[Stringer]

This article by Ben Stein is interesting in my opinion, points to the heart of things in our society today. Please take a moment to read and let me know what your thoughts may be.

If you read nothing else this entire year, you will be a better person for reading this brief article (no politics)
Ben Stein's Last 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 '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 ordinance 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.

By Ben Stein

[Stringer]

Well I suppose that this is not as interesting as I may have thought...

[Unknown008]

That's not it Stringer... I will read it. It's just that I don't have much time. I already subscribed to your thread. :)

[Stringer]

That's not it Stringer... I will read it. It's just that I don't have much time. I already subscribed to your thread. :)

Hey Unky, understood. I think that sometimes we need to place our gratitude in the right places as this article says.

It's OK bud,

Stringer

[excon]

Hello S:

It's interesting... I just don't have the same take as Ben Stein...

Charles Barkley once said, that he's NOT a role model... I agree. Contrary to Ben Stein, I have NEVER held movie stars in high regard except for their acting ability...

Now, I realize that most people aren't like me... They have stars in their eyes... I once took a course from a well known and highly popular contemporary figure... All my fellow students were thrilled to be there, just as I was...

Then this highly popular guy got into trouble... All of a sudden, the class that was so popular before, wasn't... It kind of blew me away.. Because I took the course because I wanted to LEARN what the course taught... Others took the course because of the guy who started it...

I didn't understand that... I like my Sony TV. I'd like it, no matter what kind of trouble the head guy at Sony might find himself in.

So, for Ben Stein to write an article that brings attention to the REAL stars of our day is passé for me. There's no news there, except a confirmation in my head that people are rather shallow.

excon

[artlady]

I have never been too impressed with stars much anyway.
My father was a politician and knew the Kennedys and many other so called famous people.

When ,as a child he saw I was impressed when Humphrey called our house,he told me ,in no uncertain terms,he wipes his a$$ the same as everyone.I got the message.

A person I would look up to is someone who is in the trenches making change for all people.

There is a nun who works everyday in my community with a gang task force,she is a hero in my book.

She goes into neighborhoods where few want to go and tries to get these gang members to turn their life around.

I never cared much for Ben Stein but I am with him on this one!

[Stringer]

Hello S:

It's interesting... I just don't have the same take as Ben Stein...

Charles Barkley once said, that he's NOT a role model... I agree. Contrary to Ben Stein, I have NEVER held movie stars in high regard except for their acting ability....

Now, I realize that most people aren't like me... They have stars in their eyes... I once took a course from a well known and highly popular contemporary figure... All my fellow students were thrilled to be there, just as I was...

Then this highly popular guy got into trouble.... All of a sudden, the class that was so popular before, wasn't... It kinda blew me away.. Because I took the course because I wanted to LEARN what the course taught... Others took the course because of the guy who started it...

I didn't understand that... I like my Sony TV. I'd like it, no matter what kind of trouble the head guy at Sony might find himself in.

So, for Ben Stein to write an article that brings attention to the REAL stars of our day is passe for me. There's no news there, except a confirmation in my head that people are rather shallow.

excon

Yes, I agree that people are shallow Ex, and I agree also that the result is what matters. If these people (*stars) can affect change then so be it. But it irritates me that so many of our young and bright give so much and receive so little in return.

Stringer

[Stringer]

I have never been too impressed with stars much anyway.
My father was a politician and knew the Kennedys and many other so called famous people.

When ,as a child he saw I was impressed when Humphrey called our house,he told me ,in no uncertain terms,he wipes his a$$ the same as everyone.I got the message.

A person I would look up to is someone who is in the trenches making change for all people.

There is a nun who works everyday in my community with a gang task force,she is a hero in my book.

She goes into neighborhoods where few want to go and tries to get these gang members to turn their life around.

I never cared much for Ben Stein but I am with him on this one!

I appreciate your comments Artsy. There are many unknown, worthy, and devoted people that go about doing their part (and more) to cause change and they really aren't concerned about their star status. That is not what drives them, it is much deeper than that, it is about going above and beyond for what they believe.

Stringer

[Stringer]

"artlady agrees: This nun keeps her business very private and does not want any glory or fame.Just change for the better of the community."

Yes, and that is what I am saying, she is the true instrument for change. And it is slow and steady.

[Tokugawa]

This thread seems to be running the risk of becoming a "good people" love in. I would warn against this folly as the essence of the subject is, I feel, quite important, however it is only a symptom of the larger "illness".

It is plain enough to see that there is nothing so valued in the western world as "wealth" and "pleasure". They are the new "virtues" of our world, or at least in the minds of what seems to be a large majority of people. The "stars" are just a personification of this virtue, "saints" of this mediocre new order of morality, the God of which is called "market".

Contrary to the feeble rhetoric of free market dogmatists, the "market" loves nothing but mediocrity. When we consider the "great" people and accomplishments in history, we find that NOT ONE was motivated by "profit", or "pleasure". It was rather passion, courage, and a willingness to DEPRIVE oneself of pleasure that brought about such greatness. How much have the truly great people of this world suffered? Willingly at that!

We might pause here to also question the worth of a morality that teaches virtue of "pity". This inevitably leads to that most loathsome of "virtues" which is also to apparent for my liking, that of "self-pity". Those who are familiar with the works of Nietzsche will know exactly where I am coming from, and probably where I am going.

The shift that needs to happen has to take place at a personal level. The individual needs to be rid of ALL "slave morality" and realise that "values" are nothing more than fictional constructs. The market, church,or indeed ANY external source can have no idea of what is "truly" good, as such a thing does not exist! That people would be strong enough to create for themselves their OWN good, their OWN bad! To taste the clean air that such a FREEDOM bestows!

Unfortunately, I do not see this happening anytime soon. People, it seems to me, have become too weak, too fat, too mediocre to even take their own lives into their own hands. I do not mean this in any monetary sense, quite the opposite. For people to follow their OWN passions, and shun the values of the mediocre, that would open the way to great things.

[Unknown008]

I don't know what to say... I totally agree that there are better heroes out there, suffering for others, helping others at the expense of their own life and their family. Yet, it is also true that those are not the people that receive the reward they really deserve. And what's worse, is that the general public is not at all aware of these.

As for the stars Ben Stein talked about, I'm sure few would dare doing those actions in real life. Yet, they are so popular, get wealthy, and all the stuff. Most of them are good only at acting, and nothing more. Their luxurious life allow them to by pass many daily tasks like cooking, cleaning, etc.

Sigh, I think that's all, and I'm perhaps going out of subject... continue.

[Maggie 3]

A person is very shallow, if he has not learned
That love and happness is found in doing
Love and kindness for others.

Maggie 3

[HelpinHere]

Common, he just wanted people to see that what solders give up and do for us is appreciated, and you're turning it into something else entirely.