For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...
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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 o f 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 unifor m ly 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 peo pl e 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 st reet 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 an d 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.


edit:::::see below

 

edit:::continued from above


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 lif e li ved 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.


Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

 

Hmm, I tried to Snope you.

Its real

http://www.eonline.com/Gossip/Morton...03/031220.html

 

CCLA, love you like a brother, but some things don't deserve do be snoped...No matter who wrote it, it means the same... That's kinda' the point of his article... Because he is a mildy famous writer who writes about celebirties make it any more or less important than if Joe Schmoe would have written it? Same thing with that letter attributed to Andy Rooney... Does not matter who wrote it...

 

It does if people are making it up. Be honest about who wrote it; no need to lie.

 

I'm not saying that... I'm saying does it matter to you if Tom Cruise or Billy Schmuckatele wrote it?

 

Sure it matters who wrote it... if it didn't, people wouldn't attribute the piece to Andy Rooney or whomever...

 

You're missing the point...Would you, as an individual, pay more attention to something that some celebirty wrote as opposed to a common individual?

 

And when you take into account that Ben Stein was one of Nixon's speechwriters and a close personal friend, doesn't that make you wonder if there are some political motives on behalf of Bush in his writing this piece?

Look under enough rocks, and you can find real or imaginary snakes. I have seen that article going around, and could care less who Ben Stein is. I think he wrote a hell of a tribute.

 

This article is old, real old. I saw this several years ago so no, I don't think there are any "under rock" meanings to it.

 

Its a great article but a little surreal.

How old does this guy have to be to realize this stuff.

Sure when I was 6 The General Lee and KITT were my heroes but as I grew up they quickly lost hero status. By the time I was 16 it was plainly obvious who the heroes in our world are.

My wife wonders why I don't care about getting autographs from Ravens players or singers, etc. Its rather simple. They get paid to play, that doesn't impress me.

Those soldiers, firefighters, (most) cops, etc put their lives on the line daily for others. Sure there are some selfish reasons for doing it but so what. They collect maybe 50k a year to risk their lives.

Come on...they are heroes and it shouldn't have taken a guy as smart as Stein this long to figure out.

Better late than never I guess

 

Where, I want those jobs!? The closest I've ever come to 50k per year was my last year in the military, including benefits, and I still had a LONG way to go for the 50k mark. I almost made 40k last year. That's a lot to show for a total of 15 years work and a degree.


Edited to add: I agree with you those are the heroes, not the movie stars.

 

Cops in Baltimore city start at 34k and can get to 45-50k without going above Sgt.

My cousin a Firefighter in Balto City is making over 40k right now.

They are still under paid IMO.

From the baltimore city police website:

 

That is my feeling exactly! I see lots of live music shows and have been to lots of sports events. I have talked to Emmitt Smith and several music performers. I enjoy tolking to them, to find out what they are really like. Some are good people, some are arseholes. I have never desired an autograph and it amazes me to see what lengths people go to, to get one. What is the big deal? Never understood it.