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How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's
World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which
means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This
heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I
have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall
when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I
came to believe it would never end. It worked well for a long
time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's
change have overtaken it.
On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer
attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich
people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L.
Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right
before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in
an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a
super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was,
though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think
Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly
pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve
to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for
memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no
longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to. How
can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in
insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star"
we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role
model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of
limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates
and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do
their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to
me any longer.
A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked
his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have
been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced
an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent
people of the world. A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent
to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached
it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind
who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad
who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance
on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her
aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a
family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have
lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul
even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies
battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from
terrorists. We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on
the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely
scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and
Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are
anonymous as they live and die. I am no longer comfortable being
a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want
to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at
Morton's is a big subject. There are plenty of other stars in the
American firmament....the policemen and women who go off on patrol
in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive, The
orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in
terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery, the teachers and
nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic
children, the kind men and women who work in hospices and in
cancer wards. Think of each and every fireman who was running up
the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to
collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero. We are not
responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to
us is not terribly important.
God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to
Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for
ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire
ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the
power over to Him. I came to realize that life lived to help
others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best
use as a human.
I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be
as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve
Martin....or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist
as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or
even remotely close to any of them. But I could be a devoted
father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to
the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main
task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well
with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's
help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining
years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis
and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister
and me reading him the Psalms. This was the only point at which
my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the
firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to
help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty,
in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help
others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use
as a human.
By Ben Stein
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which
means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This
heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I
have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall
when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I
came to believe it would never end. It worked well for a long
time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's
change have overtaken it.
On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer
attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich
people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L.
Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right
before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in
an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a
super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was,
though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think
Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly
pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve
to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for
memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no
longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to. How
can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in
insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star"
we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role
model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of
limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates
and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do
their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to
me any longer.
A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked
his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have
been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced
an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent
people of the world. A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent
to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached
it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind
who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad
who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance
on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her
aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a
family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have
lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul
even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies
battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from
terrorists. We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on
the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely
scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and
Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are
anonymous as they live and die. I am no longer comfortable being
a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want
to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at
Morton's is a big subject. There are plenty of other stars in the
American firmament....the policemen and women who go off on patrol
in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive, The
orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in
terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery, the teachers and
nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic
children, the kind men and women who work in hospices and in
cancer wards. Think of each and every fireman who was running up
the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to
collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero. We are not
responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to
us is not terribly important.
God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to
Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for
ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire
ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the
power over to Him. I came to realize that life lived to help
others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best
use as a human.
I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be
as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve
Martin....or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist
as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or
even remotely close to any of them. But I could be a devoted
father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to
the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main
task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well
with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's
help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining
years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis
and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister
and me reading him the Psalms. This was the only point at which
my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the
firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to
help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty,
in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help
others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use
as a human.
By Ben Stein
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
