A Half Dozen of Hollywood's Best

Exclusive commentary by Greg Lewis / WashingtonDispatch.com
May 20, 2003

How long has it been since you were hit on by a Hollywood celebrity? If it's been more than a year, ladies, you've missed out on a new crop of pickup lines that will have you champing at the bit to get back to the L.A. party scene.

Hollywood celebrities have been in the news a lot lately. Much that has been written about them focuses on the fact that those who have come out against the President and against military action in Iraq are short on education and foreign policy experience and long on self-absorption. In their defense, most Hollywood liberals do have high school diplomas (Cher is a notable exception, having dropped out of school in the ninth grade, but Martin Sheen, Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, and Barbra Streisand all managed to satisfactorily complete 12 years of formal education). Some have even finished a semester or two of college before dropping out (these include Janeane Garofolo, Jessica Lange, and Michael Moore, among others). La Sarandon, the exception, has a college degree . . . in acting.

But conservatives will be conservatives, and these celebs, despite their qualifications, are taking loads of grief over their political positions. I myself have even been guilty of not giving them their due. Why one evening just last week, I made an observation to my wife about how vacuous so many Hollywood celebrities seemed. I said, "Can you imagine Brad Pitt having anything to say that would be remotely interesting to an intelligent, educated person like you?"

To which she replied, "Sure. 'Can I get you a refill for your drink?'"

It was immediately clear that I needed to adjust my thinking. I was missing something, not seeing celebs for what they really are, not giving them their due. In an effort to get clear on the matter, I decided to review notes I'd made during my last Hollywood sojourn. In them I found precisely what I was looking for, the thing that Left Coast liberals are truly good at: Coming up with surefire pickup lines that work in pretty much any situation and, I'm guessing, with pretty much any lady.

During the innumerable parties I attended, I had made mental notes of these pearls. I wrote them down later, and then promptly forgot about them. Now, upon rediscovering them, I experienced a feeling similar to that Boswell must have felt upon recalling the time he spent with Dr. Johnson.

To those of you who would complain that attending Hollywood parties is not really work, I offer this: Do you think it's easy yawning your way through one evening after another, listening to libs pontificate about the cause du jour? Can you picture yourself nodding sagely as you listen to Michael Eisner hold forth about how he opposes the President's tax cuts when you know that, in order to minimize his tax hit, Eisner exercised an option to purchase $192 million worth of Disney stock at the end of the year before Bill Clinton's tax rate hikes took effect? Could you deal with the raised eyebrows, not to mention the outright scowls, when the conversation turned to politics and you said, "Well, to me Jack Nicholson's line describing women in 'As Good As It Gets' applies to liberals: 'If you want to know what a liberal is, you just think of a conservative, and then take away reason and accountability.'"

When you think about it, why wouldn't celebs be good at coming up with pickup lines? Picking up women is what most of them have aspired to for as long as they can remember. To my way of thinking, these gems tell us everything we need to know about what Hollywood celebrities are really good at. More importantly, I think, they help to give a background against which the import and gravity of the public political utterances of Hollywood celebrities can be measured. And so, in the interest of furthering our understanding of those who have a lot of money and are good at picking up women, here are the half dozen best Hollywood pickup lines for a new generation. Use them in good health.

"You look great! Who did your tits?"

"Woh! You sure don't need to take a date-rape drug to get laid, do you?"

"Didn't I see you in the heroin chic spread in People Magazine a couple of years ago?"

"Looks like your infected navel piercing has healed up nicely."

"Congratulations. I hear you're a free woman now that the DNA testing on your paternity suit convinced them to settle out of court."

"Would you like to, uh, you know, come over to my, uh, place, and, uh, take some of this stuff I got from this dude on Sunset that's supposed to be, uh, I don't know, uh, but he said I'd dig it and I better have a chick along just in case . . . "