Ben Stein: One of Them (Tribute to Arthur Miller)

The American Spectator ^ | 2/16/2005 12:04:31 AM | Ben Stein

[Brian Allen]

<< Yes sad.

Poor kid >>

I believe that being denied exposure to the manifestation of evil that was Miller might have been a blessing for the child.

And that's not "sad" -- rather, it's cause for celebration.

[Tolik]

....But Arthur Miller, the demigod of artistic integrity, prided himself on defending the system of Stalin and the Gulags and the worst mass murders of all time against the system of Jefferson and Washington and Eisenhower. He considered himself above mass culture and celebrity and yet married Marilyn Monroe. He berated capitalism for its hard-heartedness yet he had a child with Down syndrome whom he consigned to an institution and never once visited.

Ben Stein Nails Arthur Miller !

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[BJClinton]

That'll leave a mark.

[Choose Ye This Day]

Miller was probably an enthusiastic supporter of eugenics, to rid the world of "inferior" humans.

Lower than pond scum.

[ontos-on]

Trenchant insight on Miller and particulary his Salesman play. I never liked the play. I felt it was morose and false in the aspect of the salesman that it chose to make essential. Thus, Loman's suicide is inevitable because the range of possibility was so small. That is why the play was so depressing, even or especially in high school.

Now after many years, when youth's limitless possibilities have been transformed by life's reality, the play still appears so cramped and ill-conceived. [I feel the play's attraction for the young is only in the vein of youth seeing the conventional occupations as not for them. You cant affirm the Salesman's POV unless you see yourself as Other than the conventional. This is the perogative of rebellious youth.] The tragedy in the play was the narrowness of vision in which the family operated. It is definitely claustrophobic. It is art only in the sense that it depicts that narrowness of life. The alternative wider vision is withheld in the play and thereby the author skates by and can pose as one who may know something better as he condemns the fish in the barrel.

I think that it is not surprising at all that Miller appears to be the narrow, self-obsessed sad human being that he now is shown to have been. [See the Terry Teachout obit which is counters the MSM honoraria]

I like the way you juxtaposed responsibility for self and morality as points of view absent from the worldview which miller portrayed as his target in Salesman. You are right on when you state that self-pitying whinning appears to be the essence of the play.

[hopespringseternal]

He berated capitalism for its hard-heartedness yet he had a child with Down syndrome whom he consigned to an institution and never once visited.

We go to church with a down syndrome man, and he is a riot. I will say this: He is the only guy who can get away with running up to anyone and giving them a kiss.

We can't sit too close to him because my daughters and he start trying to entertain each other.

Yeah, he is a handful for his parents, but they love him and he does bring them a lot of joy along with the hardship.

[cynicom]

Brilliant, masterpiece and Miller do not go well in any story.

As for Monroe, he bought something that was umpteenth handed used goods. An indication of his true character. May he and Stalin spend their days holding hands as the fire burns.

[Mr. Silverback]

Ben stein really is one of the smartest human beings around, and I never, ever could have written this as well, or as suscinctly.

[lainde]

bttt

[Old Professer]

Oh Ben, I wish you were here to read what I must say, I studied the craft which you so facilely flick off like careless ashes on a long-forgotten cigar, hoping to drop that one silent brand that smolders up like passion in the steamy back pews of a stodgy protestant drip-dry baptismal edifice on the edge of sanity; then somewhere you changed course and the glare of incandescent lime and the chorus of thrill-trilling sycophants soared upward through your very core until it overpoured your tired old brain and made you ecstatic and wizen all at the same, wrong time.

It has nothing to do with celebrity; it is all about endurance. You will not be forgotten, you may not be so lucky.

[Old Professer]

My most favorite actor and a total political opposite, Jack Lemmon, made Wiilie Loman look like a Brownie in Glengarry Glen Ross.

[Old Professer]

The traveling salesman was the estranged father of our hide-bound moral past; today, he's the purple-clad pimp in the gold-wheeled Caddy at the old Motel 6 just past the antebellum Catholic church at the end of Broad Street.

[Old Professer]

An embarrassment shared is an embarrassment postponed.