BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Clear Eyed
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Clear Eyed by Benjamin J. Stein FRIDAY H UMIDITY. YUCK. When you live in California, you learn to love the absence of humidity. But, alas, the humidity is still there lurking...
...I'll think about those long lunches at The Palm when we were all still alive and friends...
...Before I moved to Los Angeles, lo these thirty years ago, John and Joan were made acquainted with me by the god-like Earl McGrath, record corncontinued on poge 64 62 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 20_9 BEN STEIN'S DIARY pany mogul and art collector...
...A political leadership class that refuses to lead or make tough decisions...
...Then, about two years ago, disaster...
...She used to be a Republican but has become a major league Bush hater...
...How well I recall the long lunches at The Palm where the Dunnes, my wife, and I would laugh and joke for hours...
...John was brave enough to make really cutting (and also very true) remarks about any race, especially Jews, and I recall them all well...
...As Monique--a rare and precious Manhattan Republican-and I were discussing the state of the universe, I saw a familiar woman walk up to the maitre d...
...I have heard Newark used to be a really wholesome, indeed delightful place, but it ain't now...
...Not many wholesome-looking people on the street...
...It was a difficult trip out there...
...Anyway, I won't think about that today...
...Actually, it's a tiny bit noisier than it should be, but I love the food so much, it hardly matters...
...A system of education that often (not always) does not teach decent values, does not teach pride in the free society, does not value life, does not value free speech, hates God, and generally acts as a Fifth Column for those outside the city who hate us...
...John, barely 70, died of a heart attack at his dinner table...
...When the Museum of Joan Didion is opened, we shall donate that box...
...She looked sad but dignified...
...Let's hope it sells a ton of Clear Eyes...
...We finished and I think it will be a great commercial...
...She was, how shall I say this politely.., a bit "reserved" towards me...
...Maybe next time we can do it in L.A...
...Warning: it is extremely powerful...
...Finally, someone from the crew came and rescued us, but it was a harrowing few moments...
...The good die young was all I could think of when I heard about the deaths...
...And no one is doing anything about this...
...I love Mr...
...Overwhelming...
...In case you are not familiar with her yourself, she is a great writer from Sacramento whose subjects cover the waterfront...
...The crowds plus the heat plus the humidity made us both sick...
...Alex and I went from the Essex House to the Museum of Modern Art to see the Munch exhibit...
...They helped me get a book agent, the redoubtable Lois Wallace, and a movie and TV agent, George Diskant, and his business partner, Evarts Ziegler...
...It begins with the immortal words, "A black and white in a black and white...
...A glorious, touching hand-written letter...
...A balance of payments catastrophe that will lead us to become the colony of the petro-states and the Chinese sooner than we care to think...
...My wife was going out with her old pal Linda Fairstein and her husband, Justin Feldman, so I went to dinner with my publicist, the charming Monique Mallory...
...I play a baseball player holding up baseballs in the disguise of eyeballs...
...Well, she always thought I was too outgoing and aggressive, but I am positively a shrinking violet compared with the man who is producing her play...
...A defense establishment that is far smaller and more poorly paid than we need...
...Our driver, an Egyptian without much knowledge of English, could not find the entrance to the stadium and in fact was driving away from it for a while even after we were in front of it...
...They were beyond kind...
...My sister scoffs at my attitude, and she often makes good decisions, so I guess I cannot assume I am right...
...It was Joan Didion...
...We took her last pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and put them in a lucite box...
...Anyway, while wifey and I took the dogs for a walk, I thought about the great question I often think about: Can the United States Survive Until the Year 2046...
...I think it has to be political...
...Except for the humidity...
...Inside the stadium all was well, though...
...It really is nauseating...
...Then, about twenty years or so ago, they moved to New York, and I never saw them again until tonight...
...My new star, Philip Roth, grew up there and went to Weequahic High School...
...I really can hardly think of kinder people than they were to me thirty years ago or so...
...We then waited in another line to check our umbrellas...
...How much of life this explains...
...I did not like downtown Newark a lot...
...A non-white and white underclass that refuses to do well in school, worships violence and materialism, creates babies in families that are not really families and are virtually guaranteed to fail and do poorly at raising children...
...John said so many clever things I can barely start to recall them all, but one of my favorites was, "You will often see a much younger, beautiful woman with an older man, but never with an older poor man...
...I did get a simply beautiful letter of condolence from John when my father died in 1999...
...I was taken aback...
...Everyone connected with the event was kind and capable and highly professional, but that humidity was murderous...
...And now, here is Joan standing a few feet away from me...
...SUNDAY W IFEY AND I ABE HOME in Beverly Hills, where there is also plenty of worship of money...
...Norman Lear, likewise a saint, had us over to a small farewell dinner for them in about 1985 when they decided to move to Fun City...
...In her youth, she wrote some of the best books on the American scene ever written, especially Run River, Play It As It Lays (the best novel about Hollywood I have ever read), and her masterwork of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem...
...She also met a horrifying fate...
...I have said it before, I will say it again: I cannot understand why people live in New York...
...We had to wait in a long line, but when we got to the desk, the clerk was very excited to meet me and comped me for the tickets...
...But she has been through so much hell, how can I judge her...
...She has also written many other great novels and nonfiction, and is an icon of American letters...
...His police novel, True Confessions, was a hilarious and also powerful insight into how Los Angeles or any other large city works...
...We still have the few remaining ones and the red pack in that box on our mantel in Trancas...
...Amainstream mediathat subverts the nation at every opportunity and preaches that we should have no pride in this, the greatest achievement of mankind by the grace of God...
...Then back to my wonderful Essex House for a long nap...
...If I may say so, I had the better arguments, but he makes more money, so I guess he comes out ahead in modern64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2006 BENJAMIN J . STEIN day America...
...My wife and I say them to each other constantly...
...Now, that book is being made into a play, starring Vanessa Redgrave...
...The Very Rich hubby and I had a lively discussion about management buyouts...
...A system of government entitlements that will literally bankrupt the nation if not checked...
...They were amazingly kind to me when I did move out west...
...He is much missed...
...SEPTEMBER 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65...
...I just know what I like...
...We were with Joan and John the day Joan decided she would quit smoking...
...He's for 'em and I'm agin 'em...
...A year later, Quintana Roo died of a lingering viral infection...
...But, alas, the humidity is still there lurking in the East, waiting for the unwary traveler...
...Plus rain plus extreme heat...
...Today, I did a commercial at Riverfront Stadium in Newark for my beloved Clear Eyes...
...They had me to their home in Trancas, Malibu, which was burned down many years ago but was very close to where our modest home now is in Trancas, Malibu...
...Cruel...
...Plus, rain fell on and off through the day...
...Killing...
...We slept the rest of the day until evening when we had dinner with Linda and Justin and a Very Rich couple who are their pals...
...I really detest and loathe the worship of money in New York...
...Greek...
...God bless her...
...We went to one of my absolute favorite places, Milos, on 55th Street...
...Anyway, the Dunnes were amazingly kind to us...
...Don't read it unless you are prepared for getting hit in the solar plexus...
...SATURDAY M ORE HUMIDITY...
...But it's not Philip Itoth's Newark by a long, long way...
...Then we waited in a long line to get on an elevator, only to learn that the Munch display had ended a month before...
...Very tasty fish...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...Joan wrote about her husband's loss movingly in her longtime best-seller, The Year of Magical Thinking...
...He undoubtedly thinks he had better arguments, too...
...Here are the challenges: • A totally fanatical, well-armed Moslem terrorist movement directed at us, paid for by us, soon to have nuclear arms...
...They gave me quotes for my books...
...Well, let us pray...
...God bless her forever and ever...
...They were saintly...
...I know there are good reasons, but I don't know what they are...
...Amanagement class at our largest corporations that openly steals from the stockholders and the workers, for whom the real goal of free enterprise is not the provision of a good or a service or the satisfaction of stockholders, but the quick and mammoth enrichment of management by any means possible, a genuine Marxist nightmare...
...He was nothing even remotely like a racist, just a guy who thought people deserved to be told the truth...
...Once in a while, when we were still getting high, we would take one out and smoke it...
...Another of his bons roots was that his mother, when she was dying, said, "Well, at least I won't have to read about the New Nixon anymore...
...I went over to her and greeted her...
...And she and John were so fantastically good to me when I needed a friend that it really would not matter what she did...
...A masterpiece of feeling and kindness...
...But why was she so "reserved" to me...
...A Hispanic immigration flood that overwhelms schools, hospitals, law enforcement, and neighborhoods, and which gives us great labor and super brave fighting men, but also takes away social cohesion...
...Her late husband was John Gregory Dunne, also a fantastically gifted writer, a genius (like Joan) of screenplays, fiction, nonfiction books, and potent essays...
...Bush and enjoy his courage, but the situation is a lot worse than he thinks...
...She and her glorious husband were magnificent friends long ago, and that is what I will dwell upon...
...I think this is what happens when the middle class moves out and the lower class moves in...
...They had a beautiful daughter named Quintana Roo who had a beguiling smile...
...We went out to the swimming pool and literally kissed the California ground to be home...
...And I really cannot even start to say what good pals they were to me when I was a newcomer in this very tough town...
...Seafood...
Vol. 39 • September 2006 • No. 7
