The Other McCain

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VIDEO: CPAC Panel on ‘Saving Freedom from Fascism’

Posted on | February 22, 2010 | 13 Comments

My friend (and sometimes antagonist) Quin Hillyer chaired this panel featuring Jonah Goldberg, Amity Schlaes and Herb London:

People who know me as the CPAC Schmooze King — as William Upton of The American Conservative observes, I have a knack for being everywhere at CPAC – often ask me, “Stacy, why have you never been asked to speak at CPAC, nor even to participate in a panel discussion?” I suggest these possible explanations:

  1. I’m not 14 years old, like Jonathan Krohn.
  2. I’m not a graceless douchebag like Ryan Sorba:

  3. My so-called “friends” in the conservative movement, who might have sufficient influence to recommend me for inclusion in the CPAC program, are consumed by secret envy of my superior abilities. This is my own pet theory, especially in the wee hours of the morning when I brood over these repeated snubs, but I don’t expect others to encourage my unfortunate tendency toward a paranoiac worldview.
  4. Sponsors are fearful of criticism for officially including a participant accused of “extremism.” That used to be my favorite pet theory, until it was invalidated by CPAC’s inclusion of the John Birch Society this year.
  5. There is a grain of truth in Mike Huckabee’s “pay for play” smear. People outside the ACU/CPAC circle don’t understand the process of organizing this annual event. The sponsors of the conference control the conference, period. They do their best to make the event interesting and informative. The people actively engaged in this organizational work — in meetings, in conference calls, in e-mails — ultimately exercise a yea-or-nea authority over who speaks or doesn’t speak at CPAC, especially on the main ballroom stage. The alternative events (workshops, seminars, panel discussions and receptions outside the main ballroom) all have their own sponsors, who control the selection of participants in those events. So unless you are a Fox TV superstar, a big-name politician or some other conservative celebrity, getting onto the CPAC program is largely a function of your having a sponsoring organization that will push for your inclusion. And I don’t, so I’m not included. QED.

One always hears post-CPAC complaints and grumbles: “Why was so-and-so asked to speak instead of such-and-such?” And it always comes down to this basic explanation: The person who was included had a sponsor/advocate and the person who wasn’t included did not.

The internal processes behind CPAC are seldom discussed very frankly in public. It’s almost like Fight Club — the first rule of CPAC planning is that nobody talks about CPAC planning. But certainly, anyone who uses their CPAC appearance to disparage CPAC will be persona non grata thenceforth.

Good-bye, Ryan Sorba, you graceless douchebag.

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Category: CPAC

Comments

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  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Hey, nobody asked *me* to be on a panel, either. :)

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Hey, nobody asked *me* to be on a panel, either. :)

  • http://redstate.com/diaries/finrod Finrod

    Augh, I hate videos that auto-play. I hate even more videos that wait for a while THEN auto-play. I finally tracked it down to this video in this post, I believe.

    Finrod’s First Law of Bandwidth (namely, a picture is worth a thousand words but takes the bandwidth of ten thousand) goes more than double for video.

  • http://redstate.com/diaries/finrod Finrod

    Augh, I hate videos that auto-play. I hate even more videos that wait for a while THEN auto-play. I finally tracked it down to this video in this post, I believe.

    Finrod’s First Law of Bandwidth (namely, a picture is worth a thousand words but takes the bandwidth of ten thousand) goes more than double for video.

  • http://arabism-islamism.webs.com/index.htm iii

    http://arabism-islamism.webs.com/index.htm

    The twin fascisms that causes most massacres, wars, “conflicts” today:

    Arabism is racism (Arab racism)
    Millions upon Millions are/became victims of [pan-] Arabism which is the worst current form of racism in its gigantic proportions, like: Kurds Jews (not just in Israel) Berbers (the real natives of North Africa), Africans (not just in the genocide in the Sudan or in Egypt on native Nubians by Arab invaders – till today), Persians, etc.

    Islamism is bigotry (Islamofascism)!
    The Islamic supremacy that “works” towards its vision of “final Islamic domination on the entire planet”, from Middle east to Africa from Asia to Eurabia, from terrorism & massacres in multiple countries (like: Thailand, Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon India, USA, France, Israel, Russia, UK, etc.) to propaganda, the war includes on Muslims who are not radical enough…,

    Let’s face it! that entire war on Israel & the Jews since the 1920’s by infamous facsist Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini who started the “genocide campaign” [and continues by the children, grand children of Arab immigrants into Israel - Palestine - now convenienently called "palestinians"] in a clear outlined declaration to ‘kill all Jews’, is nothing but out of pure Arab Muslim bigotry.

    —

    Why does biased media blame Israel defenders from vicious Arab Muslims who use civilians when they attack Israeli civilians… so that their civilians (they prefer kids to) die then parade with the casualties as “innocent victims”???

    BTW
    While the Islamo Arab dictatorship goes on…
    Israeli [ungrateful] Arabs won’t mention FAVORITISM by democratic pluralistic multi-racial Israel in: land, courts & universities, by the same token, the totalitarian & mullahcracy dictators of Iran with its Hezbollah thugs & militant “Palestine” anti-freedom forces cast their genocide plan under “freedom fighting.”

  • http://arabism-islamism.webs.com/index.htm iii

    http://arabism-islamism.webs.com/index.htm

    The twin fascisms that causes most massacres, wars, “conflicts” today:

    Arabism is racism (Arab racism)
    Millions upon Millions are/became victims of [pan-] Arabism which is the worst current form of racism in its gigantic proportions, like: Kurds Jews (not just in Israel) Berbers (the real natives of North Africa), Africans (not just in the genocide in the Sudan or in Egypt on native Nubians by Arab invaders – till today), Persians, etc.

    Islamism is bigotry (Islamofascism)!
    The Islamic supremacy that “works” towards its vision of “final Islamic domination on the entire planet”, from Middle east to Africa from Asia to Eurabia, from terrorism & massacres in multiple countries (like: Thailand, Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Tunisia, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon India, USA, France, Israel, Russia, UK, etc.) to propaganda, the war includes on Muslims who are not radical enough…,

    Let’s face it! that entire war on Israel & the Jews since the 1920’s by infamous facsist Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini who started the “genocide campaign” [and continues by the children, grand children of Arab immigrants into Israel - Palestine - now convenienently called "palestinians"] in a clear outlined declaration to ‘kill all Jews’, is nothing but out of pure Arab Muslim bigotry.

    —

    Why does biased media blame Israel defenders from vicious Arab Muslims who use civilians when they attack Israeli civilians… so that their civilians (they prefer kids to) die then parade with the casualties as “innocent victims”???

    BTW
    While the Islamo Arab dictatorship goes on…
    Israeli [ungrateful] Arabs won’t mention FAVORITISM by democratic pluralistic multi-racial Israel in: land, courts & universities, by the same token, the totalitarian & mullahcracy dictators of Iran with its Hezbollah thugs & militant “Palestine” anti-freedom forces cast their genocide plan under “freedom fighting.”

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  • http://redstate.com/diaries/finrod Finrod

    It *is* this post.

    I want to take ustream.tv and find whoever wrote their flash plugin and force-feed them their own spine. VIDEOS SHOULD NOT AUTO-PLAY, MOST CERTAINLY NOT AFTER A DELAY. It makes people homicidal.

  • http://redstate.com/diaries/finrod Finrod

    It *is* this post.

    I want to take ustream.tv and find whoever wrote their flash plugin and force-feed them their own spine. VIDEOS SHOULD NOT AUTO-PLAY, MOST CERTAINLY NOT AFTER A DELAY. It makes people homicidal.

  • http://redstate.com/diaries/finrod Finrod

    Hah. I right-clicked on that damned ustream.tv flash annoyer, went to the middle option, local storage, and changed the amount of info that cdn1.ustream.tv can store on my computer to 0K.

    Eat shit and die, pigfuckers. I’ll watch the video when I damn well want to watch it and I don’t want your crap on my computer until the second I decide to watch it.

  • http://redstate.com/diaries/finrod Finrod

    Hah. I right-clicked on that damned ustream.tv flash annoyer, went to the middle option, local storage, and changed the amount of info that cdn1.ustream.tv can store on my computer to 0K.

    Eat shit and die, pigfuckers. I’ll watch the video when I damn well want to watch it and I don’t want your crap on my computer until the second I decide to watch it.

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