- The 30th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) ended last Saturday, and I'm still recovering.rnrn
I mean, how many times can one person stand up and clap every time Ronald Reagan's name is mentioned? (And rest assured, it was mentioned a lot. That senile old gent is like a god to these people!)rnrn
And how can anyone's ears withstand the energized cries of sadly deluded college students (who were sitting right behind me) yelling, "Ol- lie! Ol- lie! " during ex-jailbird Col. Oliver North's 10-minute rant about why America's defense capabilities suck'rnrn
See, one of those Religious Right e-screeds that I subscribe to gave notice a couple of months ago that the American Conservative Union (ACU) was about to throw its annual shindig, and glutton for punishment that I am, I e-mailed the URL (www.cpac.org) to Fish and Ramone, adding, "You really need me to cover this."rnrn
Imagine my surprise when they both agreed.rnrn
But I gotta tell ya, after three days of listening to the most amazing amount of garbage (admittedly, salted with a couple of pearls of wisdom) to come out of several dozen people's mouths since a friend of mine dragged me to a pitch meeting for est (no pearls there!), I'm sad (though glad) to report that I heard no smoking guns aimed at the adult industry.rnrn
But that's okay; what I did hear about what these chowderheads plan to do to this country should be enough to shake your core pretty thoroughly... and you'll get to read all about it beginning in the April AVN.rnrn
Just to get you in the mood, though, picture a hotel banquet hall filled to overflowing with about 700 people (out of the approximately 2000 who attended the convention), roughly evenly divided between college students and the 40- to 75-year-old crowd, several wearing black sweatshirts, the front of which proclaimed, "Abortion Is Homicide," with the back promising, "I Will Not Be Silenced," and most of the rest in suits, ties and wingtips - except the women, of course, among whom knee-length skirts were common.rnrn
At the podium in the front of the hall could be anyone from Vice-President Dick Cheney to former congressman Bob Barr to Virginia governor Jim Gilmore to Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security Asa Hutchinson to media whore Ann Coulter, all either spouting the current (conservative) party line on subjects like Iraq (the CPAC attendees can't wait for the U.S. to attack), welfare ("It destroys people's lives"), sex ("The president's abstinence-only sex-ed program in schools is working! "), academia ("The liberals have taken over our colleges!") and a dozen other subjects, or trying their best to avoid saying anything of substance.rnrn
That latter group included Cheney, Hutchinson, Bush himself (in a taped message to his "fellow conservatives") and several other political types. I assume they took that position to avoid being quoted adversely by those rotten liberal news media who might be lurking in the audience... but I got most of it on tape, and over the coming weeks, will be transcribing the best.rnrn
So sit back, relax - you might want to pop one of those "George W. Bush Power Mints" that I purchased in the huckster room - and let the spirit of Ronald Reagan wash over you and into you. After all, as ACU chairman David A. Keene wrote, "Many of those attending this year's conference were in grade school when then Governor Reagan addressed the first CPAC and many others hadn't even been born, but they're here this year because of the timelessness of the values he spoke of then."rnrn
Great stuff, eh?
