So, last night my wife and kids and I were at a friend’s kid’s bar-mitzvah party.

I know, and you know, that it’s been something of an American Jewish cliche for a long time (since I was a kid) that some parties like this can go the tiniest bit over the top.

I’ve been to a few of those, and they certainly do make you stop in your tracks with your mouth open. If fact, I was in a movie about this called “Keeping Up With The Steins” which was out a couple of years ago (I played Stein). It’s a good movie, too, a very good one, I think.

Last night’s affair wasn’t crazy, though, it was just nice, a meaningful ceremony, and an old, neat, small bar off the loud main area that had a very convivial bartenteder and the UCLA-USC game on, which is, not surprisingly where I spent somewhere between thirty and eighty percent of the evening. I think my wife would’ve been really mad if she wasn’t in there with me.

In addition to the game, though, was a friend of the celebrating family we’ve met several times in the last few years, Ben Berger and his wife, Ray. They’re a couple in their eighties, but one of those lucky and blessed couples that is healthier and fitter than you and me. You would have guessed this pretty fast if you saw them drinking and cheering. Ray is a lunatic USC fan and is not quiet about it.

They’re great folks, though, and it’s good catching up, and I just like them; and they fly around, so to speak, in some lofty political circles of both parties, and are always invited to parties with governors and mayors and congressmen, and I can always get a read from them on who’s a decent man or woman, who’s a pompous martinet, who’s a liar, who’s a hard worker, who’s a jerk, etc.

We talk about Israel a lot (well, it was a bar-mitzvah), and they mentioned who they thought was good and in what way, and then I got another drink for my wife and said to her, “Gee, it’s funny, Ben and Ray are always meeting all these big office holders. They’re not rich, they don’t support anyone in particular, they think both sides are usually full of it, they don’t work for anyone. They’re just two nice people who smile a lot and like football and drinking. I wonder why they’re always getting invited to — ”

And then it hit me. I remembered and started laughing.

See, Ben served in World War Two in North Africa and Sicily, and then was sent to England to stage for the invasion. He was in the first wave at Omaha Beach and went right across Europe. He was wounded and won several large medals.

Including the Congressional Medal of Honor.

That’s when it hit me: Politicians all across the country, from Maine to Texas to Oregon, will always want to hang out with someone who won the Congressional Medal of Honor.

So every so often Ben and Ray get a call like, “Hey, we’re having a conference on this and that, would you like to fly out and stay at the so-and-so and meet Governor so-and-so? He’d like your opinion on…”

Well, sure, say Ben and Ray. They’re a handsome couple, fitter than you and me, as I said, and why not? Plus, Amber and Lance, the parents of the kid whose party it was, met Ben and Ray at temple years ago, and sort of unofficially adopted them as the kids co-grandparents.

Just another interesting moment in the shinig history of the greatest generation.

Ben and Ray would be the first to poo-poo that. They just stand there smiling and cheering for their team, and know that when the moment came and they were called, they stepped up and did the right thing.

And despite their own deep and wide personal failures, our representatives in congress and the senate and the statehouses will always want to touch someone who, unlike themselves, did the right thing long enough and hard enough and exceptionally enough to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY AND STRETCHED AND MOVED AROUND AND WERE HALF AS FIT AS THE AVERAGE EIGHTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER… FOLKS, THE GAME’S OVER, AND THE ALLIES WON.