THANKFUL THURSDAY - A MUST READ

Thank you Rhondi for your Thankful Thursday's opportunity to show our thanks.  Today I thank  this author who says it like it is.  Please visit Rhondi at, Rose Colore Glassess to share in the other participants who are thankful too.

"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 'FINAL,' 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 recitin g 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 a re 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 ordinance 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.  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

Thank you Ben Stein...Blessings and love...Jeanne

Comments

[Ronda]

Good Morning my sweet friend,
I just wanted first of all to say just how very much I love your blog. Secondly, just how very sweet, kind, and inspiring you are to all of us.
Thridly, I want you to stop by my blog today. I have something there I want you to pick up...grin.

Love & Prayers,
Ronda

[Diane@A Picture is worth....]

Hi Jeanne,
This is a great story indeed. Thanks for posting.

We have heros all around us often unnoticed. I love Good Morning America's new AmeriCAN feature!

Have a great day!
Diane

[Theresa@TakeASentimental Journey]

Great story Jeanne. Have a Happy Easter dear.

[Shelia]

Morning, Dear Jeanne! Oh, this was a great story and thank you for sharing it! You're so right - we really don't have heroes now a days! I think Roy Rogers was my hero when I was a little girl. I read later on in life that he wouldn't drink or do anything in public that would disappoint a child if they saw him! Today movie and singing stars are just out right open with anything. It is a disappointment, isn't it? Happy Easter, sweet friend.
Be a sweetie,
Shelia ;)

[Pat@Back Porch Musings]

Jeanne this post is wonderful. When I got to the end of the column, I was not surprised to see Ben Stein's name. I believe his thoughts are those of many Americans.

It's been a mystery to me, for years, how "stars" have so much power, when they only memorize lines written for them.

Great Thankful Thursday post!!

Happy Easter!

[Carmen]

Jeanne

What a tribute to all who give day in and day out for others. By the grace of God we all will look to our everyday doing as a powerful way of saying thank you for this one life to give. You dear sister are and will always be my hero. Carmen

[Sally]

Real heroes are never paid with dollars.

[Pat@ mille fiori favoriti]

Hi Jeanne,

This was a wonderful commentary by Ben Stein! Thank you for sharing it. It is so true that media stars are not always deserving of all the attention they receive and are mainly superficial. The true heroes in the world are too often forgotten.

I hope you and your family have a very blessed Easter.

Hugs, Pat

[DeeAnn]

I agree with your really fine post, those who give of their time and roll up their sleeves to help others are the finest and those I really admire. Anyone can write a check to a charity, and anyone can be kind to a friend, but it takes a really admirable person to roll up their sleeves and help the homeless person or reach out to the ill stranger who doesn't seem to want help.

[Beth at Aunties]

This post and story was so right on. Ben Stein knows what is right in the world and I agree with him 100%.
I love the stories you share and the positive spirit of your blog.

Love, Beth