BEN STEIN'S DIARY: It Was a Very Good Year
Stein, Benjamin J.
b e n s T e I n ’ s d I a R Y It Was a Very Good Year by Benjamin J. Stein huge super day. I am on “vacation.” It’s in quotations because I am never really on vacation. Either I am...
...It has been our home since about 1978...
...I f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 7 3 b e n s T e I n ’ s d I a R Y sure hope so...
...Maybe more so than ever...
...We’re all heirs and the gifts just keep on coming from our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan...
...Then I got back into town, napped again, and then went off to Morton’s for its closing night party...
...Richard Nixon, who gave his whole life for peace, and ended up killed by the people whose stock in trade is hate...
...Richard Nixon, the peacemaker, crucified by the haters for tiny sins after gargantuan steps for peace...
...That latter one, at a resort called “The Seasons,” may be the most beautiful place on this earth...
...b e n s T e I n ’ s d I a R Y It Was a Very Good Year by Benjamin J. Stein huge super day...
...And the teachers...
...I was safe there...
...She has gone on to other subjects dear to her Darwinist heart...
...The article didn’t actually say anything I did wrong...
...Then we got to our house about 1 a.m...
...There are a lot of cranks out there, though, who could distract him...
...We are at our usual table with Phil DeMuth, his wife, Julia, looking very stylish, Barron Thomas, our dear, dear pal, and my indispensable agent, Marcia...
...That’s my idea of heaven...
...Tonight, it’s packed like a sardine can...
...Years ago, I re-acquainted myself with my Junior High School colleague, Sly Stallone, there and met Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (who reminded me she had gone to high school with my niece, Emily...
...He and Pam are awfully good at it...
...Th a r o d n e l p e o i i d n o c r i a i o d t a h o d I . e m f hen, bacK to the house to feed the cats (we m or en an d wom w en w I ho we n ar th - e unifo t rm n h d av s e erected e t , Iwo Jima and all around the Huertgen Forest...
...I just felt sick about that...
...This is a big event in my life...
...They I was so tired I didn’t think I could make it, but I did all of the hard part...
...Consumer spending is strong...
...Could they, tailors or leather workers or rabbis or whatever they were, have imagined this life I have...
...Pam Morton, disciplined about money and I am a wild spendthrift...
...Richard Nixon, who changed all of our lives, starting with my father and mother and going through me and continuing even to our handsome son...
...We unpacked and I jumped into my pool (our pool...
...It’s at 90 degrees...
...Water, forests, mountains...
...I used to take Peter Feierabend there, and now he’s dead...
...The writing comes first and is the spur to the thinking...
...You always made more of a ripple in the pond,” she said poetically...
...only five or six tables were occupied at dinner...
...the manager, Peter, her brother, the billionaire How did we get so different, I asked her...
...That’s America...
...Housing is not big enough...
...7 4 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 ben stein is an writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu...
...I have been walking around the gailydecorated room taking photos...
...WHY do they do it...
...The hot rumor is that Peter is so moved by the turn out that he’s going to start a new restaurant...
...With intelligence and liberal application of monetary policy in a generous way, Bernanke will get us through...
...Plus, I bought at least two dwellings, one in Rancho Mirage and one in glorious, stupendous Sandpoint, Idaho...
...But we are different...
...I knew I was On the way out I had a delightful long talk with my safe there...
...By the way, speaking of strength, to me, it does not seem as if we are heading for a recession, or at least not a big recession...
...Huge billows of steam leapt out of the water into the night sky...
...All in all, she is Todd, Guy, the debonair hosts, all the others whose careful with her food and I eat anything...
...I know I like it...
...waiters applauded me when I walked in...
...I pray he does not listen to the nutcases and there are— again—a lot of them...
...Actually, I guess you can since they have a website...
...That’s the story for all of us Americans, black, white, European, Asian, Mexican, we all get to live incomparably better than our ancestors could have imagined...
...I cringe when I read the course catalogues of today’s universities, but the kids are cheerful and enthusiastic when I see them...
...Long ago, I said to my Pop, “You know, Pop, we Jews live better right now in this country than we ever did anywhere else...
...Actually, I guess that’s small-city America...
...Why...
...It just sort of slimed me...
...Bloomington, Indiana, where IU has an auditorium that rivals Radio City Music Hall for Art Deco 7 2 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 b e n J a M I n J . s T e I n because I am narrator and “star” of a movie about Intelligent Design...
...Why do we live so well...
...It’s just being a civil servant...
...I keep it at 89 degrees year round, as I have often zone...
...just always different,” she said...
...Years ago, famous The day Joan Rivers sued me the waiters applauded me when I walked in...
...The police, the sheriffs, the deputies, the highway patrol, the park rangers...
...You liked to show For years now, it’s been virtually empty...
...But how do politicians do it, getting slimed every day...
...Who gets to live like this...
...Can we even imagine it...
...Why do it...
...And what about the peace officers here at home...
...Then I drove out to our house in Malibu...
...W d h e o ma de it possible...
...They give up their families and their peace of mind and their limbs and their lives so we can live in comfort...
...We spend a big chunk of our lives there...
...It’s perfect...
...Or even ancestors of 100 years ago...
...I tried to get a room sing-along of “Auld Lang Syne” but only dear Barron, Skippy, and my former lawyer, Tom Hoberman, joined in...
...I cried when I pulled out of the parking lot for the last time...
...You only live once...
...Try putting The Seasons into your browser and there it is...
...It really still is hard to believe...
...I write checks for my taxes...
...Not me...
...You are in our prayers...
...I wonder if she ever read where Darwin said the subject of The Origin of Species was extremely complex, and that he was un sure of his conclusions and hoped everyone would continue to believe and hope as they wished...
...Probably not...
...orto y, man wit y thous my w ands fe an of times alk ab did ut I o sit a r l pool...
...Mostly it is the gift of freedom under law, with terrible corruption, but nowhere near as bad as many other countries...
...I love the waiters and captains—Skippy, the educated one, salt and sugar and she eats none...
...She is thin and I am in common with the other customers, but I loved overweight...
...Dogs are God’s angels...
...That Caddy is the ultimate where I just sit back and enjoy the gifts bought by the freeway driver’s car...
...I did the easy part: the part did, and in record time...
...actors were there and singers and movie studio heads and billionaires...
...Yes, housing is terrible, but that is only a small part of the economy...
...These people are not as important as the men and women who fight for us and die for us...
...Richard Nixon, who gave his whole life for peace, ended up killed by the people whose stock in trade is hate...
...Anyway, this has been the busiest year of my life...
...Mario, the valet...
...I think my worst morning of the year was when I awakened in Minneapolis to find at my hotel room door a nasty article about me in the New York Times AsaTURdaY the co-host of a TV show (America’s Most Smartest Model), helped in a tiny way to write a book or two (Phil DeMuth did all of the real work and then some), wrote many columns for the New York Times, Yahoo-Finance, and this fine magazine...
...Small-town America is still vibrant...
...But for the last week it’s been mobbed...
...I used to see legions of beautiful girls there...
...Freedom to be all you can be (as the Army used to say), and freedom not to have it stolen from you (except occasionally) when you make it...
...But they were familiar and now I won’t see them any longer...
...I wonder if my ancestors in some little shtetl in Russia could have even imagined this kind of life...
...Either I am traveling and speaking or I am writing and thinking...
...It’s right on the shores of Lake Pend’Oreille, with a view that goes on forever...
...Letter to Asa Gray,” May 22, 1860...
...charged Cadillac STS-V, and headed off to the desert...
...I guess that explains a lot...
...And to Julie Eisenhower, the archangel of that fine spirit of peace, and her brilliant David, and their children, Merry Christmas...
...And to whom do we Steins owe special thanks for as long as there are Steins...
...I about… well, actually we don’t disagree on that many am Jewish but far from rich and I never had much subjects...
...It’s like losing a good chunk of my world...
...The stock markets, even after the corrections recently, are still at high price/earnings multiples...
...We were owner, they all seemed like family...
...The day Joan Rivers sued me, long ago, the told you...
...car, Then, mighty dogs and super wife with m n y dogs nearby...
...Mostly, it is the gift of freedom that unlocks the fullest of human potential...
...I think I gave about 70 speeches all over the country, was splendor...
...Overall, I love, love, love writing for the Times...
...But I do it all behind the wall of peace and security that the I am an heir...
...I swam for about an hour, and with every stroke, I thanked the Lord God Jehovah, Lord of Hosts, King of the High Places...
...I think Bernanke will “schlep it through,” as the saying goes...
...And then what about the firefighters...
...sister, Rachel, about how blessed we are to live in The modal (not model, “modal”) customer at America...
...When I accelerate, the road lit- blood of the men and women who bled at Anzio and erally goes into a blur, just as the windshield of the at Pusan and the Cho-Sin Reservoir and at Khe San Millennium Falcon did in Star Wars...
...I really do not and Phubai and the Iron Triangle and in the caves of understand why every American doesn’t get a car like Cu Chi...
...No, but they would have liked it...
...It’s not glamorous...
...So do the Poles and the Italians and the Irish and the Scots and the Mexicans and the blacks and the Salvadorans,” he said, or words to that effect...
...Why do they offer such peace when they are by our sides...
...Well, to go on, I have traveled far too much this year...
...Often off and I was much quieter and more disciplined...
...On the other hand, I suspect the Times has many different princes and princesses each with separate domains...
...Think about it: Can you even imagine at all how your ancestors of 400 years ago would gasp if they saw how we live...
...I always loved to show off...
...I knew A I got up and swam in my super warm son...
...She is highly neat and I am a slob...
...Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where the kids actually look wholesome...
...I still cannot get over that a newspaper I write a column for would do that to me...
...When I got to Malibu, I slept in my bedroom overlooking the ocean, with my Brigid dog by my side...
...They swirled about in the 40-degree night, and rays from a full moon filtered through the palms and lit up spokes of luxurious steam...
...The airplanes are super jammed...
...They do at IU, also...
...Still, I sang it and Skippy cried...
...It’s not even close...
...I met Garth Wood, M.D., there and now he’s dead...
...We disagree on many subjects, especially Morton’s is a fabulously rich Jewish businessman...
...And the nurses and the parents who care for their autistic children...
...What would we be without the mothers who give birth to us in agony...
...She is very names I cannot recall...
...It’s in quotations because I am never really on vacation...
...But so much of my life is perfect it’s really sort of unbelievable...
...It’s losing a friend and a home...
...Or maybe so...
...that...
...How many times did I sit there in a safe, neutr u o t d i h s ’ n a few days before Christmas, and it’s Saturday...
...ther H nyway, it’s the end of the year almost, just a Brad and J e o t w M man en were super nice to me...
...And who pays for that freedom...
...Well, all that’s over with now, that woman sliming me in the Times...
...I wish you could see it...
...He’s got his plate full with fears of inflation, a collapsing dollar, and the credit crunch and housing disaster...
...We went there with Martha and Sid Dauman, and now Martha is dead...
...The Seasons also has a clubhouse and a spa and a swimming pool heated year round...
...The problems of the nation cannot be solved by politicians anyway, but only by the people ourselves, one family, one man, one woman, at a time...
...Morton’s is like our living room and dining room put together...
...Probably not...
...The hotels are packed...
...I still do...
...T d n a y d n a m r o N t a d i o h w n e m o w d a n e m - , the the t g I and have six o cats into , all rescues...
...Plus I saw some places I never thought I would see...
...I think they carry a fire of the Divine in them...
...But this is a huge economy and it takes a big torpedo to sink it...
...What’s the upside...
...It is lush living at its best, in a setting that really has to be seen to be believed...
...I give to charity...
...We get to live free of terror by the criminals in our midst because of them...
Vol. 41 • February 2008 • No. 1
