God's Own Crunk

RSM sums up a theme that’s suddenly become, er, annoying on my Reader:

My pre-CPAC advice to Cody is kind of interesting, in light of the post-CPAC commentaries offered today by Erick Erickson and Melissa Clouthier, both of whom express concern that too many young people at the conference were getting hammered and trying to get jiggy. This is actually something that has worried me at least since 2007, the year when an especially rowdy bash hosted by the Maine College Republicans got shut down.

Do we worry too much about these kids? I don’t know. While some of them were obviously enjoying the Adult Beverages with tremendous gusto, it is impossible to estimate how much “getting jiggy” was going on. Probably a lot less than us old folks might fear, given the 3-to-1 male-to-female ratio amongst the college-age contingent. And probably not enough to worry about an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

via Cody’s Totally Excellent CPAC : The Other McCain.

My headlines would’ve been better if tangential was spelled tangenital in more than a UD sense. Whatever. On a slightly related note, I get an email every-other week from the Ayn Rand Institute – years after I either donated money to them or signed up for their newsletter, they’re still looking for a volunteer coordinator.

Seriously.

Anyway, what RSM helpfully does in this post is take a lighter approach to young Conservatives acting like young adults at CPAC – they drink, they get drunk, they try to hook-up, etc. I read pieces by EE, Clouthier and Dan Riehl on this subject, and now RSM has come in with some clean-up.

Of the pieces I read, Clouthier’s resonated the most because it brings me back to an vblog entry Ed Morrissey and Tina Korbe did with Rick Santorum over at HotAir. Korbe, a recently-engaged millennial and native Oklahoman, appeared to be auditioning for on-air Fox talent – the blonde hair was highlighted by a skirt whose hem broke about 18 inches above the knee, or six-times higher than Clouthier’s “three-finger” rule (not to be entirely confused with the finger rule introduced in the Tony Scott epic, The Last Boy Scout - although oddly, somewhat relevant).

To wit: Should young Conservatives behave like young Baptists when attending CPAC and other such conferences. This type of ruffled-brow concern reminds me of my younger teen years when my goal in life was to become a missionary/evangelist type (no, seriously). Among other things, young Southern Baptists growing up in Oklahoma made the annual summer pilgrimage to Falls Creek Baptist Encampment, which at one time was the largest Christian youth camp in the world – for all I know, it is still is.

What does that have to do with CPAC? Pretty simple, really. Falls Creek is for Southern Baptists, and Southern Baptists are what most people think of, whether they realize it or not, when they close their eyes and think of what a “Fundamentalist Christian” is. The last time I was at Falls Creek (as a children’s camp counselor, summer ’93), boys and girls still could not swim together, and girls still had to wear a dark t-shirt over their swimsuits.

And yet … the most popular/likely place for a young SoBa to lose their virginity was at Falls Creek. I did not lose mine there, but I was friends with eight under-sixteeners who did. It’s called flippantly “the Baptist breeding grounds” for a reason. Even for kids who stayed virgins until marriage or the military called, chances are that their first kiss came at Falls Creek.

My general theory on this – aside from the natural thing that happens when you put several thousand teenagers in the same place during a week in the summer – is that when everyone pretty much agrees on religion and morality, then no matter how far to one end it skews, things are still going to level out. Ergo, at CPAC, among like-minded Conservatives, many social niceties can fall to the side and comfort is more easily attained.

I’ve never attended CPAC or any other conservative gathering, in part because I’m a poor planner and in part because I’m not a joiner by nature. I’ve never been a Republican or a Democrat, though I was a registered Libertarian for a few years until they lost ballot access in Oklahoma at some point in the early 2000s. With sincerity I would also note that it’s hard for me to think I’d fit in at a conference of Conservatives that Ron Paul normally wins the straw poll, only to be usurped by our own Lion of Moderation, Mitt Romney.

Of the Conservative superstars in America, I’ve met Sarah Palin and I’ve seen her speak, which only leaves Rush Limbaugh, Dick and Liz Cheney, Michelle Malkin and Jonah G0ldberg as people I’d actually like to meet. Yes, there are some bloggers I’d like to meet, but you get my drift.

Plus, in any gathering of Conservatives, I suspect that – stories of drunk debauchery, cleavage and hook-uppery aside – the majority are going to be SoCons, and while I respect SoCons from afar, I find them grating IRL as a rule. Although I’m as sober as Sunday morning now, I’ve spent the better part of my life lurching from one decadent gathering of hedonistic delight to the next – if given the choice between somber self-respect and a good night’s sleep coupled with a chance to make my next favorite mistake, I’ll take the latter every time.

After reading so many of these ‘what’s the matter with kids these days’ pieces, I’m left to wonder by MTV isn’t warming up for Spring Break at CPAC. Instead of ‘Don’t Tread on Me,’ it sounds like the youth flag could be flying the old ‘gas, grass or ass’ mantra. Certainly no shame in that, at least for me.

This too shall pass, and I’m glad I watched it on CPAC. Clouthier is correct in her warnings to the young Conservative women of the world – the second an inch of your cleavage is available for observation is the last second any man cares what you think of Global Minimum Tax. Trudat.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 20:45 and is filed under EOT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.