How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

Ben Stein's Last Column...August 9, 2004Email of The Week

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 Iput a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is"FINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing thiscolumn for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I lovedwriting this column so much for so long I came to believe it would neverend. It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as aperson and the world's change have overtaken it.

On a small scale, Morton's [famous restaurant which was often frequentedby Hollywood stars], while better than ever, no longer attracts as manystars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves anddefinitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, andwe had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendidtalk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendorin the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy itonce was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywoodstars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendlypeople, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a manor woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them infront of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should alllook up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives ininsane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we meansomeone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real starsare not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches orgetting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while theyhave Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nicepeople, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked hishead into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met bya bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject SaddamHussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world. Areal star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to aroad north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off andkilled 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 apiece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding astation. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as itexploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girlalive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavishweddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even aftertwo of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered andstripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists. We putcouples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of ourmagazines.
The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but standon guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and nearthe Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poorvalues, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending thatwho is eating at Morton's is a big subject. There are plenty of otherstars in the American firmament....the policemen and women who go off onpatrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. Theorderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terribleaccidents and prepare them for surgery, the teachers and nurses whothrow their whole spirits into caring for autistic children, the kindmen and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards. Think of eachand every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World TradeCenter as the towers began to collapse.
Now you have my idea of a real hero. We are not responsible for theoperation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terriblyimportant.
God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, hetakes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves. In aword, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors ofthe movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one thatmatters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put itanother way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor asOlivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin--or Martin Mull or FredWillard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman, or as good awriter as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them. But I couldbe a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a goodson to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my maintask in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with mywife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I caredfor and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed withmy father as he got sick, went into extremis, into a coma, and thenentered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of thesoldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize thatlife lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is myduty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to helpothers He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as ahuman.

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Alim