Lately, several people have had heaps of praise for Andrew Bernstein, an Associate of the Ayn Rand Institute, who lectures on the topic of egoism in The Fountainhead. Bernstein has frequently been referred to as a "really swell fella" or "the personification of Objectivism. A man who is always warm, friendly, polite, and senstitive.
Well, no doubt Bernstein can be a really nice fella (at least when the public is watching) but he can also be a real jerk. I know, because I've seen it first hand.
The incident took place approximately eight years ago, in November of 1991, in Seattle, Washington (my home town).
Andrew Bernstein was in town for a national convention of English teachers. As I recall, the Ayn Rand Institute had sponsored a booth at the convention to promote The Fountainhead essay contest. While in Seattle, Bernstein was staying with Pam Benson (who later went on to become a part of Lyceum Conferences). Pam was working closely with Bernstein at the convention. In fact, as I recall, she even helped him man the booth at the convention.
At the time, I was hosting a Friday night get-together for Seattle Objectivists, twice each month, in my home. I had been involved in Objectivism for many years, and knew most of the Seattle- area Objectivists (including Pam Benson). Since it was Friday night, and a meeting was scheduled, Pam suggested that we take Bernstein out to dinner at a nice restaurant, and then take him to the meeting. Pam offered to pay for Bernstein’s dinner. Pam also told me that, in addition to attending the meeting, Bernstein would speak to our group about egoism in The Fountainhead, which was a lecture he was developing at the time. As the host and program chairman for the Friday night meetings, I was constantly scratching my head for suitable discussion topics for our meetings, so I was thrilled at the idea of having Bernstein address the group. Accordingly, I spread the word to the rest of the group that Bernstein would be speaking to us. As a result, we had an extra-large turnout (30+ people).
I suggested to Pam that we take Andy to a local seafood restaurant that was less than a mile from my home. It was one of Seattle’s better restaurants, and it wasn't cheap, but it's not every day you get to host a famous Objectivist lecturer. Pam agreed with my choice of restaurant.
Our Friday night meeting was scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. Therefore I arranged to meet Pam and Andy at the restaurant, at 5:30 p.m. I took along my close friend and business partner, Mike Maikowski. Both Mike and I were looking forward to meeting Bernstein.
It's important to know that, at the time, I was an enthusiastic supporter of Leonard Peikoff, the Ayn Rand Institute, and everyone associated with the Institute (including Andrew Bernstein). I was also the sworn enemy of David Kelley, whom I regarded as a turncoat traitor to Objectivism.
It’s amazing how much I’ve changed in the last eight years.
Mike and I arrived at the restaurant at the appointed time. Bernstein was a skinny, dark-haired fellow, wearing jeans and a jacket (I think it was leather). He was a little underdressed for the restaurant, but such things aren’t very important in Seattle (and certainly not important to me). Pam introduced us, we shook hands, and were promptly shown to our table. I was looking forward to an intellectually stimulating, enjoyable dinner, with a man who was fast gaining a reputation as a brilliant Objectivist lecturer.
Alas, ‘twas not to be...
Bernstein opened his menu, quickly scanned it, then closed it and put it down and announced, "There’s nothing in here that I can eat."
Needless to say, I was quite surprised. The restaurant was a very fine restaurant, with an extensive menu of choice seafood items. And if you didn’t like seafood, steaks and other traditional fare were also available.
"What’s the problem?" I asked. Bernstein shook his head and repeated, "There’s nothing on this menu that I can eat." I waited for him to explain the nature of his dietary difficulty, but no explanation was forthcoming. Apparently he did not wish to explain the nature of his problem. Naturally I was very curious as to the nature of his problem, but as he was a guest, and we had only just met, I did not feel justified in prying.
"We need to go somewhere else," said Bernstein.
I glanced at my watch. It was 5:45 p.m., on a Friday night in Seattle. Our Friday night meeting was scheduled to start, in the living room of my home, at 7:00 p.m.
"I’m afraid that’s impossible," I told Andy. "It’s Friday night in Seattle, and without reservations we’ll never get in anywhere else, in time. I have to start hosting the meeting at 7:00 p.m."
"Well I can’t eat anything here," Andy repeated. Apparently he was expecting me to Do Something to solve his dietary problem. His attitude seemed to be that he had a problem, and it was up to the rest of us to do something about it.
"We’ll have snack food at the meeting," I told Andy. "Popcorn and potato chips, and such. You could fill up on that. Or we could go to a fast food place. Hamburgers or pizza. That’s the only sort of place where we can be served in time."
"No, I can’t eat fast food," declared Andy.
I was getting a little perturbed at Bernstein. Just what in the hell could he eat?
"Can’t we go someplace where I can get some pasta?" asked Andy.
"Not without a reservation," I told him. "I’m afraid you only have three choices. Snack food at the meeting, fast food somewhere else, or find something on the menu that you can eat here."
"I don’t understand why we can’t go somewhere else," said Andy. Clearly he was upset. And I could not understand his seeming lack of understanding simple English. We simply did not have time to go elsewhere, and still make the meeting at 7:00 p.m. How hard was that to understand?
(It did not occur to me, at the time, that I could have skipped dinner, returned home, and been there to greet my guests when they arrived for the meeting, while Mike, Pam, and Andy went somewhere else for dinner. Without dinner reservations, they would have missed the first hour, or two, of the meeting, but I could have held down the fort until then. However I don’t feel too badly at this oversight, since no one else thought of it either. I guess it did not occur to me, at the time, that a man might be willing to be late for a speaking engagement, just to get a more desirable dinner.)
Faced with the fact that it was either Find Something On The Menu, or Starve, Andy began scrutinizing the menu. He finally found a salad dish that might suffice. When the waiter came to take our orders, Andy entered into a detailed conversation with him; inquiring as to the ingredients in the salad dish, and repeatedly emphasizing that it must not contain certain ingredients. I began to wonder if Bernstein was some kind of strict vegetarian.
At this point, I had several questions on my mind. First, Pam had been running around with Bernstein for several days, and she presumably knew that he had some sort of dietary restriction, so why did she not mention this to me at the time I suggested a restaurant? But she had made no mention of it to me. Second, when told that we would be going out for dinner, why did Bernstein not make mention of his dietary restrictions? Why did he wait until we were in a restaurant, and seated at our table, to drop his little bombshell? And third, why was he not offering any sort of explanation as to the nature of his dietary problem? Granted, it was his private business, and if he wished to keep it private, that was his privilege, but his refusal to explain made him look like a spoiled brat who expected to have his whims catered to, at the last minute, by the rest of us, regardless of the inconvenience. For someone who was being treated to a fine dinner, in an expensive restaurant, I thought Bernstein’s behavior was abominable.
And finally, why was Bernstein not apologizing for disrupting our dinner with his request/demand to be taken elsewhere? Certainly if it had been my dietary regime that required the group to go to a different restaurant, I would have been apologizing profusely.
As we waited for our food to be brought, Mike and I attempted to engage Bernstein in polite dinner conversation. However it quickly became obvious that Bernstein was in no mood for polite conversation. His answers to our questions were short and curt. He looked and sounded, for all the world, like a pouty little kid who was sulking because he couldn’t get his way.
I decided that if Bernstein wanted to sulk and pout, that was his privilege, so I engaged Mike and Pam in conversation. Periodically I made attempts to get Bernstein to join in, and after about twenty minutes or so, he seemed to loosen up and started to converse with us. We asked Bernstein about his work, and about his association with other famous Objectivists. Bit by bit, the conversation got a little boisterous, and ended up with Pam and Andy relating the details of how they had lost their respective virginities (presumably not with each other).
The rest of our dinner was pretty straightforward. However, afterward, Mike make an interesting observation. He pointed out that we had asked Andy all sorts of questions about his work, his background, his life, etc. However, Andy never asked the first question about our work, background, life, etc. Apparently he did not have the slightest interest in us, personally. Obviously he had not been taught how to behave in polite company. At one point, Mike (who was a pilot) mentioned to Pam that he had just received his Instrument Flight Rating that he had been working on for many years. Pam asked several questions relating to Mike’s accomplishment, but Andy just looked bored, and had nothing to say. It was obvious that Andy was happy to talk about himself, but had zero interest in the rest of us. Apparently he expected to be entertained, and catered to.
We finished our dinner and returned to my home for the Friday night meeting. I only had chairs for about twelve guests, so the overflow crowd had to stand, or sit on the floor. At the height of the meeting, we must have had close to thirty people present (a tribute to Andy’s reputation).
Andy sat on the floor as well. He leaned back against the front of an empty chair, and prevented it from being occupied. Then he draped his arm over the seat of the adjacent chair. In other words, Andy managed to occupy two chairs, while the rest of my guests sat on the floor, or stood up. Nice guy, huh? Always thinking of others. A real kind, considerate gentleman.
In my opinion, your Basic Jerk.
The living room was packed with people, King Andy was sprawled across his private throne, and everybody was eager for Andy to begin his talk. I introduced Andy, gave a bit of his background, and then announced that Andy would be speaking on the subject of egoism in The Fountainhead. The room got very quiet, and all eyes turned to Andy.
Whereupon Andy announced that he’d changed his mind! He didn’t feel like talking about The Fountainhead tonight, and anyway he’d forgotten his lecture notes, having left them back at Pam’s house. Andy offered no apology, or attempt to make amends for cancelling his lecture. He simply announced that the lecture was off, and that was that.
I thought that Andy was being very unfair to the audience, since he had previously agreed to give his Fountainhead lecture (or at least that’s what Pam Benson had told me he would do). Was this Andy’s revenge for the restaurant? Or was it just more of his Basic Jerk character? Whatever the reason, there was nothing I could do about it.
Andy’s refusal to deliver his lecture left me in a real bind. I had a living room full of thirty people, and no program to fill the next four hours. I decided to make Andy the centerpiece of the meeting (whether he liked it or not). I asked him a general question about Objectivism. He couldn’t resist answering it. Then someone else asked another question, and we quickly had an impromptu Question & Answer session (which was probably more entertaining than Andy’s Fountainhead lecture).
During the Q&A session, I treated Bernstein with politeness and respect. However if I disagreed with one of Andy’s answers, I said so. I made him prove his assertions. (At one point, Andy was thumbing through a copy of Atlas Shrugged looking for the passage that would prove his claim.)
After the meeting was over, several of my guests commented to me on what a jerk Andy Bernstein seemed to be. His refusal to give his Fountainhead lecture, and his hogging of two chairs when seating was extremely limited, was noticed by more than few people. When I related the story of Bernstein’s behavior at the restaurant, my friends were doubly stunned. THIS is how a top-notch Objectivist behaves?
The next day, I was told by Pam that Andy had been very critical of me during their drive home. Andy had told her that I was doing "tremendous harm" to the Objectivist movement. Apparently he found me intimidating and arrogant. According to Andy, I dominated the conversation, hogged the floor, dismissed arguments without listening to them, and in general behaved like a pompous ass.
I was very surprised to hear this, since I thought I had gone out of my way to treat Andy with politeness and respect. Certainly I had been less-than-happy at his rude behavior in the restaurant, and then at his refusal to speak on The Fountainhead. Was it possible that my private anger had spilled over into my public persona? I didn’t think so, because I’d had ten years of experience in running these meetings. I’d learned early on that the host has a job to do, and that this job frequently required the host to keep his own passions firmly in control. I called up several people who had attended the meeting. I had known these people for many years, and I knew they would give me a straight answer. My question to them was simple; had I indeed behaved like a pompous ass during the meeting?
Their unanimous answer was "no." They thought I had treated Andy just fine, and that I had run the meeting in my usual fair manner; giving everyone a chance to speak, and not hogging the floor. One woman even pointed out how, at one point, I had conceded that Bernstein was right, and I was wrong (on a plot detail in Atlas Shrugged). Hardly the behavior of an intimidating, arrogant, pompous ass.
Considering how Andy had behaved at the restaurant, and later at the meeting, I decided that I need give no additional credence to his personal criticisms of me. Apparently, "refusing to cater to Andrew Bernstein’s whims" constituted "tremendous damage to the Objectivist Movement." Later on, a friend of mine who had attended several Objectivist conferences (where Bernstein was a speaker), explained why Andy was so critical of me.
"You challenged Bernstein," my friend pointed out to me. "You made him get out Atlas Shrugged and prove his claims. Bernstein isn’t used to that sort of treatment. He’s accustomed to being treated like royalty at Objectivist conferences. Andy Bernstein is not accustomed to having his opinion challenged. He speaks, and the audience listens respectfully. They adore him. They never challenge him. You challenged him, so now he hates your guts."
Interesting theory, to say the least. My friend was an unusually astute observer, and very intelligent, so I took him at his word, especially since I’d never been to an Objectivist conference myself.
Anyway, that’s the story of my dinner with Andy. A most unpleasant dinner companion.
At this point, I think the evidence that Andrew Bernstein can be an Absolute Jerk, is overwhelming. There was simply no excuse for his rude behavior in the restaurant. Why would Bernstein have behaved as he did? I think it was simply because he felt he was in the presence of people who weren’t particularly important, or valuable, to him, so he treated them like dirt. He felt no need to be polite and benevolent, whereas a civilized man is always polite and benevolent. That’s the crucial difference between a truly civilized man, and a jerk like Bernstein.
It’s been suggested that perhaps Bernstein was simply having a bad day. My answer is that even a bad day is no excuse for a complete lack of manners. Furthermore, if Bernstein was simply having a bad day, I should have later received an apology from him. That’s how a civilized man behaves, if he slips. I never heard anything more from Bernstein. Obviously Bernstein doesn’t think he did anything wrong. That makes him a first-class Jerk.
It’s also been suggested to me that one episode of being a Jerk does not necessarily make a man a Jerk. That is certainly true. However, in this case, I would have to say that this episode provides overwhelming proof that Andrew Bernstein is a rude, ill-mannered, uncivilized Jerk. When treated to a meal in a fine restaurant, Bernstein demanded to be taken elsewhere, and never bothered to explain why, or attempted to apologize for doing so. He then reneged on his promise to deliver his Fountainhead lecture, and then left the host of the meeting, scrambling to fill the gap. He hogged two chairs during the meeting, when seating was in short supply. How much more evidence is needed?
It’s been pointed out that this particular incident took place eight years ago, and that Bernstein might very well have changed, for the better, since then. Perhaps, but I doubt it. Behavior such as Bernstein’s is automated at a very early age, and seldom changes. At the time the incident happened, Bernstein was a completely developed adult, and such creatures seldom change their basic behavior. In other words, this was not a twelve-year-old kid who might be expected to learn better.
Andrew Bernstein may be a brilliant scholar, and an outstanding speaker, but as a civilized human being, he leaves a lot to be desired. This is why, when I hear how Bernstein is such a kind, thoughtful, sensitive fellow, I can only think to myself, "Pretty good act. And the suckers are buying it."
A lot of people seem to be under the mistaken belief that if a man is highly intelligent, and acts like a warm human being in public, then he is equally charming in private, and is a fine fellow, through and though. It isn’t so. Intelligence, and emotional maturity, are two very different things.
Of course, the final proof for the claim that Andrew Bernstein is a Jerk, is the fact that he’s still associated with the Ayn Rand Institute, in spite of their irrational and unjust treatment of George Reisman, Edith Packer, Linda Reardan, Jerry Kirkpatrick, and Richard and Genevieve Sanford.
Chris Wolf
January, 1998