The real
of the world
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.
of the world
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 journalists 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 chat, 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 memorising 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?
'My highest
and best use as a human'
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 US 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 US 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 US$100 million (S$170 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.
I came to realise 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 realised 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. Life lived
to help others is the only one that matters. 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.
Ben Stein is a top American newspaper columnist.
QUOTE:
NO! NOT THEM
'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?'
QUOTE:
YES! THEY ARE
'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.'
QUOTE:
LIVE TO HELP OTHERS
'I came to realise 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.'