BEN STEIN'S DIARY:I Get Around
Stein, Benjamin J.
B E N S T E I N ’ S D I A R Y I Get Around by Benjamin J. Stein her at all. She did me a huge favor by talking me into getting a Weimaraner dog named Mary back in 1972. That truly changed...
...On to a studio to record my little commentary for “Marketplace,” a very successful radio show about money, business, economics, finance, and so forth...
...25 • E-mail: pylesp@spectator.org 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7...
...I sat down in the chair, the same chair my father used to get his hair cut in for so many years...
...Want to Help Spread Free Market, Conservative Ideas...
...at Rhode Island and Connecticut Avenue...
...Now, I am in Palm Desert...
...How can it be so consistently great...
...I picked on it...
...now for 31 years and know far fewer people there than I did when I moved there in June of 1976...
...Maybe she’s retired now...
...Dogs are our best friends...
...A real star...
...On the way, I passed the American Enterprise Institute...
...Past a hideous office building where the Circle Theater used to be...
...I was with my girlfriend, Pat, and she saved me by walking out and I went with her as some man never knew how close he came to getting shot and how close I came to throwing away my life...
...B E N S T E I N ’ S D I A R Y I Get Around by Benjamin J. Stein her at all...
...The gift will be counted against your required minimum distribution but will not be counted for income tax purposes (in exchange, the IRS does not permit a tax deduction on this amount...
...Or maybe it was later when they moved to 1000 Connecticut Avenue...
...We are clearly not winning and we may well be losing...
...What a charming place, especially Lawrence University...
...Except I still think he was on the right track...
...The great pleasure of walking in D.C...
...I liked him a lot...
...Well, we’ll all meet again at that great dance party in the sky...
...To qualify: • You are age 701/2 or older...
...You cannot imagine...
...I will really miss him...
...It was a powerful, terrifying museum...
...She would not last a day here...
...I have almost no friends in L.A...
...I walked around the town with my escorts from the College Republicans...
...So was Carl Bernstein, my next-door neighbor, and so was my old friend, Ronnie Oberman...
...To think that when she was suffering horrifyingly, beyond imagining, I was growing up in leafy, beautiful, peaceful Silver Spring, Maryland, next door to a beautiful Sligo Creek Park...
...They are super great people and I love and worship them...
...Then off to Detroit again and a long layover and then a flight to Green Bay, an airport from heaven, possibly the best airport in the world, and then a car ride to Appleton, Wisconsin...
...I saw a beautiful girl crossing College Avenue, in shorts and short hair, then had a burger at the student union, then back to my room...
...I went to see a movie called Blades of Glory...
...I don’t really blame 6 2 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 B E N J A M I N J . S T E I N If Bush is the only one who still wants the war, but won’t do what it takes to win it, we’re in real serious trouble...
...I am happy...
...again, mostly to rest, to Detroit, great group, ORT, a Jewish good works group, all of whom I loved to pieces...
...M O N D A Y ERE I AM IN WASHINGTON, D.C...
...It was all for play money, but it was fun anyway...
...And speaking of pulpits, goodbye to Jerry Falwell...
...She is lucky she does not live in L.A...
...I walked from 13th and H to the Brooks Brothers And that’s another reason I love Washington, D.C...
...Now, for 50 years or so, just clay...
...It was like American Bandstand, but local...
...Amazingly, her name was Rachel Stein...
...Do not miss it...
...I finished and the producer told me he had been a friend and colleague of my father’s when he was a young man...
...Memories...
...How can I have been so blessed...
...You must see that movie...
...Almost always, the best meal I get anywhere is at McDonald’s...
...Your donation is transferred directly from your IRA or Rollover IRA to the Foundation...
...I should really be a monk in a cell just saying praise to God all day and all night...
...Why the heck are we still there...
...I wonder, though, how many Jews just as smart and kind as my father were murdered by Hitler...
...That’s a good business model for them but not so great for me...
...It provides counseling and love and meetings and prayer and comradeship for widows, widowers, orphans, and parents of those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and in training...
...We are just not brutal enough to win that war and the killers know it...
...Then a midT H E A M E R I C A N S P E C TAT O R F O U N D AT I O N night visit to Tailgunner Joe’s grave, then back to L.A...
...Yes, that’s what it is...
...The gift is made on or before December 31, 2007...
...She was so young and lithe and beautiful and I am so old and fat and foolish...
...Who knows what play that’s from...
...Just maggots...
...up the Washington Post...
...Tomorrow, Lords, is a busy day...
...The gift is $100,000 or less per person for the calendar year...
...How many dozens of times did I walk over there to have lunch with Pop and Dr...
...This does not sound or smell like constitutional government to me...
...After dinner, a ride to the Hay-Adams with Aram, who is very upbeat about the GOP and the war...
...I have more friends in the desert than I do in Malibu and we’ve had a home there for almost 30 years off and on...
...An obituary for Milt Grant...
...I thought no one on this earth was smarter...
...I was just shaking after I watched it...
...Bonnie, the head of TAPS, should be president...
...I was so proud of my Pop...
...Then my speech and hours of autographs and people telling me memories of Tailgunner Joe...
...I just want to spend my whole life thanking God for being in America...
...Now, he’s dead...
...It doesn’t really matter what I said...
...You cannot imagine what a power he was in my youth...
...Anyway, I still love Pat because of the dog thing...
...I had to get up at 5:30 A.M.—no fun—and then fly to Palm Beach...
...Then, a long nap, and then off to dinner at Karl Rove’s house with my pal Aram Bakshian...
...As far as I can tell, I don’t get paid for it...
...I loved to watch it on Channel 5. Then, a mere 45 years ago or so, it was canceled...
...Maybe that’s what I am and the whole America is my pulpit...
...L.A is not, repeat not, a friendly town...
...Make a Gift from Your IRA THE PENSION PROTECTION ACT OF 2006 allows individuals age 701/2 and above to make current gifts from their IRA accounts directly to nonprofits like The American Spectator Foundation...
...I spoke to a group of donors to TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors...
...Alas, there were none...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...What magic do they have...
...All of that power, all of the fear, and now he’s in a small space in a graveyard overlooking the Fox River...
...What great movies they showed there...
...Be sure to consult with your tax advisor prior to making your gift...
...My life under the palms and her life under the Nazis...
...My darling Victoria Sackett, who used to work there on AEI’s great magazine, is also now working somewhere else...
...Am I right...
...Milt was host of a local dance show called “Milt Grant’s Dance Party...
...I see the war as an unmitigated disaster...
...I slept all afternoon, then spoke to a great group of men and women who all work as Chief Financial Officers...
...For more information, please contact: Patrick Pyles, The American Spectator Foundation, 1611 North Kent Street, Suite 901, Arlington, VA 22209 Ph: 703-807-2011 ext...
...I bought shirts at BB, then went to McDonald’s to buy a salad and had my usual thoughts about Mickey D’s...
...Black Book...
...There’s Munson Hall at GW, where wifey and I lived when she was in law school at GW and I was a poor miserable bureaucrat and a happy, happy teacher at American University...
...Last night I met a really beautiful young woman eating sushi, but that's another story...
...I don’t see it, but Aram is a lot smarter than I am, so he is probably right and I am probably wrong...
...What’s this...
...My sister in every sense...
...I wish I could remember her name...
...I was really dumbfounded...
...However, I may be all wrong...
...I remember I went there once when I was on some evil drug (always prescribed by my doctors) that was making me nuts...
...As I walked farther east on H Street, I could not help but think about something: Why are we in Iraq...
...This is not what we are up to nowadays...
...I think it’s Richard III...
...Or, to put it another way, why did we go into a war we did not intend to win or put enough resources behind to win...
...is meeting young, pretty girls and then never seeing them again...
...Fellner and Allen Wallis and Murray Foss, and now only Murray is left...
...S U N D A Y Ihotel, the Boston Harbor, great audience, Bentley ton ( t entry Since that las T’S ACTUALLY A LOT MORE , I have been to Bos than just five days later great . College ), to D.C...
...That was the most frightening one...
...I keep running into people who knew my Pop...
...I got up in my apartment at the Watergate, prayed for a long time for my dearest friend, Al Burton, who’s got some medical problems, for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, for their families, for everyone who has ever served this great country in war and peace, and then I got dressed and headed to the U.S...
...Quite a few...
...Milt went on to great wealth as a TV station owner, and then I guess he went bankrupt...
...Oh, well...
...Yes, that’s how nutty prescription medicine can make you...
...So many MEMORIES...
...Then it would save me when I joined a 12-step program...
...That really brought up some memories...
...It was a satire about ice skating and very funny...
...Then to the Chamber of Commerce...
...I came close to pulling a gun on someone there...
...The women were so much cleverer than the men, it was almost eerie...
...My sister was J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 6 3 B E N S T E I N ’ S D I A R Y Then, off to Palm Beach on a very early flight...
...I love Will Ferrell...
...I love almost all fast food, but McDonald’s is a true miracle...
...She did me a huge favor by talking me into getting a Weimaraner dog named Mary back in 1972...
...Then, to bed, lying in my bed at the Watergate, listening to the silence...
...I think he has a future in that...
...As a nonstop traveler, I am subjected to terrifying garbage masquerading as gourmet food...
...Today was a busy day...
...That’s another reason I love D.C...
...Then, along L Street and up to Washington Circle, and then fell into step with a beautiful redhaired co-ed from GWU...
...But I was a drug addict and that would eventually come back to bite me...
...That truly changed my life for the better...
...Then, speaking of Pat, past the main IMF building where, I assume, she works at a job my mother and father got her in 1975...
...Once again, it renders me prostrate with happiness to be in America...
...How sad...
...I just came from seeing one of the oddest, most powerful movies I have ever seen, maybe one of the few best, a movie called Black Book about a Jewish woman in Holland under the Nazis...
...I saw Joe McCarthy’s grave...
...I keep running into people there who knew my Pop...
...The Honeymoon Killers...
...Most Americans don’t want us there...
...I haven’t seen her in years...
...That’s all, just for being in America...
...Then, a walk into Georgetown to see the sights of young girls...
...Then we had dancing and played craps, which is a game I love...
...I have said it before and I’ll say it again...
...I’m not, though...
...But I may be wrong...
...But so many others and always cheap and great popcorn...
...Sic transit gloria mundi...
...It is just a miracle that their cheeseburgers, Big Macs, apple pies, and salads can be so consistently great...
...Amazingly, one of the exhibits was about a scientist named Herbert Stein and all of the bad things that happened to him...
...Then, down to the Watergate to get my hair cut...
...I cannot disclose what we talked about except to say that Karl is a genius at imitating accents...
...While I was in Detroit, I went to the Holocaust Museum there...
...Chamber of Commerce...
...Then past 1729 H Street, where the Committee for Economic Development had its research office, of which my Pop was director, in the mid-1950s...
...What times I had there...
...As always, it made me cry...
...It was really, really funny...
...I got out and walked many blocks to 16th and H where the C of C is...
...I’ve been in L.A...
...Pat has not spoken to me since 1976, because she is so mad that I misbehaved towards her...
...So, let’s just leave and let them sort it out...
...It has some nudity but not much...
...My cab got stuck in traffic at George Washington University...
...Most Iraqis don’t want us there...
...If she knew the way I love my dogs, she would be touched, or maybe not...
...She has really good character...
...You have to firebomb cities, kill whole towns, mow down whole families to win this kind of war...
...I still think that...
...This is an innovative way to limit your tax liability, support publication of The American Spectatorand help train the next generation of conservative journalists...
...I was an office boy there, I think...
Vol. 40 • July 2007 • No. 6
