Opinion

S.E. Cupp’s Diary: Pure GOOOOLD

S.E. Cupp Contributor
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I went to Massachusetts this weekend with a friend who wanted to get hypnotized to lose weight and quit smoking. (I will let you know how this works out, but I’m less than hopeful since in the days after he had three cigarettes, a 2.5 lb. lobster, and a fish-and-cheese sandwich. But my fingers are crossed.) Over the weekend, we went into a furniture store in Gloucester. Taped on the counter, the shop owner had a fake photograph of George W. Bush carrying a “Presidency for Dummies” book. I wanted to ask the woman if she knew her name and what year it was, but this seemed cruel. So instead I started singing a David Gray song really loudly as I walked through the store, driving out at least two customers who I think were considering buying something.

Returning the rental car to Hertz in Manhattan, I was asked by the clerk behind the counter if I had a gas receipt, to prove that I am returning the car with a full tank, as I promised I would. I didn’t have such documentation, but suggested she could go check the car if she really didn’t believe me. It was less than 20 feet away, parked outside the office. This was her response—totally unedited: “You have to have a receipt, because we don’t want to have to go out and check the instrument panel ourselves.” If Mr. Hertz is reading this, I want to remind him that sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.

I got home just in time to catch the 3-D tribute to Michael Jackson at the Grammy’s. Well, it was only in three dimensions if you happened to be there—the 25.8 million viewers at home were robbed one dimension. No bother though, watching Beyoncé ooh and ahh in her 3-D glasses was quite enough for me.

The next morning, I read Joan Walsh’s Salon.com column, in which she giddily effuses about President Obama’s handling of the GOP Q&A session in Baltimore. For her, he delivered an unequivocal WWE SmackDown performance, and over one lame lunch in the Harborplace Hotel’s event room B, he, like, totally legitimized her vote: “We did expect him to tangle with—and defeat—his antagonists, politically, rhetorically, intellectually, sometimes morally, far more often than he has this year. So today was a relief and a revelation for a lot of us.” I like that Walsh and the rest of the liberal media elite still think that Obama’s “antagonists” are Republicans. The fact that they’re really just average Americans will make for a great VH-1 reunion special come 2012.

G. Gordon Liddy comes on my television, as he is increasingly wont to do, and he is selling gold for Rosland Capital. I can’t help but be reminded of Goldmember from “Austin Powers.” “That’s the sound of security. That’s the sound of goooooold!” I half-expect him to peel a piece of his own skin off, eat it, and then offer me a “shmoke and a pancake.”

I’m reading Thomas Fleming’s “The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers,” which is well-written and well-researched. I’m only one Founding Father in, but if Washington is any indication of how the rest of the book will go, the intimate lives of the Founding Fathers are like the intimate lives of the Duggar family: the complete opposite of erotic.

I write a piece on pork-barrel spending for the March issue of Townhall, and actually find a way to use the words “pork fried dumplings” in it. For some reason, I consider this a significant victory, and decide I’ve met my creativity quota for the day. Now I can go back to playing battleship in the bathtub.

Later, I read that the world’s most famous adult pirate, Johnny Depp, told the Sydney Morning Herald that we should all just leave child-rapist Roman Polanski alone. And why? “He’s 75 or 76 years old. He has got two beautiful kids, he has got a wife that he has been with for a long, long time.” Ladies, this is your 2009 Sexiest Man Alive. I know I’m swooning.

Finally, a plea for help. Does Apple have a word-count feature? Maybe it does, and I’m just too dumb to find it on my MacBook, but if it doesn’t, this seems a huge oversight. Oh, and the iPad sounds like something Massengill would make. I’ll probably get one though.

S.E. Cupp is co-author of “Why You’re Wrong About The Right,” (Simon & Schuster, June 2008). Her second book, “Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity” comes out in April 2010. She is a columnist for the New York Daily News and a regular guest on “Hannity,” “Larry King Live,” “Fox & Friends,” “Geraldo,” “Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld,” and others.