S.E. Cupp’s Diary: Taking my box-o-plagues and going home

It’s been an excruciatingly long week. It began with the Daytona 500, where Tony had a less than stellar day and I spent an interminable 16-hour caution drinking with Andy Levy. For the rest of the week, I’ve been a shut-in, toiling away on my master’s thesis, due inexplicably soon, drowning in Durkheim and Freud and Geertz, reminding myself to eat and bathe, and assuring myself that any of this actually matters. I can sum up my fragile state of mind in one sentence: My mother wished me a happy birthday, and I said, “When is it?”

During a brief respite, I was flipping through the channels the other night only to discover that I have no desire to watch the Olympics, and that every year my interest drops significantly. Initially this puzzles me—as a child I used to really enjoy them. But after thinking about it, I realize that the reason I once liked watching the Olympics so much wasn’t because Katarina Witt had such a great sit-spin. It was because I was allowed to stay up late for two weeks out of the year to watch TV with my parents. It was like a slumber party. But then, so was the first Gulf War (a pass to stay up late and watch TV, that is, not a slumber party—unless perhaps you were a couple of Saddam’s kids.) Now that I can stay up as late as I want—and thanks to the demands of work and insomnia I do — the Olympics have become the Halloween candy of adulthood. Sure I could eat an entire bag of Good & Plenty, Nerds and Twizzlers in one night, but would I want to? Sorry, Vancouver—all I see when I turn on NBC is a pending stomach ache and dental surgery.

Proof that America is intrinsically more interesting to Europe than it is to us: Brits know who Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are, and you have never heard of Cheryl Cole or Katie Price.

I read George Will’s WaPo column in which he says that populism is inherently “whiny.” He’s brilliant and reasoned, blah, blah, blah, but I’m increasingly beginning to suspect that we’ll get an Obama endorsement out of him in 2012. Unrelatedly, would Charles Krauthammer be scared or flattered if I sent him a love letter?

I read that Ellen Degeneres has demanded a $150,000 clothing allowance while on American Idol. It’s actually not a lot of money, and I don’t really have an issue with it. But how much can 10 pantsuits cost?

Like everyone else, I’m counting the minutes until the staged Tiger Woods apology, in which his agent says he will address a group of “friends,” and will not take any questions. Isn’t that the same thing as writing a letter?