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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…
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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.

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.

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