The Conservative Political Action Committee finished its three-day run on Saturday in Washington D.C. It functioned as a meeting place for the most important conservative writers and politicians in the country and remained, for the most part, an echo chamber.
The CPAC conference did not receive much coverage in the mainstream press with the exception of a brief quip delivered by conservative pundit Ann Coulter – the hatchet woman of the right. On Friday, Coulter delivered a speech during which she made another one of her trademark “zingers,” this one directed at presidential candidate John Edwards:
“It turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I’m kind of at an impasse – I can’t really talk about Edwards.”
Coulter’s “provocative” comments are so bereft of wit or humor that she should simply scrap political writing altogether and join the staff of Mind of Mencia.
People are shocked – shocked! – by Coulter’s “faggot” comment. We all knew Coulter was tactless, tasteless, vile, obnoxious and humor deficient, but what would compel someone to take such a cheap swipe at a politician using the common playground vulgarity of a 12 year old?
She was simply playing to her audience.
I know. I’ve been in these audiences.
Three years ago I was the managing editor of the Oregon Commentator, the University’s conservative/libertarian publication of news, opinion and humor. It’s a fine publication and everyone should read it. Although the Commentator receives most of its funding through the incidental fee, it also receives approximately $3,000 dollars a year from the Collegiate Network, an extremely well-funded loose consortium of conservative student publications.
The Collegiate Network started in 1979 as a resource for conservative students who wanted to make an impact on campus. It was conceived as an offshoot of the Institute for Educational Affairs. In the mid-’90s, operations were taken over by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute – one of the oldest conservative organizations, founded during the dawn of the “paleo-conservative” movement in 1953.
Almost every university in the nation has a conservative publication, and almost all of them receive at least a few thousand dollars from the Collegiate Network. In many cases, the Collegiate Network helps students found conservative magazines.
The Collegiate Network’s goal is to bring young people into the “conservative movement” – and that’s exactly how they refer to it, as a “movement.” They hand out money, visit you on campus, wine and fete you, and finally bring you into contact with other “likeminded” young conservatives. They co-opt the tactics and rhetoric of 1960s-era radical leftists, often referring to conservatism as a “revolution.”
Most of the conservative pundits working today started at Collegiate Network publications, including Ann Coulter.
In early 2003, I and another writer at the Commentator were selected to attend the Collegiate Network’s annual conference. That year, the conference was held in Chicago, home of the first Collegiate Network publication, Counterpoint. The Collegiate Network flew us out to Chicago and put us up in a classy downtown hotel for the weekend.
Our first night in Chicago, we “conservative” student journalists filed into the large banquet room for dinner, beer, speeches and a quick meet-and-greet with each other. One of the attendees aptly declared: “This is a total sausage fest.” My memory is a bit hazy, but there were probably only 15 -25 women in attendance out of between 100-125 people.
The attendees were dressed very smartly in their most conservative, dark-hued suits and ties, giving the surroundings a very Sunday school vibe. Some of the men were dressed in the modern-day dandy attire that’s often popular with young conservatives, wearing bowties and looking like clones of Tucker Carlson.
After the speeches, the hotel staff wheeled out the open bar, which consisted of wine and beer – though the paltry beer selection consisted of Heineken, Coors and Budweiser.
“Heineken?” my fellow writer screamed. I half expected him to continue: “Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!” That would have sent some of the bowties twirling.
We double fisted our watered-down ambrosia and commiserated with our fellow attendees. Most of these kids were true believers, vehemently convinced of their rightness – in more ways than one. At this event, they felt unencumbered by political correctness or the watchful gaze of the campus thought police. Primarily, they functioned as sounding boards for each other’s half-baked ideas.
There were two students with whom my fellow writer and I hung out that weekend. I don’t remember their names, though I do remember them starting quite the chaste weekend romance. I’ll call them Joanie and Chachi. Their affection for each other grew more vibrant once they learned that they had something in common: A deep, seething hatred of Abraham Lincoln.
“He was our worst president ever,” said Joanie, who came from North Carolina.
“He suspended Habeas Corpus,” declared Chachi. “He rescinded the rights of states.” At the very least these comments were provocative, at the worst they were highly uninformed.
The Collegiate Network always brings A-list speakers to its conferences. Speakers in the past include David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin and, naturally, Ann Coulter. At the Chicago conference, R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., founder and publisher of the American Spectator, delivered the keynote address. The audience hung on his every word. They laughed at every joke. They ate it up – especially the provocative content, which they found truly cutting edge.
A few months later I was talking to a young guy who worked for the Collegiate Network, and I asked him what his opinion of Tyrell was. He told me – and I paraphrase – that Tyrell had become a joke and had ruined his magazine. No one in the “movement” takes him that seriously, but organizations like the Collegiate Network feel compelled to invite him to events nonetheless because he has been successful and the vast majority of true believers still take him seriously. In short, the movement plays to its audience.
This moment of candid honesty was the most provocative thing I ever heard from a conservative movement insider.
I suspect that the movement thinks that Ann Coulter is an embarrassment too. But she prospers because she remains a provocative and bestselling author. She gives the reactionary elements of the movement a cheap laugh, a cheap thrill. And this will remain a common, irreversible theme as political conferences become dumping grounds, or grooming grounds, for embarrassments like Coulter.