Leading up to the July 4th holiday weekend this past week muchtime has been spent in the cable and TV media discussing thehullabaloo that has rankled the celebrity community over somecomments by Tom Cruise during a recent TV interview. One could saythat maybe with this country at war there maybe more importantthings to discuss – ad nausiam – than what one celebrity says aboutanother.

One well-known national columnist – Ben Stein recently wrote acolumn (his last) on that very subject. Stein a syndicatedcolumnist better known for his commentary on political andfinancial issues also, until recently, wrote a celebrity column fora national restaurant chain. He has decided to stop writing aboutand glorifying celebrities.

Disgusted with the importance the public places on celebritieshe pinned his final column on who he thinks are the real heroes inthis country. Some of his comments are as follows:

“… I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important.They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people…. But a man or womanwho makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them infront of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we shouldall look up to.”

“How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and livesin 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 inPorsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only rawfruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.”

“They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroesto me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th InfantryDivision 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 allof the decent people of the world.”

“A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bombnext to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bombwent off and killed him.”

“A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, isthe U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with apiece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guardinga station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as itexploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girlalive in Baghdad.”

“The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who havelavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosuleven after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodiesbattered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis fromterrorists…”

“There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament…thepolicemen and women who go off on patrol our streets and have noidea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics whobring in people who have been in terrible accidents and preparethem for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their wholespirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and womenwho work in hospices and in cancer wards.”

“Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairsat the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now youhave my idea of a real hero…”

Comments to ponder as we celebrate the July 4th holidayweekend.