The Modern Conservative Sleaze Factor
Now, Ameroconservatives who believe in the existence of a creator lord think they along are the true, godly Americans who alone hew to the genuine American way, and believe that everyone else is outside the norms of faith and country to a greater or lesser degree. I imagine many of them just cannot understand how a decent American could not agree that their way is the one true blue – or is it red these days -- way. And theocons go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about principle and honor and virtue and self discipline and pious purity, and the need to return to these traditional values if we are to keep this here country from going to hell in a hand cart.
Theocons hold special contempt for the self absorbed, hedonistic, oversexed, baby boomer counter-culture of the sixties that they opine still contaminates American culture because, according to theocons, of the cynical schemes of the liberal-secular elite. The theocon dream is for America to return to the good old days of, say, the 1950s, when theoconservative nuclear family values still reigned. The religious right wing punditry and promotion of this line is endless, involving think tanks such as Heritage, American Enterprise, Discovery Institute, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Answers in Genesis, and a list of pundits including your O’Reilly, Coulter, Beck, Limbaugh, Bennett, Hannity, Malkin, Schlafly, D’Souza, and Stein. Not to mention a whole lot of Ameroevangelical leaders from Warren on down.
What I doubt is that the theocon minority – they make up between a fifth and a third of America depending on assorted factors -- fully appreciate how they appear to the rest of the population. Now, they kind of know they have been screwing up of late what with all the assorted scandals religious, political and personal coming from their ranks. But what they do not get is the extent to which they look like a bunch of out of control cynical hypocrites whose vaunted value system is working out about as well as the maiden voyage of the Titanic. One reason for this mess is because conservative doctrine is not a practical way of running a society, it being too supernaturalistic and unrealistic to produce the results it promises. But there is another reason for the theocon failure that was exposed by the apparent and self-destructive idiocy of conservative tabloid style "journalist" James O’Keefe. The dirty little not-so-secret fact about conservatives is that a lot of them actually adore and delight in the sleazier end of the counter-culture sensibilities they pretend to despise.
After O’Keefe and his darn good looking coworker Hannah Giles exposed dubious ethical practices by some ACORN employees early in 2009 the political right embraced them both as a new and rising hero of conservative values. At first glance that seems to make sense, but a second look shows how extraordinarily deviant was this acclaim, and reveals the sleazy side of the admiration. Think about it, what roles did O’Keefe and Giles adopt to entice the people at the organization. Pimp and prostitute. And they did so in full blown, flamboyant style that actually set off who-the-heck-are-these-people alarm bells among some whom they were trying. In other words they were not acting in a professional journalistic manner intended to maximize results. Nor where they gritting their traditional values teeth and slogging through a necessary job for the cause of virtue. O’Keefe has claimed to be a "radical progressive," so his world-view is probably not what one would call time-honored. What the pair was having was a very, very good time. Video of the couple rises to the egregious. Giles wore a miniskirt beneath a bare midriff, and one stretch shows her walking up the stair from behind, her nicely proportioned ass swaying full tilt to show off to the camera. She and he knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew that they were going to get away with it vis-à-vis their traditional values audience because the values of so many of those conservatives are not really all that traditional.
Now, here’s what should have happened when Giles and O’Keefe came up with their ACORN expose. It was understandable that the right exploited the evidence that a liberal oriented organization was not consistently ethical – the left would do the same in reverse. But theocons who claim to be traditionalists value wise should have rebuked O’Keefe and Giles for pushing the pimp-prostitute thing over the top, reminding them that the sex trade does grievous harm to many women. Had that occurred then maybe O’Keefe would have realized he needed to be more careful about what he did in the future. Instead the gung-ho adoration of his fawning "conservative" fans – O’Keefe became a favored regular on the conservative talk circuit --jacked up his hubris to such an extreme that he thought he could get away with invading a senator’s office and pulling off a publicity stunt that would garner him yet more adulation. Instead the inanely foolish action he is alleged to have committed blew up not only in his own face, but did some damage to the conservative cause – the anti-ACORN expose has been thrown into greater question, it looks like O’Keefe will never again be credible, and theocons look like smarmy dolts for giddily supporting the knave. It’s a classic but common example of conservative blowback.
So why did the right dance with delight, and without qualification or shame adopt O’Keefe and Giles despite the edgy aspects of their work? Because they liked it. You see, there is a problem with being conservative. It’s rather dull. Social traditionalism and virtue is square and unexciting. Always has been, always will be. I recall how in my youth church leaders droned on about how good kids knew that being wholesome was even more fun than being bad. Even then we knew this claim was at best an exaggeration. This is one reason that even as the 1950s square culture of conformity cruised along with Father Knows Best, a growing segment of the population was already beginning to rebel without an obvious cause via a budding, rock and roll (slang for sex) dominated counter-culture headed by Elvis whose pelvic thrusting most certainly was explicitly sexual if you watch video of TV appearances in which they did not cut him off below the waist. Also a leading agent of radical change was Huge Hefner, whose best selling Playboy was mainstreaming porn. Timothy Leary was finding uses for LSD far beyond those imagined by the CIA. By the 60s the rebellion was full blown, with the baby boomers adopting a lifestyle that seemed like it was arriving from Mars to the "Greatest Generation" parents who grew up in the Depression and fought WW II. In James Michener’s well-executed book about the era, The Drifters set in 1969, the middle aged main character based on Michener wanders through the drug warrens of Marrakech looking for a younger character. He observes that many of the supposed hippies will in a few years be conservative Republicans. As much as conservatives dislike the 1960s youth culture many did and still envy it, and they want to be hip and cool, not square and unhip. This is why the right has tried to corral the counter-culture for its own purposes with Christian rock (never mind the original meaning of the term) and hip-hop, and flocked to the snuff flick The Passion which is so super violent that it would have sickened Christian audiences back in the 1950s that today’s theocons claim to aspire to return to. Think about it, the Mel Gibson flick could not have gotten past the Catholic League’s Hayes Code that ensured that Hollywood productions promoted traditional values. That today’s theocons would celebrate such a movie shows how badly they have lost the culture war (for how the theocon alliance with the corporations is exploding like an IED in the faces of the churches see www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/buckleys-big-mistake and www.rationalresponders.com/forum/16619).
The willingness of the right to tolerate and even enjoy it when their own go low down is a repeated pattern. What happened when Bush II and Cheney used vulgar language to describe reporters and Democrats? Were they denounced and chastised by theocon opinion makers and citizens for their objectionable, unvirtuous behavior? No, they were heartily slapped on their proverbial backs for giving it to the damn liberals. And because it came across as kind of cool, as proof that even conserves can get down and dish it out (www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/another-bill-oreilly-snafu-or-why-the-social-right-cant-win-the-vulg
arity-war).
Catholic theocon Bill Bennett used to promote virtue. Wrote a whole book about the need for more virtue. Called it The Book of Virtues just to make sure you’d know that. Adult and kids versions. Then he was caught gambling big time, to the tune of seven figures. Not illegal, or even automatically out of line with his Catholic doctrine. But definitely not virtuous, nor self-disciplined, and decidedly sleazy. Bennett did get slapped down by his fellow theocons for his unprincipled behavior, but he has been edging his way back up ever since.
Then there was the tawdry affair the memory of which has largely disappeared down the fast receding black hole of the Bush-Cheney administration. The National Mall in DC is the nation’s front yard. For decades the Parks Service and Congress has worked to protect the traditional image of the field – lined by one of the last stands of elms kept going by periodic treatments -- stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. Events were limited to those political or celebrations of national holidays, and the Smithsonian Folk Life Fair. But as the privatization that the supposed traditionalists prefer crept in the mall become the venue for less noble fare. In 2003 the National Football league, ABC and assorted sponsors were allowed to hold a big promotion of the upcoming season on the no longer sacred ground. During this august – actually it was September -- occasion the Republican friendly Britney Spears did a semi-strip tease with men in football uniforms helping her undress. President (war-on-terror) Bush took some time off from hunting Bin Laden to, via giant video screen, proclaim that football "celebrates the values that make our country so strong." To which Washington Post TV critic tom Shales responded "Like what, violence and greed?" The President of the United States of America and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces then repeated the corporate slogan, "Are you ready for some football?" Of course the outraged pundits at FoxNews ardently protested this travesty upon traditional American values. Just kidding.
Take sex. And marriage. And Ann Coulter. One of the big components of the counterculture was the sexual revolution that is largely still with us and shows no signs of going away. The conserves proclaim that they oppose sex outside of marriage -- even though the Bible does not go to lengths to specifically condemn the act – to the extent they are pushing abstinence from puberty to the wedding night, and oppose contraceptives that prevent the creation of God’s little children. Which can be 10, 20 years these days. Anyhow, the right has lost this aspect of the culture war big time. Currently two thirds of the country does not consider nonadulterous nonmarital sex immoral, a far higher level of acceptance than in the Eisenhower era. What is even more interesting is that studies indicate that 95% of American engage in nonmarital sex. Which means that the great majority of theocons who think marriage outside God’s sacred institution is a no-no at least once say yes-yes. This may help explain the Coulter phenomenon. The sex symbol of the right is about half a century old. According to the rules of the right she should be married with children. Sans the marriage she should be chaste over the long decades. Like that’s going to happen. On Rivera Live Coulter proclaimed "Let’s say I go out every night. I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I’m not married." In other words Ms Coulter is OK – and she thinks God is OK -- with fequent pickup sex, apparently in a nonmonogamous context, as long as it does involve someone breaking wedding vows. As far as is known Ms Coulter has had sexual relationships with a number of men, presumably and hopefully using contraceptives. Coulter is also well known for dressing and posing for publicity photos in ways that complement her sex appeal, and she has become a sex symbol to many theocon males, and a heroine to many theocon females.
The problem with Coulter is not that she appears to be sexually active outside marriage, yadda, yadda. More power to her. Nor is she being a blatant hypocrite. She is being fairly open about the matter, as far as I know she does not promote adult chastity, and she could make the argument that nonmarital sex is not necessarily anti-Biblical. The problems begin with that she is playing a bit of a cynical game, in that she does not mention, much less argue, for her views and practices on nonmarital sex in front of conservative audiences. Perhaps she merely prefers not to be rude, but this practice served to protect her brand. But the really big issue is how the right not only does not bring up the awkward subject when she appears before them, or challenge her to either become chaste or married, but not blithely ignores her obviously sexually liberated habits and opinion, actually embraces her as one of theirs even though she is in flaming violation of a core theocon principle. Such hypocrisy shows that the right will dump honor and all that stuff at the drop of a hat when it is convenient, and in doing so ensures that the rest of the population does not take them seriously when they proclaim principle and virtue.
Theocon problems with sex don’t stop with Coulter. Rates of abortion, teen pregnancy and gonorrhea and syphilis infections tend to be high on the most theoconservative regions of the USA, and this country performs worse – often spectacularly worse -- in these measures of sexual dysfunction that do the more secular and progressive 1st world democracies (www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf and www.newsweek.com/id/211746). The failure of the conservative way of sex is generally attributed to the right’s emphasis on unrealistic abstinence only sex education and policies that backfire because young conservatives haven’t been taught to use protection often enough (www.gregspaul.webs.com/pediatrics.pdf and www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42607-2002May31?language=printer).
Then there is divorce and adultery. The swinging sixties saw the beginning of the divorce revolution. Theocons imply that the divorce boom is yet another dark side of the secular self-absorption of the counterculture me-generation, but the baby boomers were too young to be married in large numbers at the time. It was the more traditionalist and church going Greatest Generation that started doing the splits big time. In the late sixties and seventies a main theme of horrified theocons was how divorce is patently unBiblical and unGodly and how Americans ought to knock it off. But this became awkward when Reagan became the flag bearer for the conservative movement. The right would go on to cheerfully make him the first divorcee president. Meanwhile, Newt Gingerich became the firebrand of the right. Never mind that he had dumped his first wife in favor of he woman he was having an affair with. When he performed exactly the same stunt with wife number two – and about the same time lost Congress back to the Dems – Newt got in hot water with the right. He has been edging his own way back, even contemplating a run for president, his books jacket covers graced with a picture of himself and his lovely wife #3.
If you are thinking that the idea of a divorcee with the woman he shacked up with running for the first family post under the aegis of the Republican is hardly plausible, then may I show you McCain and wife, the Repubs who were aspiring to occupy the White House in the 2008 campaign. Actually, I understand that Mrs. McCain was not enthusiastic about the effort, perhaps she understood the incongruity. It’s an amazing thing, had the Repubs won, then 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would currently be occupied by a couple of adulterers. And don’t think for a minute that conservatives would be wringing their principled hands over what they had done, they would instead be denouncing those who dared mention this conflict of family values as an exemplar of right wing hypocrisy as an unwarranted assault on the personal lives of the first couple. That’s what conserves do when their inability to stick to their own honor codes is exposed, they lash out in cynical self defense. That’s what happened when druggie hating Limbaugh was expoxed as a drug addict. There is nothing in terms of objective self examination by the right in which the possibility that their ideology might be inherently defective is considered. They just keep brushing aside their own failings and demand all others adopt their world view.
Understand that the frequency of divorce among leading conservatives is nothing special, evangelicals split up at very high rates, and no western country has higher divorce rates than Christian America except Sweden, barely. Research indicates the instability is in part because middle aged theocon husbands are prone to having affairs, and dump aging wife #1 in favor of a younger model – I personally know of one example of this. Also, some born-again wives get tired of playing the evangelical second fiddle wifely role and get out of the misogynist prison. The series of sometimes spectacular extramarital affairs that theocon politicians have engaged in – including three members of The Family evangelical group that organizes the national prayer breakfast Obama will be attending --has paralleled the same among a number of born again clerics.
When I was kid I vaguely recall meeting the white haired minister, last name Moore, of some of my run of the middle class, church going relations living in tidewater country. Years later it turned out he had been having a long-term mutually extramarital affair with one of my relatives. When that blew up in his face Reverend Moore moved back to his home country south of the VA/NC border and ended up marrying a devout evangelical Christian woman named Blanche. Really, Blanche. Not the best choice. She was a serial arsenic poisoner who had dispatched a number others over the years, and the reverend was lucky to survive the highest not quite lethal dose of the poison. The Black Widow Blanche is living out her life on death row. I saw Dan Rather headline the story as a "Gothic horror," it was made into a book "Preacher’s Girl," and that became a movie starting my childhood heartthrob Elizabeth Montgomery as Blanche. I don’t make this stuff up. David Lynch is right -- scratch the surface of the Christian American Way and there’s a whole lot of stuff going on.
There is good reason to conclude that theocons to a fair degree like their bad boys and girls. Its edgy, its exciting, it vicariously breaks them out from their unrealistically constrained lives. So conserves stuggling to remain virginal until their blessed honeymoon can get off on how their girl Ann is getting it on with some fellow – and when they fail they can feel if its OK for her then maybe it’s not really that terrible. You’ve got to admit it’s kinda cool how Governor Sanford was having an affair with that hot woman all the way down in Argentina, and then was pretty darn proud of it if you read between the lines of his apology.
All this is a very bad thing for the theocon movement not only on a personal basis, but politically. It is correspondingly good news for the progressive cause. Now that conservatives have revealed to the country how scandal and dysfunction prone they are despite – or because of – their godly mores, they are promising that next time they get power they are going to clean up their act and run the nation in accord with God, honor, principle, discipline and virtue if we only give them another chance. But of course they cannot do that. They suffer from the same core defect as everyone else – they’re human beings too. Year after year, decade after decade, theocons are going to screw up, often literally, just as much as everyone else. This is worse for theocons than for the opposition because they keep setting themselves up. They over promise the morality they will deliver and then look hypocritical when they cannot meet their own criteria, leaving many voters who backed them feeling burned. Right wing sleaze is the gift to the left that the right will keep on giving. The right has not practical way out of this self damaging circle, and it will help prevent them from becoming a permanent majority (www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html).