Ben Stein Explains His Holiday Confession

Hello, I’m Ben Stein. You may know me from minor roles in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Wonder Years as an unenthusiastic teacher. You might know me from Win Ben Stein’s Money as the unenthusiastic game show host, or from my role as the unenthusiastic shill for Clear Eyes eye drops.

Or, maybe you know me from my enthusiastic condemnation of the politically correct terminology used during the holid---CHRISTMAS season. My Confessions for the Holiday has turned into a meme that gets passed around during the CHRISTMAS season since 2005. In it, I mention the absurdity of the politically correct terminology we use during this season in America. Why should people feel obligated to say "Happy Holidays" isntead of "Merry Christmas"? Even the White House has stopped calling their obvious Christmas Tree what it is, a Christmas Tree, and instead they are calling it a Holiday Tree.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I did not write my Confessions for the Holiday piece in response to that decision by the White House. The "White House Holiday Tree" part of the meme/email was added in 2009. I don’t even know who added that, but I love it.

Even though it’s definitely not true. The White House still calls it a Christmas tree and the Obamas very openly celebrate Christmas and wish others a Merry Christmas every year they've been in office.

But doesn't it feel like something the ultra liberals would do? It sure does. And when a well-respected eye drop spokesperson like myself speaks up about it, it causes a righteous fury in a certain segment of the population who enjoy viewing themselves as victims being persecuted by a secular horde. Or a Muslim horde. Or a Hindu horde. Some kind of horde, to be sure.

Which works out great for me because I get to sell books and go on talk shows exploiting that righteous fury. Merry Christmas, indeed.

Now, the rest of the meme/email is 100% true. Ok, maybe like 55% true. At least, true in the sense that I, Ben Stein, actually wrote it. Unfortunately, I didn’t write much of the text that is being passed around these days. That whole thing about Dr. Benjamin’s son committing suicide? Not true. But using a well known doctor’s son to manipulate people’s emotions and religious beliefs during the holiday season is my idea of fun!

The part that I really did write was about the offense people take to the term "Merry Christmas." All of this "happy holidays" nonsense. Why should I have to embrace everyone who might be celebrating any number of religious or non-religious holidays between November and New Years? Love and acceptance is not what Christmas is all about. It is strictly about celebrating the birth of Jesus.

Ignore the fact that everyone still says Merry Christmas, from your Korean atheist neighbor, to the sales clerk wearing a turban, to my Jewish relatives, to the exchange students at the local university, to basically every commercial on tv around this time. Forget about the serious issues we have as a society with the extreme commercialism we exhibit at the holiday season. I could talk about that, or the fact that Christmas constantly overshadows all other religious holidays and the ramifications of our overly Christian-centric worldview, but none of that draws the same emotional reaction as saying "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

If I discussed serious issues like commercialism, getting riled up would require people to actually confront their own attitudes and do something about poverty and other social ills. By constantly invoking this War on Christmas nonsense, people can get all riled up, and all they have to do is...get riled up. There is literally no solution to their indignation because there is no real problem.

This is a trick I learned as a speech writer for Nixon and Gerald Ford: strongly denounce some nonexistent controversy and people will focus on that instead of the real issues. It's why I vilely slandered Michael Brown as a scary thug instead of addressing any very reasonable questions surrounding police brutality in Ferguson and around the country. It's a trick the media and the government have essentially perfected at this point, so why shouldn't I get in on the act? I lost a lot of money in that damn Comedy Central game show and the only one who benefited was Jimmy Kimmel. And he doesn't even return my calls anymore.

Well, now it's Ben Stein's turn. Time to start looking out for myself.

Merry Christmas. Buy Clear Eyes.

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I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

A One Act Review of Vonnegut's First Play

Act I

Scene I

SILENCE. Pitch blackness. A door opens and a light switch is flicked, illuminating the small room. A 35 year old man looks at the bookshelf near his bed, overflowing with books he has sworn to read in his lifetime. Gifts, spontaneous purchases, long-sought after novels, all stacked together to create a seemingly infinite abyss of words and ideas and stories.

Among the spines of all colors and sizes, a name sticks out: Vonnegut.

Man

Hmm. Haven't read any Vonnegut in like 6 months. It's about that time.

He picks up the thin book with the soft, black cover. Printed in bright yellow letters are the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE. A quick perusal of the back cover lets the man know this is the first, and one of the very few, plays Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote.

He opens the cover and flips through the first pages. After a few stage directions, a character named Penelope opens the play:

Penelope
This is a simple-minded play about men who enjoy killing, and those who don't.

The man closes the book.

Man

Good enough for me.

The man sits down in his recliner and finishes the play in 3 hours. As a composition instructor at the end of a long semester, it is a pleasure to read professional, interesting, clever writing. Vonnegut's writing is typically sparse, simple, yet elegant. He doesn't give overly descriptive stage directions, so there is a lot of room for interpretation from the actors, which means there is a lot of room for interpretation as a reader.

The play deals with identity, post-war masculinity, and social conceptions of a hero. Harold Ryan is a retired soldier and an old school adventurer. After serving in World War II, he immediately went to the South American jungles to explore, leaving his new wife and young son at home in New York. The wife, Penelope, has tried to accept his disappearance and move on with her life, but her son, Paul, envisions his heroic father coming home every night. Everybody knows his father as a hero and Paul has heard all the stories. Even his mother's new suitors admire and fear the very idea of Harold Ryan

In fact, Harold does return after 8 years. He is the stereotypical alpha male. He demands his wife serve his every need. He knows his reputation as a heroic soldier and he makes sure everyone else does, too. He brags about killing hundreds of men. That number is only eclipsed by his good friend Looseleaf, who was the pilot that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Looseleaf is less enthusiastic about the lives he took.

Things eventually fall apart for Harold upon his return home, culminating in him smashing the prized violin of Penelope's neighbor and friend. Upon seeing the damage and the turmoil Harold's return is causing, Looseleaf opens up to him:


HAROLD
You're an imbecile.

LOOSELEAF
I know you think that.

HAROLD
Everybody thinks that.

LOOSELEAF
Anybody who'd drop an atom bomb on
a city has to be pretty dumb.

HAROLD
The one direct, decisive,
intelligent act of your life!

LOOSELEAF
(shaking his head)
I don't think so.
(pause)
It could have been.

HAROLD
If what?

LOOSELEAF
If I hadn't done it. If I'd said
to myself, "Screw it. I'm going to
let all those people down there
live."

HAROLD
They were enemies. We were at war.

LOOSELEAF
Yeah, Jesus--but wars would be a
lot better, I think, if guys would
say to themselves sometimes,
"Jesus--I'm not going to do that to
the enemy. That's too much." You
could have been the manufacturer of
that violin there, even though you
don't know how to make a violin,
just by not busting it up. I could
have been the father of all those
people in Nagasaki, and the mother,
too, just by not dropping the bomb.
(pause)
I sent 'em to Heaven instead--and I
don't think there is one.

The man underlines this section of the dialogue and puts the book down. He gets up from the chair in which he had been tirelessly reading the book and walks to the closest window. The moon sends its pale blue light through the curtains onto the man's solemn face. He looks out longingly. A single tear falls down his cheek.

He returns to his chair and finishes the play. He then finds a pen and paper and begins to write:

Vonnegut has captured an idea I've tried to articulate for years now. Vonnegut, through Looseleaf, envisions a world where those who kill the most people in the name of war are not looked at as heroes; a world where those who decide to not retaliate are seen as heroic.

One of Penelope's suitors, the neighbor with the violin, is a doctor who considers himself a healer. He is a pacifist who says "peace" all the time. Harold constantly attacks his masculinity and mocks his speech. He considers the doctor "unmanly", but this is the exact type of person Looseleaf envisions as a true hero: the type of person who meets hatred and violence with love and compassion; the type of person who seeks to understand and comfort even the worst among us, like the teacher who stopped a mass shooter with a hug.

Society generally recognizes the heroic nature of this kind of act on an individual level, but as a whole, we are a society that still romanticizes deadly force. We cheer when we drop bombs on an entire country in retaliation for the actions of a few. Even though those bombs achieve absolutely nothing, the "civilized" world wants--needs--the show of force and destruction. We need to satisfy our thirst for revenge. We idolize soldiers with the highest kill counts, despite the fact those kills occurred in wars that the majority of us see as unnecessary. We may disagree with the war, but we still celebrate the warrior.

Happy Birthday, Wanda June questions the role of a hero (defined by violent, hyper-aggressive masculinity) when the wars end. It examines the place of this "traditional" masculinity in times of peace. As Harold discovered, soldiers are often lost in a peaceful environment. They end up abusing their offspring or significant others. They alienate themselves from their friends and family. They kill themselves. 

If the goal of war is to create peace, how do we reconcile our perceptions of violence as heroic when we reach that goal? The loss of traditional ideals of masculinity is widely believed to be a major cause for much of the violence we see today. As aggressive as it can be, masculinity can also be very fragile. It feels threatened by change. Masculinity prefers black and white, binary definitions of truth, so it doesn't understand the fluidity of gender roles and identities, or terms like "transgender." Widening the definition of "man" means that the traditional view of masculinity, that hyper-aggressive, violent machismo, is no longer the only accepted view.

People who define themselves by the old traditions and definitions struggle to accept these changing views and feel as if they are losing power and relevance. That was Harold's problem. He was unable to adapt to a peaceful world. He did not recognize as "Man" anyone who refused to kill or aggressively take what they consider theirs. He identified pacifism as weakness, as an emotional problem, instead of an ideal, and he couldn't accept the fact that the entire world no longer idolized his type of masculinity.  

Harold was unable to adapt to society's changing views, so he lashed out. As a society, and as individuals, we need to continue to re-examine our traditional notions of heroism and manliness; otherwise, fragile men who believe the only masculinity is a violent one will continue to express themselves violently in an effort to attain the masculine identity they so desire.

The man puts down his pen and paper, satisfied. Time to choose another book.

End.

I Love You All...Class Dismissed. 

Reflections of a Vaguebooker

I was guilty of vaguebooking the other day. In my defense, I wasn't looking for pity or attention. I swear it was an honest mistake.

On Facebook, I posted "Fuuuuuck Cancer" randomly with no context. In hindsight, I can see how this could be misconstrued, but when I posted it, I really didn't think of all the ways it could be interpreted. In general, it was an expression of frustration at the pervasiveness of cancer. Specifically, it was a reaction to hearing that a good friend's father was diagnosed with cancer at a relatively young age. It was also a declaration of determination. He will beat it.

Maybe with a paddle?

After posting it, I had dinner and went to see Creed so I forgot all about it. A few minutes into the movie (before Rocky is *SPOILER ALERT* diagnosed with the same cancer as my friend's dad...there is literally no escaping it) my phone's text message notification goes off. I put it on vibrate and checked the text. A good friend asked if everything is ok. I had no idea what he was talking about. Then I see another text almost simultaneously. Again, "are you ok?" The second message continued: "I just saw your post."

Oh shit. I checked Facebook and 5 people had already commented, some to express their agreement and their own experiences with it (these were the types of responses I had anticipated) others asking if I was okay and telling me to keep my head up.

I immediately felt horrible. People thought my family or I was sick. And in a way, it is my family, but I'm not affected so much by it that I need sympathy or even concern. I'm not going to act like I'm directly impacted by it more than I really am. I just feel real bad for my friend.

So it was not my intention at all to get pity, but it was really moving seeing people's reactions. The comments. The texts. That was all truly unexpected and heartwarming. It reminded me that some friends, no matter how often you see or talk to them, will always be there for you. And it showed me that some friends that you really only communicate with via social media can be just as supportive and caring and important as any other friend.

I have ridiculed vaguebooking before, and after doing it and seeing the reaction, I'm even more against it. Most people are really caring, and if they see a post that vaguely alludes to sickness or something troublesome, they will worry. If something is really wrong, it's best just to talk to someone. Even sharing it on social media is fine (and you will clearly get support, as my post just proved) but just tell us what it is, don't make vague references to it. That's a cheap way to get sympathy or start a conversation.

But damn if it doesn't work. At least I know if I ever do get cancer people will like my status.

Thanks?

In all honesty, the comments, and even the likes, feel good. They are ultimately the least you can do to support somebody, but so what? I hope that when the situation arises, I will check on my friends as they did for me. Even people I had just gotten into heated debates with liked the post and checked on me. It's always important to remember the humanity in everybody, even those you vehemently disagree with. And its always good to let your friends and family know how you feel about them every now and then, before the inevitable news of their eventual cancer diagnosis.

Sorry, I meant to end on an uplifting note. Here's Aunt Bethany singing the National Anthem. Hey, she didn't die of cancer!

It was alzheimer's. Sorry again.

I Love You All...Class Dismissed.