Ben Stein knows his celebrities. In fact, the economist, actor, game show host, and writer, whom I am happy to number among my friends, knows so many celebrities that the website E! Online asked him to write a regular column about his encounters with the rich and famous. Stein wrote that column, titled ?Monday Night at Morton?s,? for nearly eight years.

But he?s not writing it anymore.

In his last installment, Stein explained, ?Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole [in the dirt] 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. . . . 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,? writes Stein, ?is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance. . . . He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.?

Hearing about ?real stars? like these did something to Stein?s sense of priorities. As he put it, ?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.?

Stein understands that the most valuable work he has ever done was being a good husband and father and caring for his ailing parents. ?I came to realize,? he writes, ?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.? Amen.