Today I recieved no less than three copies of the same story in my email. It isn’t the first time either. This story comes around every month or so. It started in 2003.
There are bunches of these things. So many in fact that I’ve setup a new catagory on this blog called “Email Stuffers“. This particular one is about Ben Stein’s Last Column in E! Online. With the current war there has been a rerun of this “email stuffer”, so I went to Snopes.com to see once and for-all if it is a true story. It is, after all, a grand column that makes a point. Here is a bit of what Snopes has to say about it.
Claim: Ben Stein penned an essay about the nature of stardom.
Status: True.
For several years (through the end of 2003), Mr. Stein penned a regular column for E! Online, and the excerpt quoted above is taken from his final piece for that venue, published on 20 December 2003. He seized the occasion of his last column to muse on the nature of stardom, asking “How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?” and questioning whether actors and actresses who make huge sums of money and live in luxury should truly be considered “stars” or “heroes” in the modern era, especially in comparison to 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 [and] are anonymous as they live and die.”
Mr. Stein’s column evidently struck a chord with a good many readers, as it continues to be circulated widely via e-mail forwarding several months after its original publication.
GREAT! It’s true! While ol’ Ben is sometimes “out there” with his economic ideas, I’ve always loved listening to him and reading his material – even if I don’t agree. This time, though, I do agree. Totally! So much so that I’m going to post the portion of that column that is most often used as an “email stuffer” right here, right now.
Enjoy!
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.Lew Harris, who founded this great site, asked me to do it maybe seven or eight years ago, and I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
But again, all things must pass, and my column for E! Online must pass. In a way, it is actually the perfect time for it to pass. Lew, whom I have known forever, was impressed that I knew so many stars at Morton’s on Monday nights.
He could not get over it, in fact. So, he said I should write a column about the stars I saw at Morton’s and what they had to say.
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.
A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq.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.
I no longer want to perpetuate poor values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.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.
w00t!
You tell ‘em, Ben!
There is MUCH more to this column. It’s a good read. If you want to read it – and you should – you can find the entire thing HERE.
Perhaps we will never end “email stuffers” from orbiting through the ether, but it at least will give me something to research and blog about!
Omar, oout.
