Conservatives Gone Wild: Life Imitates Art at CPAC
This year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) shows that life does indeed imitate art. In 1997, faux New Republic writer Stephen Glass fabricated "Spring Breakdown", an expose of young Republicans gone wild for booze, babes and Buchanan during the conference. Now, eight years later, CPAC's own credentialed bloggers are offering a similar (if somewhat milder) view of young conservatives gone wild.
Like the Glass piece, CPAC's "Bloggers Corner" and blog aggregator show a fawning, post-pubescent fixation with women, some famous, most attractive and all unattainable. A small sampling from the CPAC blogosphere shows that Ann Coulter's "heroin unchic" look has been replaced as the stuff of conservative fantasies:
Sean Hackbarth of The American Mind
On the first day of CPAC the "star" of the whole conference is the lovely Namrata Singh Gujral. Robert Cox agrees with me that Namrata is the "hottest looking woman at CPAC." Ann Coulter, eat your heart out!
Robert Cox of The National Debate
Lt. Cdr. Joe Cooper (USNR), CEO of American Pride Films Group just stopped by talking about his new film production company. Joe knows a little about marketing because he brought along the hottest looking woman at CPAC, Namrata Singh Gujral, and perhaps one of the hottest women I have ever met. Yow!
Kevin McCullough
Athena, from Terrorism Unveiled, is not only an expert on Middle Eastern accent impersonations. Her olive colored skin, and deep dark hair and eyes make her the perfect author for a blog that gets radically hateful, hate mail.
Matt Margolis of GOP Bloggers
Sean at The American Mind is "star struck" over Namrata Singh Gujral, and Bob Cox was also quite giddy over meeting this lovely lady. I of course, missed her appearance at Blogger's Corner yesterday... They both had to gloat... Of course, neither of them interviewed Miss America 2003...
Note that one of GOP Bloggers' advertisers is ConservativeMatch.com, whose ad features a blonde, trust fund debutante shown under the slogan, "Sweethearts, Not Bleeding Hearts."
Chris Nolan
This is a young crowd. Young as in youthful. This room – this convention by contrast – is filled with fresh young earnest faces. And lots of blondes. This isn't just a digression on cosmetics. Young faces look ahead. Not back.
Clearly, the CPAC bloggers believe that abstinence is for suckers (that is, American teens and UN family planning programs).
There are of course, subtle differencs between Glass' fictionalized account in 1997 and this year's CPAC, especially when it comes to prioritizing right-wing idol worship. Whereas Glass wrote that "40 of the young conservatives ditch Lott's speech and pack a sweaty hotel room on the second floor", Kevin McCullough notes that:
Mike Krempasky [of Redstate.org] may be a great blogger, but by his own admission - his boyfriend skills need some touch ups. Mike dissed his girlfriend for Valentine's Day so when it came to getting to see Cheney tonight or being with his Miss Lovely...he just could not turn down the cute Texan.
All of this rumor and innuendo brings us full circle to Stephen Glass. While his fraud was initially uncovered by Forbes, the extent of his falsehoods was documented by Ana Marie Cox in Mother Jones.
Yes, the Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette fame, who also happens to be a credentialed blogger covering CPAC 2005.
Update: Mike Krempasky of Redstate.org rightly notes that I didn't get the gist of the conversation related by Kevin McCullough above. I reflexively assumed that by "cute Texan", McCullough was in fact referring to Dick Cheney, former CEO of Houston-based Halliburton. Among other things, the 2000 election established that Cheney is still a Wyoming resident, avoiding the Constitutional ban on same-state tickets. Apologies to Mike for my cranial shutdown.
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