BELOVED SISTER, referring me to an obituary for Brigid Flanigan in the New York Times. It set my...
...There are some people I meet, or have met, who strike me as almost impossibly romantic and attractive, with more self-confidence and fullness than humans are supposed to have...
...There were videos of amazingly sadistic torment of caged chickens who live and die in an area the size of a sheet ofpaper...
...If I were President, I would make a more humane life for animals my very first priority...
...And witty-how quick she was with a description and a line that summarized a human in five words...
...Enter some very Good Samaritans who came to New Orleans to rescue the poor creatures who survived...
...Sportsmen...
...The two of them bestrode the world like colossi, the perfect image ofwhat the Beautiful People are supposed to be...
...His wife was a perfect match: stunningly beautiful, supremely self-assured, Vogue-model glamorous...
...Many ofthese were spurred on by media reports...
...She's in a better place...
...Peter worked on sending poor children from pitiful public schools to good Catholic schools...
...Then, when I went to New York in 1974, Brigid and Peter took pity on me, took me in at Peter's club, the Recess, and had me up to their spectacular house in Purchase several times...
...Above all, he was devoted to his children and to his Brigid...
...Then, she had a stroke many years ago and became able to do less and less...
...This isn't good-bye...
...A fine man from KCAL 9 TV in Los Angeles came back the next day and the dog was still there...
...I saw him a couple of months ago in New York, at 80 or so, still criminally handsome...
...How can I feel too bad about her...
...We did a function against laboratory cruelty to animals in front of the federal building in Los Angeles long, long ago...
...5elim, in his fabulous new Audi A8L (what a car...
...Peter had been a summa graduate of Princeton, a Navy carrier fighter pilot in World War II, and mated to Brigid for life...
...Someone once said that John F. Kennedy had lights inside him...
...But Peter and Brigid were swans, mated for life...
...Yes, cattle have to be fed, too...
...Sporting about everything...
...He embarrassed me by letting his Hollywood audience know he had always opposed the war in Iraq, which brought applause...
...But I'll tell him, he gets nowhere by playing this card with Hollywood...
...He brought the dog out onto the stage and everyone went wild with applause...
...56 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...Peter's investment bank, Dillon Read, became UBS...
...I drove home with my trusty driver, Mr...
...Why would anyone have it in his soul to do that...
...That was Peter and Brigid Flanigan when I met them in maybe 1971, when Peter had some high responsibility for international trade at the White House, lived in a palace in Spring Valley, and was super-humanly handsome...
...Yes, ranchers have the right to a living...
...This seems like a nobrainer to me...
...Lights inside him...
...I sat next to a man named Brad Sherman...
...Maybe Brad Sherman was feeding me a line, but if so, I pray the Bush White House wakes up and lets this bill go forward...
...he said...
...It set my mind racing as I walked around in circles in my bedroom with my dogs watching me in puzzlement...
...Now, we're working together again (ifyou can call it work) on a segment ofthe Genesis Awards devoted to people who helped out in the companion animal disaster that was Hurricane Katrina...
...At the Genesis Awards, there were stories about horrifying, vicious kills of dolphins in Japan...
...That was what she meant to him...
...And what a loss of a woman of splendor who, like Peter, was lit from the inside out...
...But how can anyone shoot a magnificent wild horse from a helicopter...
...Only they were not really "beautiful people" in the bad senses of that term...
...The French have a word for it...
...Maybe that's what they were...
...Humane actions starts with the fork," as an award-winning cartoonist said tonight...
...He is a Democrat congressman from L.A...
...He said her name the way you say a word that means your beating heart...
...Of course, he has his kids and his larger family and an infinity of friends, and, above all, he has his faith...
...Often, my topic was kindness to animals, so Gretchen got together with me...
...My wife and I went to their-what must it have been?maybe 35th wedding anniversary party, and it was a marvel of the happiness of people who have a lot of confidence that they have lived their lives right...
...Many perished in horrible circumstances-drowned, starved, electrocuted-when their owners were taken away but no one would take them...
...She is a famous theater and TV star who has devoted most of her life to helping poor animals...
...I kissed the dog and said, "See, Republicans love animals...
...Then the animal went back to his porch-from which his master had long disappeared...
...He worried-as we all do-about the Republican Party...
...So, I am giving them awards for their work getting people to focus on the plight of companion animals who suffered in Katrina...
...I got to hand out awards to TV station people, network people, ordinary people who saved dogs and cats...
...As the kindly but slightly naive man from the American Conservative said (and I am paraphrasing), if we conservatives believe in God, we surely cannot believe He means for us to feed ourselves by torturing innocent animals...
...They were far closer friends of my parents than of mine, but I often saw Peter at the EOB, sympathized with him entirely when that poor wretch, Eagleton, kept Peter from being Ambassador to Spain out of some petty grudge...
...Why would anyone want to slaughter beautiful wild horses...
...But, unfortunately, this does not seem to be completely true...
...Anyway, my wifey and I went home, determined to eat a lot less meat...
...The award winner in this class was actually a man who edits the American Conservative magazine, which seems to have something to do with Pat Buchanan...
...The days of casting a good line were in the past...
...Many, many thousands of cats and dogs became separated from their masters and mistresses...
...But how can it be that when animals are our best friends, we are their worst enemies...
...I thinkher mother, Carmel Snow, had been a famous beauty in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s, and then editor of Vogue...
...The mistress of this whole event is glorious Gretchen Wyler...
...Brigid was always sparkling, literally sparkling, with an accent from a 1930s film about New York rich, but always laughing, good-natured, a perfect hostess...
...He still had his swan...
...Or at least semi-great...
...He brought the dog home in his media truck and now the dog lives with his family in L.A...
...He told me Brigid had heart problems, but he was still upbeat, still hopeful...
...Time passed...
...continued on poge 56 54 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 2006 BEN STEI N ' S DIARY But how lonely we men are without our swans...
...He visited the Holy Father...
...How cold that lake now feels...
...I met up with her decades ago when I used to write a column for the now defunct Herald-Examiner...
...They were devoutly Catholic, amazingly hard-working, strict with their many good-looking children, thrifty (Peter, an heir to Anheuser-Busch, flew and still flies coach), and patriotic...
...He had hip surgery...
...quickly changed, and then headed off to the Humane Society Dinner at the Beverly Hilton, just a hop, skip, and a jump from our house...
...Especially since they are tortured bybeing hung by one leg in the process of slaughter...
...They won't respect him in the morning...
...I wish I could enclose a photo ofthem in 1971 to show what they looked like: just, again, supremely self-confident, amazingly good looking, and filled with the kind of light that seems to come from inside...
...Au revoir" We'll see you again" NIGHTTIME SATUR_9 a me feel great...
...Terrifying, blood-curdling stories of cruelty to dolphins in"tame" dolphin parks in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Israel...
...Anyway, this is Gretchen Wyler's last year doing this event, and she is bound for an eternity of glory...
...What was it that Peter said his future father-inlaw told him about Brigid...
...Thursday, his swan entered immortality, and now Peter, the glorious figure of what we all wish we were, is alone...
...Something like, "She shoots a straight shot, rides a good horse, casts a good line...
...That was how I felt about Peter M. Flanigan...
...This thing is called "The Genesis Awards-20" because it is the 20th year they've been given...
...The best part was this: a poor large black pooch saved a poor black man from drowning in the cold, murky water...
...We men were meant to die first...
...There were stories about torture on factory farms, all so pork chops can be a few cents cheaper...
...There has to be a better way...
...And when I think of Peter and my father and my wonderful doctor Paul Hyman, I think ofwhat Richard Nixon said so long ago...
...He told me that the Bush White House had blocked a bill banning wild horse slaughter out west...
...Many media people did rescues themselves...
Vol. 39 • May 2006 • No. 4
