It's getting worse than Alice In Wonderland, folks:
http://netscape.eonline.com/Gossip/Morton/Archive/2001/010922.html
ben stein at hollywood's a-list table
This Country Is Not Weaker Now,
It's Stronger
SEPTEMBER 17, 2001--I am back in L.A. now. And I keep thinking back to my time in New York after the bombings. It seems like a dream, though I finally got to find some solid ground there. Years ago, I joined the Yale Club of New York. I had never been there until last week, but I spent part of every day after Tuesday there.
It has a huge lounge with leather couches and sturdy tables and immense portraits of George Bush and Bill Clinton and William Howard Taft. It has a great rooftop dining room.
But the best thing is the library--dark, with rich leather chairs, ancient books on crowded shelves and a secluded atmosphere that feels very safe.
I read books about ancient wars between Chinese and Japanese. It was my womb until a loud librarian came along giggling and ruining my peace of mind.
I went down to the Tap Room, ate shrimp and watched TV about the brave men and women who knew they would die but rushed the cockpit of the plane in Pennsylvania and made it crash in a field instead of into the White House. Then I watched about a field trip of inner-city black kids from D.C. who were used as ballast by the terrorists to attack the Pentagon.
I was crying so much I could not see, and the other diners joined in, and I thought, What do you do with such atheistic evil? Can you use an atom bomb against it? Or is it the end of days? Imagine thinking about Satan while eating shrimp at the Yale Club. Maybe these really are the final days.
Imagine thinking about Satan while eating shrimp at the Yale Club. Maybe these really are the final days.
Speaking of the final days...I had a nice dinner with my pal Wendy, a blond knockout, and my lifetime pal Carl Bernstein, at Trattoria dell'Arte. Carl said we should not carpet-bomb Baghdad because it had many nice people there who hated Saddam. But how will we ever get revenge if we worry about killing the innocent? How many innocent there must have been in Dresden or Hamburg or Hiroshima. War is a horrible business. But it's a business we're in now.
Carl's girlfriend came, and we talked about how poorly book writing pays. But money seems like a small subject now. Everything but how the FBI let these killers get through seems small now.
By Friday, it was clear that I would never get a flight out of New York back to L.A., so I hiked down to Penn Station, some 30 blocks or so, bought a ticket to D.C. on the Metroliner and determined to leave the next day.
I bought a flag and put it in my breast pocket. People I had never met came up in tears and hugged me.
On my way back to the Essex House, I bought a four-inch stars and stripes flag and put it in my breast pocket. I walked uptown with it. People I had never met came up to me in tears and hugged me as I passed through Times Square. New York is different now. It's weaker and stronger at the same time. It's more human.
Anyway, Wendy and I watched TV and cried as we saw about men who loved their kids who have disappeared because they stayed in their offices to help disabled friends try to get out of the World Trade Center. This country is not weaker now, I realized. It's stronger.
The train to Washington was fine, although the countryside looked desolate and, then again, just the same. Sailboats on the Severn River in my native Maryland looked as if they were paintings. Surely no one could be sailing on such a sad weekend. But they were.
In D.C., the streets were deserted. My pal Wlady had dinner with me at the Watergate. It was as if we were all under water. Hard to even talk, hard to breathe. This is sorrow in action, and a wild, screaming rage kept under control.
My other pal Mike Long drove me to Dulles the next day. I had been warned not even to bring a nail clipper to the airport and to expect long lines. Instead, there were no lines, no checking of my bags--and I mean ZERO--not any added security at all in the terminal. I was stunned. At the Admirals Club, though, I learned sad news. The flight crew on the Dulles flight that hit the Pentagon were all men and women I had flown with 20 times.
All great people, especially a woman named M.J. and a husband/wife flight attendant duo and a very pretty woman named Maidenberg. All familiar faces, along with the pilot, a former navy Top Gun flyer who always said he would play against me on on my show someday. All murdered.
A man with a swarthy complexion, dark glasses and a little beard was talking angrily to the flight attendants behind me in coach. Men with badges came on and took him off the plane. Yeah! Then I noticed two very young muscular guys with bulky jackets sitting two rows ahead of me. Yeah! Sky marshals!
Two young muscular guys with bulky jackets were two rows ahead of me. Yeah, sky marshals! I was so happy I fell asleep.
Yeah! Much too young and healthy to be in first class otherwise. Sure enough, a flight attendant I knew whispered that they were cops. I was so happy I fell asleep.
Outside the cockpit, there were immense cloud banks with lightning exploding inside them for hundreds of miles at a time. It was like when the warrior gods enter Valhalla. Big things are happening here on earth.
Anyway, when I got to LAX and headed home along the San Diego Freeway, I had a horrible thought. There is no home anymore.
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