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<blockquote data-quote="moreluck" data-source="post: 575810" data-attributes="member: 1246"><p><span style="font-family: 'Arial'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Arial'"></span></p><p><strong><span style="font-family: 'Verdana'"><span style="font-size: 18px"><span style="font-family: 'Verdana'"><strong>Ben Stein's final column --</strong></span></span></span></strong><span style="font-family: 'Verdana'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Verdana'"></span></p><p><em><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></em></p><p><em><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><em><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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.</span></span></em></span></em></p><p> <em><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></em></p><p><em><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><em><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Ben Stein's Last Column...</span></span></em></span></em><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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 'online FINAL,' 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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..? I no longer think </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Hollywood</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> 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..</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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..</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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 </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Tikrit</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> , </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Iraq</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> . 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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">A real star is the </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">U.S.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Baghdad</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him..</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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 </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">California</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> and a little girl alive in </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Baghdad</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> .</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Mosul</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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 </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Afghanistan</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> and </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Iraq</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> and on ships and in submarines and near the </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Arctic Circle</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> are anonymous as they live and die.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">World</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Trade</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Center</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">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.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Iraq</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> or the firefighters in </span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">New York</span></span></span><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"> . 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</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.</span></span></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'"><span style="font-size: 15px"><span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">By Ben Stein</span></span></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="moreluck, post: 575810, member: 1246"] [FONT=Arial] [/FONT] [B][FONT=Verdana][SIZE=5][FONT=Verdana][B]Ben Stein's final column --[/B][/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][FONT=Verdana] [/FONT] [I][FONT=Comic Sans MS] [I][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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.[/FONT][/SIZE][/I] [I][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Ben Stein's Last Column...[/FONT][/SIZE][/I][/FONT][/I][FONT=Comic Sans MS] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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 'online FINAL,' 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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Beyond that, a bigger change has happened..? I no longer think [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Hollywood[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] 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..[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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..[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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 [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Tikrit[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] , [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Iraq[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] . 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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]A real star is the [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]U.S.[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Baghdad[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him..[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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 [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]California[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] and a little girl alive in [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Baghdad[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] .[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Mosul[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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 [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Afghanistan[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] and [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Iraq[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] and on ships and in submarines and near the [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Arctic Circle[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] are anonymous as they live and die.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]World[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Trade[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Center[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]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.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Iraq[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] or the firefighters in [/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]New York[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS][SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS] . 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[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.[/FONT][/SIZE] [SIZE=4][FONT=Comic Sans MS]By Ben Stein[/FONT][/SIZE][/FONT] [/QUOTE]
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