Real Superstars

This is worth re-reading (HT: Spouse Corner).  Ben Stein wrote his final bi-weekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's" and dedicated his final column to some real superstars. 

Morton's is a famous chain of steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.  Ben Stein would write about the many Hollywood stars he would see at Morton's and what they would say to him during dinner.

It is well worth your time to re-read Ben Stein's last column.  Here is an excerpt:

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.

The rest of Ben Stein's final column is equally as good. 

Air Force Voices concurs with Ben Steins words.  Sometimes it is good to be reminded that there are Americans who appreciate the efforts of men and women sacrificing and serving worldwide.  We need more stories like this.

Comments

[Major Mike]

Nice find...MM

[Lynette Schurman]

An interesting take on the undeserving "haves" vs the deserving "have nots". Notice, however, that the "haves" in this case are movie stars and such who are usually liberals and targeted as such. Stein could just as easily have used our captains of industry as the undeserving "haves", but in that case he'd have to have taken on the conservatives.

Consider, though, that most of these movie people "making an eight-figure wage" are, by strict economic standards, actually underpaid when you consider the money they make for the studio moguls vs the amount they're paid. Yes, many of them flaunt it, but many more subscribe to progressive causes and take a good deal of flak from the right-wing media for their trouble.

So, is Stein a conservative hack? I think so.