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Ben Stein's Diary
Return From Sandpoint
The death of Robert Butler, M.D., stirs memories.
(Page 2 of 2)
“Bell bottom blues, you made me cry…” (Great song by a great singer.)
Anyway, why am I telling you all of this? Because Bob Butler died and it brings back memories.
At Yale when I went back, I had a simply dreadful shrink for two years and then a super great shrink named Sidney J. Berman for a year. He was a prince and a great, great analyst. I credit him with giving me a lot of the self-confidence it took to be a student radical leader.
Now, I would laugh at us as we were. Maybe not, though. We made fun of ourselves. We knew we were not really rebels. We were really the gilded, unbelievably blessed youth of privilege. The real stars were fighting in Vietnam. We had fun. They had balls.
I don’t regret trying to stop the war, though. My father-in-law, Col. Dale Denman, Jr., a highly decorated Vietnam war hero, told me in 1966 that if he were not in the Army, he would demonstrate against it himself. “It’s a meat grinder,” he said. “We’ll never win and good men are getting killed.”
It’s amazing how all of these memories keep flooding back to me. I can recall Col. Denman in his Dress Blues. This man was not only the bravest of the brave, but as handsome a man as God ever made.
His daughter has been my wife since 1968, with a few years interruption.
That is the number one blessing of my life. That, and America, and the fighting men and women, and the dogs lying in bed with me. Psychoanalysis is good. Yale is good. Doctors are sometimes good. Women, good. But dogs in bed with me. That’s perfection. I see Brigid looking at me now to get back to bed with her. Bye.
About the Author
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (11) | Leave a comment
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Ned| 7.12.10 @ 7:05AM
Tom T. Hall sings the above quite well:
There wasn't anyone around cept this old man and me
The guy who ran the bar was watchin ironsides on tv
Uninvited, he sat down and opened up his mind
On old dogs and children and watermelon wine
Ever had a drink of watermelon wine? he asked
He told me all about it, though I didn't answer back
Aint but three things in this world that's worth a solitary dime,
But old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
He said, women think about they-selves, when menfolk aint around.
And friends are hard to find when they discover that you're down.
He said, I tried it all when I was young and in my natural prime;
Now it's old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes;
God bless little children while they're still too young to hate.
When he moved away I found my pen and copied down that line
Bout old dogs and children and watermelon wine.
As far as psychoanalysis goes, I like the new Geico insuarance commerical with R. Lee. Ermey as the Shrink.
Bill| 7.12.10 @ 9:16AM
"We had fun. They had balls."
To recycle an old phrase: There it is.
Quartermaster| 7.12.10 @ 7:34PM
Indeed, it is. At least Ben admits it. Too many of that generation are still proud of their cowardice.
RCV| 7.12.10 @ 11:34AM
Ben: Another wonderful read, for which I thank you!
Antoinette Aubert| 7.12.10 @ 9:42PM
You weren't trying to "stop the war" Mr. Stein. You were aiding and abetting the Vietcong in their aggression against the south. You were trying, and eventually succeeded, in keeping the United States from defending millions of people from communist aggressors. Those same aggressors won the war, killed hundreds of thousands and enslaved millions. Congratulations you must be so proud.
deadwood| 7.15.10 @ 8:50PM
Great stuff.
And we DID have fun (Paid for it though).
george kimball| 7.19.10 @ 4:37AM
Antoinette, I seriously doubt Mr. Stein or most of the antiwar crowd had any intention of aiding the North. Your description of a terrible outcome misses something crucial, which is that the offices running the war had lost credibility long before Tet showed them up. The credibility gap became a chasm, and rightly so.
Stateside, those in charge of the war had little understanding of the enemy and, crucially, feared to tell the truth about the infantry war to the tyrannical McNamara. The body-count lies passing for battlefield 'intelligence' from the military turned the Army into a necrotic conspiracy of misrepresentation - and which destroyed the moral standing of the command.
As an antiwar activist myself in my late teens, I had a very limited grasp of SE Asia geopolitics. Like most Americans I did not see a compelling reason to fight a colonial war in a very distant and alien place. The horrible truth is that virtually everything the government represented about the war was fabricated or falsified. Endless lies, misrepresentations and oppressive mendacity were used to deny the obvious: those running the war really didn't know what the hell was going on.
I am proud today that at 18 I had good enough judgment to grasp the core of the matter: if there was not credible information about the war, it was unprosecutable and unwinnable.
Blame for the outcome does not belong on the war's opponents - it is one of the few issues the American left ever managed to get right. The blame for the horrible rending of the domestic fabric and the outcome in Vietnam lies squarely with the lying federal government and the supporting pro-war cohort who refused to see the obvious, that nothing could be believed.
BUT - the subsequent rejection of Vietnam veterans by the left was and is one of the most disgraceful events of the ensuing decades. More Vietnam vets have committed suicide than were killed in combat.
Now are you the one that is proud?
Jim Packard| 8.3.10 @ 4:07PM
george kimball, regarding "Tet showed them up": Tet was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese army; it lost heavily everywhere it met American and South Vietnamese forces. Ho Chi Minh sacked the general who planned and executed the offensive. Walter Cronkite and other left-wing America-haters spun the facts to deceive the American people into thinking the Tet was a catastrophe for the US and thereby inculcate defeatism.