Ever had a dream where an angry, disembodied, floating right-wing head screams at you for eight minutes? Me neither.

In the course of writing about a long-awaited initiative of prominent black ministers to tackle HIV/AIDS, Debra Dickerson notes the stifling level of cultural conservatism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities:

With 100-plus campuses, HBCUs are notorious for their conservatism; they routinely censor campus newspapers, squash rallies and flyer-distribution of flyers for campaigns like HIV/AIDS awareness, and even protests of the Iraq war, a position uncontroversial among blacks. In particular, young black gays trying to assert themselves on HBCU campuses find themselves stymied by their colleges’ administrators and alumni (many of whom are also ministers); few have been granted the student group charters required to officially exist on campus. The entrenched black religious, political and educational establishments see themselves in a battle for the soul of the black community and thus believe it is they, not black homosexuals, who are under fire for their beliefs; it'll be awhile before they get this new memo. Recently, black gays at Hampton University in Virginia tried, and failed, to establish a campus group for gays;

Regarding the gay issue specifically, this recent AP article covers the matter pretty well.

Today falls exactly nine months before Russia Day, and as one of Putin's policies to encourage more breeding in his country, he's offered SUVs, refrigerators, and monetary rewards to anyone who gives birth on June 12. So the mayor of Ulyanovsk, a region in central Russia, has given workers there the afternoon off to make with the baby making. Everyone who gives birth is a winner in the "Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia's Independence Day" contest, but the grand prize winner -- judged on qualities like "respectability" and "commendable parenting" -- gets to take home a UAZ-Patriot, a Russian-made SUV.

I attended an event by the conservative Culture and Media Institute that was rich in silly sophistry. If you want to read my full take in TNR, click here.

My nut graf:

The funniest thing about watching [Brent] Bozell and [Michael] Medved thrash the "liberal media" is that their own governing philosophy has made it that way. Both conceded that Americans want salacious and irreverent content.

You have to respect Bill Kristol. Yes, you can disparage his politics--his imperialist hawkishness that got us into this bloody, sand-caked fiasco, or any of the ridiculous op/eds you find in his Weekly Standard. But on May 3, at the National Press Club, he did what few conservatives would do in this somber age of Congressional minorities and 28% presidential approval ratings: he swallowed his pride and attended an event titled, comically, the Failure of Conservatism Conference. And at the luncheon of the Conference, hosted by the Campaign for America’s Future, not only did he share the same room with a group of people who probably wanted his head on a platter instead of the veggie pasta, but he was forced to defend his much-maligned movement in a debate with The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner. The topic at hand? The equally cruel and funny inquiry “Can Conservatives Be Trusted to Govern?”

To be fair, this was no worse than some of the panel titles I saw while undercover blogging at CPAC (for example, “The Left’s Continued War on the American Soldier”), and Kristol’s amiability promoted a certain tongue-in-cheek, sport-like quality in the contest that prevented it from ever getting ugly. Plus, the subtext to the harsh title was clear: in the midst of the Reagan nostalgia that Bush’s mess of a presidency has inspired and that is currently clouding the minds and words of the Right’s 2008 nominees, it is in the Left’s best interest to cut off the problem at its stem instead of at its goofy, vacant, Texan head. At Kuttner’s podium was a sign that read “Pro,” and at Kristol’s one that marked him, in blood red, “CON.” The stage was set. The bell was rung.

Round 1

Kuttner comes out swinging, characterizing the last six years as a laboratory for elected conservatives to try every idea they ever had, in the absence of a president who would remotely challenge them. What manifested, he notes, was not principled libertarianism or a return to tradition, but a movement based on sheer, unadulterated opportunism. The laziness, corruption, and greed was not a temporary ailment but at the heart of the Right’s cause.

Kristol pursues an exclusively economic counterattack, rhetorically pondering if we really want to return to the fiscal state we were in before 1980 and Reaganomics, then citing the positive influence of such policies on developing nations. He hits a sensitive spot by pointing out that none of the Left is campaigning on their party’s pre-1996 position on welfare. He wipes his brow.

Round 2

Kuttner notes Kristol’s conspicuous failure to mention Bush or Iraq once in his opening statement, and asserts that the family unit that Kristol’s conservatives are so desperate to attack has been hurt more by the Right’s rich-favoring tax cuts than by any sort of cultural deterioration. Kuttner continues to focus his blows on the fiscal cronyism of the Right, attributing conservatives’ enduring ability to win elections to the inevitable translation of wealth into power.

Kristol bobs and weaves, defending himself by proclaiming that he would gladly accept Clinton-era Reubenomics as a suitable alternative to Reaganomics (being as it is in his mind influenced by conservative policy), and points to Giuliani’s success in making New York “liveable.” On Iraq, he unashamedly insists that the next president will have a similar foreign policy to Bush’s, but with a different “style.”

Round 3

Kristol suddenly breaks ranks with the conservatives and launches a strictly Neocon attack—he embraces a rightist welfare (read: nanny) state, heralds Bush’s Medicare bill and tax cuts, and boldly counters criticism of military build-up by lamenting that we didn't bolster defense spending more before 9/11 and Iraq. When pressed on the war, Kristol, unexpectedly fatigued after his offensive, graciously yields that Bush’s certainly hasn’t been the most competent presidential administration, to roaring applause.

Kuttner sticks to his reliable jab, insisting that corruption and conservatism go hand-in-hand, using as evidence the K Street Project and the Right’s massive investment in think tanks. Kristol goes into block mode, attributing the growth of said think tanks to the enlistment of conservative political science professors who can’t get tenure on college campuses. Kuttner tries new moves as he unflinchingly credits the Left’s 2006 election success to the pocketbook problems of average Americans, instead of Iraq. Kristol attempts one last hook by disparaging the Left’s unity, noting that liberalism seems to be merely comprised of grievances against conservatives, rather than a force in its own right.

Post-Match Analysis

Against all odds, and despite definitely lacking the home-team advantage, Kristol was able to at least hold his own against Kuttner. He looked calm and comfortable for almost the whole debate, but when he went for economics, it allowed Kuttner to focus on the money-grubbing disenfranchisement of the poor that he claimed was at the heart of conservatism. Both men more or less played by the rules in that they avoided the opportunity to make Bush the centerpiece of an argument about conservatism in general, but when they did mention his name, a weird kind of consensus was reached. Though these days one would expect any self-respecting conservative to denounce Bush as a tainted, wrong-headed deviation from the base movement, Kristol actually agreed with Kuttner (quite happily) that future conservative presidents will have the same goals and ideas as George W. Bush. He seemed to think this was a good thing. I’m not so sure, but it certainly raises a more appropriate but no less pitiless topic for a debate: “George Bush: Totally Misguided, or Just Disastrously Incompetent?”

In a typical display of the utter vacuity of conervative punditry in general and his shtick in particular, David Brooks wastes his New York Times column">Link on a cranky, silly rant today. Instead of addressing any real crises in the world, like the escalating civil war in Iraq, or even a substantial problem facing American families, Brooks indulges his narcissistic obsession with "Bobos'" parenting habits.

Brooks, who resides in a posh D.C. suburb, opens with a scurrilous attack on some supposed denizens of my native Park Slope, Brooklyn. Says Brooks:

Can we please see the end of Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms in their black-on-black materinty tunics who turn their babies into fashion-forward, anti-corporate indie-infants in order to stay one step ahead of the cool police.

Can we stop hearing about downtown parents who dress their babies in black skull slippers, Punky Monkey t-shirts and camo toddler ponchos until the little ones end up looking like sad parody clones of mom and dad?

And, of course, his description of the trend and what's wrong with it, like most conservative cultural moral panic attacks, is totally non-sensical and bereft of any empirical evidence. Stepford Moms don't have jobs, but in my 23 years of living in Park Slope the overwhelming majority of mothers I knew worked, and Brooks cites no evidence to prove otherwise. I also tutored the children of some of those hip downtown parents Brooks rails against. I saw no negative impact on their behavior, educational outcomes or psychological well-being from the trendy attire their parents purchased, and, of course, Brooks offers no evidence that there is any. He merely asserts that parents who dress their children like themselves are failing to respect "the dignity of youth." Who knew Oshkosh Bigosh overalls were so dignified?

More importantly, why is the Times indulging this pabulum? Their Sunday paper is widely read by the country's elite. They have Nicholas Kristof reporting from Ethiopa on one page and Brooks bloviating on fluffy topics on the other. OK, so it's good to balance Kristof's depressing dispatches with something lighter. That's why they have an acerbic politcal-cultural critic in Frank Rich on the Sunday op-ed page. And if they want a conservative they should find one who can offer something of value to the readers who shell out five dollars for a Sunday paper.

Cross-posted on TAPPED. Read the responses here, here and here.