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For those of you that know who Ben Stein is, this will hit home a little harder than those who do not.
Ben Stein's final column --
> >>
> >> 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...
> >>
> >> 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
> >> 'eonline 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.
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >> Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
> >>
> >>
> >> By Ben Stein
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> We truly take a lot for granted.
> >>
> >> Forget the Hollywood 'stars' and the sports 'heroes' ....and pass this
> >> on, and on and on.......
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
Ben Stein's final column --
> >>
> >> 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...
> >>
> >> 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
> >> 'eonline 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.
> >>
> >> 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.
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >> Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
> >>
> >>
> >> By Ben Stein
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> We truly take a lot for granted.
> >>
> >> Forget the Hollywood 'stars' and the sports 'heroes' ....and pass this
> >> on, and on and on.......
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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