I have to say that the CPAC scene, such as it is, isn't too different from other conventions I have been called on in various professional capacities to cover, except that the overheard conversational snippets occasionally slide into politics. Things like, "they can't name one thing Hillary achieved as Secretary of State. Not one!" Kind of like the bitching one used to hear at the New Music Seminar about bands that were not to the speaker's liking. Except everyone's got money, it seems. They want more, and power besides, but who at a convention does not?
You can always tell who the true patriots are - they're the ones rubbing their asses and junk all over the flag.
ReplyDeleteThey've got money... and they're really snappy fuckin' dressers, from the look of it.
ReplyDeleteThose two must be from the Hillsdale College animal house.
Sorta brings new meaning to "wrapped in the flag," doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteProof, as though more were needed, that some people look better the more clothing they put on.
ReplyDeleteCPAC weekend already? Man, how time does fly.
ReplyDeleteI vote you get David French's phone number, then use it in a "For a good time" message in the men's room. Social experiments and all that.
omg what did you guys get me for cpac?!
ReplyDeleteI'm betting it's already there.
ReplyDeleteAck! I'm having a CPAC Attack!
ReplyDeleteMonkey CPAC, monkey DOPAC.
ReplyDeleteDid CPAC Shakur show this year?
ReplyDeleteCPAC paddywhack give the dog a Boehner.
ReplyDelete(Hi, Ricky!)
ReplyDeleteSee if you can find any Breitbartlings trying to steer people towards their own little hootenanny. There has to be at least one there.
ReplyDelete... this Old Party still hates them homers!
ReplyDelete"I went to CPAC, and all I did was wack in this flag!"
ReplyDeleteWhat truly amazes me is the big brass clangers it must take for Ted Cruz, the Tea Party darling, to decry "crony capitalism" when the Tea Party is run with the money of billionaires, and moreover, that there wouldn't have been a Republican campaign in 2010 and 2012 without the money from crony capitalists, and as well, no one seems to notice that he slid in "repeal Dodd-Frank" as part of that wholesale condemnation of all things Obama, and who would that benefit but the crony capitalists.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's no longer an abject refusal to acknowledge one's own hypocrisy. Maybe we're finally into Doublethink territory here, where the controlled insanity of holding two contradictory thoughts in mind at the same and believing them both to be true is finally ascendent. Lard knows Michele Bachmann has been doing it for years. And, we know from past experience that Cruz is bugfuck insane. And, we know from the right-wing Outer Party peanut gallery that saying something is Orwellian coexists comfortably with a Newspeak tendency to obliterate thought and logic and to use Orwellian euphemisms on behalf of the Inner Party.
If this is what we have to look forward to, it's gonna be a long, long decade.
It would seem certain that Ben Shapiro is there, but, he probably looks like someone's kid dressed up for Sunday school, and can't see over the crowd.
ReplyDeleteI don't know who you should talk to, but you definitely should have a single earbud (left ear, natch) blasting Pere Ubu while you're chugging up that river.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite bit was this:
ReplyDeleteCruz kept saying “young people,” that the party wins youngs when “we
tell the truth,” that they’re laboring under debts that “their deadbeat
parents and grandparents stuffed them with” and look to Republicans for
alternatives.
He's telling this to a bunch of trust-funders.
A bucket of bile!
ReplyDeleteGood heavens, I had no clue that Roy was thus embedded!
ReplyDelete...the world is more dangerous than it has ever been. I grew up during the
Cold War. At least then we had mutually-assumed destruction [MAD].
That declaration seems oddly dissonant, but I can't quite put my finger on the reason...
Go home, Jeff. You're drunk.
ReplyDeleteAlternate name for CPAC
ReplyDeleteThe posts are coming from inside the hotel!
ReplyDelete"Mom and Dad and dear old Granny are all a bunch of deadbeat welfare-queen losers! Vote Republican!"
ReplyDeleteI don't know, maybe that message has more resonance with the sort of people who turn up at CPAC, but I can't see it turning into a generational rallying cry*. This is their strategy, delivered by their beloved folk hero/media darling: manufacture generational warfare. Convince young people to despise their parents. I mean Jesus fuckin' Christ.
*-If anything, it's stupider now than it ever has been, because people my age can't find jobs, and thus are living at home longer than ever, and know both those things have fuck-all to do with social security.
(L-R: Ron Paul, Michelle Malkin)
ReplyDeleteNOW, and ONLY now am I properly chastised. :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, that is pretty rich. But, he's probably talking about government debt, and even on that score, the Repugs have done a lot more than their share to blow it to smithereens. Reagan tripled a one trillion-dollar debt, Bush the Elder added another $1.5 trillion to it in four years, and Little Boots doubled it again from $5.6 trillion to not quite $11 trillion.
ReplyDeleteAnd, a good case can be made that most of the debt incurred during Obama's administration is blowback from Junior's maladministration. Even if we're generous and say only half of Obama's deficit is due to the Bushies, the running total for debt creation since 1981 is: Republicans: ~$11 trillion, Democrats: $4.5 trillion.
But, funnier still is the notion that Republicans "tell the truth." Is there anything, ever, that runs more counter to practical experience than that?
Shouldn't he be out somewhere winning arguments with liberals? Or is he too busy writing about how to win arguments with liberals?
ReplyDeleteYou might run into @Olivianuzzi (formerly of NSFWCorp), and if so might want to compare notes.
ReplyDeleteBurning the flag calls for a constitutional amendment. Leaving skidmarks on it? George Washington would have approved!
ReplyDeleteStep one: find a liberal willing to waste his or her time arguing with conservatives.
ReplyDeleteHippies were getting their asses kicked for that 40 years ago. How times have changed.
ReplyDeleteI'm so old I can remember when desecrating the flag meant something.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Covering up that level of self-satisfied dudebroness is probably going to require a few cubic yards of cement.
ReplyDeleteNo way, an actual person just makes it harder to win.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like only yesterday I was festooning the house with tea bags and trucknutz
ReplyDeleteAmorality plus a superiority complex--with Kung Fu grip!
ReplyDeleteChad and his roomate Riff are putting themselves through SMU doing German animal porn. Chad developed strabismus during the filming of Habt ein Lemur and will probably never work again.
ReplyDeleteStep minus one: Throw a dinner party. Invite a token conservative.
ReplyDeleteReagan tripled a one trillion-dollar debt, Bush the Elder added another
ReplyDelete$1.5 trillion to it in four years, and Little Boots doubled it again
from $5.6 trillion to not quite $11 trillion.
My deadbeat parents voted for those guys, so I guess he's right!
I'm waiting for someone to slam 'em with this bit:
ReplyDeleteKJV:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. THE END OF THE PROPHETS.
And yet they never serve under a flag.
ReplyDeleteSigh. Oh, memories. Godspeed, Roy; I never quite recovered from my infiltration of CPAC. If anyone can make it out unscathed, it's you.
ReplyDeleteI liked the second one in which you gently expose and provide some insight into the more or less regular people who try to hustle up a buck or two at the event. That kind of thing, I think, gives more insight into the movement than whatever Ted Cruz or George Will may have to say.
ReplyDelete"Cruz kept saying "young people", that the party wins youngs when "we tell the truth..."
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, "truth"... such a slippery concept. "Truth" tends to be the version of a story that gets repeated most often and without contradiction. Would it kill Dems to stand up every so often and give the folks a sanitized, civilized version of:
Ted Cruz is a fucking liar," and then go on to list the reasons why?
Used and discarded by the pitiless overlords of the Milk Solids Council. Another victim of heartless leftists.
ReplyDeleteExactly, but in his case they've added a few more layers of "enemy of."
ReplyDeleteAll work and no play make Roy a dull boy.
ReplyDeleteAny day that starts with Pere Ubu is a good one.
ReplyDeleteThere's a certain amount of pathos in the second link. I can't imagine myself ever going to something like CPAC--my knuckles would itch; some of the guys that I went to college with could have been the dads of the two young star-spangled-junk gentlemen in that photo--but your descriptions remind me very much of various no-hope vendors and exhibitors at both professional and hobby conventions that I've been to: the guy who's trying to hitch a ride on a pop-culture phenomenon while he still can (Grizzly Joe, aka Duck Dynasty by way of Bensonhurst), the guy who seems a bit dazed even as he's trying to engage people (I did a double-take at the signature-collecting candidate because he's a dead ringer for someone who hangs around my local RPG store), and heaven help us, the self-publisher with a lot of flattering Amazon reviews from commenters on his favorite blog. (Nice cover shot of the tween with the assault rifle, BTW.) For all I know, some of these people are regulars at library and comic book conventions, and they just change up what they're pitching for the particular audience.
ReplyDeleteIf you're taking requests, let's reach for the stars and see if you can get some face time with Victoria Jackson.
Oh, and one other thing... as much as we laugh at these CPAC specimens, a more constructive thing to do would be to have one of these things of our own, except without the guns and insanity.
ReplyDeleteThey tried this intergenerational conflict crap back in Bush II when they were trying to dismantle SS, and it didn't work then, so why do they think it'll work now? Maybe these guys would shove their parents in front of a speeding train for a couple bucks, but most Americans are a little more sanguine than that.
ReplyDelete"It's a first-class tragic trauma...."
ReplyDeleteDon't trust anyone over thirty percent marginal tax reate.
ReplyDeleteWho are those charming young men desecrating the American flag?
ReplyDeleteTruth kinda like Paul Ryan's heartrending lie about the kid with the school lunch. It's troothy truth.
ReplyDeleteConservatives have always had a deep respect for the flag.. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/01/31/its_time_to_end_busing_in_boston/
ReplyDeleteTweedledick and Tweedledouche
ReplyDeleteClowns Pack Another Car.
ReplyDeleteConservative Pricks Advocating Cruelty
ReplyDeleteDoc, these creeps usually pay about fifteen percent.
ReplyDeleteThe second round-up reminds me a lot of the old Kentia Hall at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video game industry conference in LA). While all the big companies with actual budgets could afford to set up in the main South and West Halls, Kentia Hall was the converted parking garage where tiny developers and designers with not much more than a quirky dream in their hearts and a stack of prototypes could vie for attention from the handful of retailers and journalists who accidentally wandered in while looking for the real showcases upstairs.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the tiny booths at CPAC are trying to sell quixotic Senate campaigns, historical revisionism and David Horowitz, not ballroom dancing simulators, Serbian roleplaying games and force-feedback motors you strap to your ass, so I can't be too sympathetic.
My request: if you run into Veritas Project's James O'Keefe, ask him about his Michael Jackson impression. Trust me.
If Jonah is there? Though I suppose he might recognize and avoid you.
ReplyDeleteNot if Roy sprinkles himself with Cheeto dust.
ReplyDeleteI fear that O'Keefe's Michael Jackson impression would involve kid diddling.
ReplyDeleteWell, one of them might be the bottom.
ReplyDeleteDon't those hideous shorts count as flag desecration?
ReplyDeleteAnd they tried with both sides of the generational divide too. "You'll get your money!" Bush told retirees. (It's just your kids and grandkids that are gonna get screwed; so help me do it.)
ReplyDeleteAnd he seemed genuinely frustrated, puzzled, that people weren't jumping on board.
I actually felt a moment of pity, trying to comprehend what sort of families they came from.
Some talking head on CNN this morning used exactly that phrase to explain why Republicans are totally going to rally behind Christie 200%. There was no mention of whether that actually makes any sense or is the right thing to do, of course. I'm not sure who this was, but they threw in a line about how MSNBC/Maddow is "obsessed" with going after Christie, which made it pretty clear where they were coming from.
ReplyDeletecraiglist ads for furtive, depressing sex
ReplyDeleteIOKYAR.
ReplyDeleteHeh.
ReplyDeletehttp://media.tumblr.com/c28a5f9c328854cf6cf51d01eb52089c/tumblr_inline_mv1lj30lYy1rsufew.gif
~
Jenghazi Rubin was singing his praises today.
ReplyDelete~
Ewww. Considering what Jonah is liable to do with that Cheeto dust, DO NOT WANT. And I suspect neither does Roy.
ReplyDelete(No matter what his sexual orientation is, I doubt he's Jonahsexual.)
I hope you're getting paid well for this.
ReplyDeleteBut where's the cross?
ReplyDeleteWow, I kinda hate to think that some CNN talking head is thinking the exact same way that I'm thinking…
ReplyDeleteI guess it's bound to happen every once in awhile.
The Republican Party is in stasis; they keep re-hashing the same old ideas, the same tired old assumptions and all…
ReplyDeleteBeing alive without consciousness… that's being a vegetable.
Maybe CPAC stands for "Corn, Peas and Carrots."
True, but the problem with "Left" events like this is that it would attract all the people who epitomize the right's caricature of the Left. People with giant puppets, the ultra-vegans, the hard-core PETA types, people with "Free Mumia" sweatshirts, and so forth.
ReplyDeleteWorse, the event would fragment almost instantly into disparate groups, each pushing for their very own sparkle-pony special interest. Back when I did political consulting, I always found the Democratic candidates to be the worst ones to work with--they spent so much time and effort contemplating the possible impacts on minute special-interest groups that they were rendered incapable of making a statement or taking a stand. My GOP clients, however, were focused like lasers on their message and policy--both of which were simple to package and convey.
As Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party: I'm a Democrat." Sadly, that's still all too true today.
I'd make a vorephilia joke, but I like Roy.
ReplyDeleteSo this is what one wears to the Gaylord, eh? Those bow ties - they are clip-ons? I'm never going to be able to pass, even if I can find a blazer three sizes too small.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that my idea was not exactly original... I heard John Fugelsang saying the same thing on the Stephanie Miller Show today. His feeling was that progs could use a pep rally just as much as cons, but I do get your point.
ReplyDeleteUm, about those ballroom dancer simulators..
ReplyDeleteIncoming turkey at 11 o'clock!
ReplyDeleteUpticking just on account of the krautrock gravatar.
ReplyDeleteI was told there would be dildo references here.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly requires more blazer than either of them has been able to find. Future Limblobs. Take THAT, Flotus, with your daily glass of water and your anti-obesity fatwa, take THAT.
ReplyDeleteAlso too... http://s29.postimg.org/3z79vi3nb/bushkie.jpg
ReplyDeleteYES! WE MUST HAVE DILDO REFERENCES! YES!
ReplyDeletePerhaps we should be chipping in - if only to cover incidental disability insurance and vodka.
ReplyDeleteReally, I've been wondering if Roy and Ed are doing this because we don't pay them enough to stay here with us and just be inspiring and witty 23/7 - time off for showers and dental abrasion, of course.
(Nay, nay, t'is not just one person writing this blog and that column. Do not be so silly. And two cannot eat as cheaply as one at Hardee's as we might imagine. We could paypal $5 each and let the boys get matching shorts! With belts!)
That was really excellent click bait.
ReplyDeleteAnd yetis, too, if we can work them in.
ReplyDeleteNow imagine it's a Flying Jonah dispensing Cheeto-dust.
ReplyDelete(Might need larger wings.)
~
You misspelled "profits".
ReplyDeleteBarrie's Tinker Bell is "slightly inclined to embonpoint", which sounds better than "fuller-figured".
ReplyDeleteIf these jerks go in for lighting their farts, they'll be grateful to the lefties that fought that amendment...
ReplyDeleteNever been much of a flagwaver, but I'd agree, just on the ick factor...
ReplyDeleteIs a weenie-wagger in those underwear a flagwaver?
ReplyDeleteFor the Doubting Toms... I mean, SURE! It sounds like so much bullshit, but...
ReplyDeleteThanks, Michael.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your kindness to the attendees who are a little nuts but aren't professionally evil. (Cruz and Ryan, on the other hand...)
ReplyDelete...same thing as every year, duh!
ReplyDeleteThe first story might as well be titled, "Who's Who in Mental Illness."
ReplyDelete