The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Fear and Loathing: CPAC Calls Me, and How Can I Answer the Call?

Posted on | February 22, 2017 | 1 Comment

 

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK:
Cynthia Yockey called last night from the Minneapolis airport, where her flight to Baltimore-Washington International had been rerouted due to weather problems in the Midwest. Blame global warming, and also heteropatriarchy, but why take time to assign blame now, eh?

No, right now I’m rattling the tip jar like a fear-crazed madman because I’d been hoping to get a check that didn’t show up and I’m about $450 short of what I’ll need to make this trip to CPAC, an event I’ve covered for 12 consecutive years. It’s not like my cash shortage wasn’t apparent by Saturday, but I was deep into another exploration of a radical feminist insanity, and so I procrastinated on posting my emergency appeal for contributions to the Shoe Leather Fund. Now, here I am, just hours before my planned departure to National Harbor on the banks of the Potomac, pleading in helpless desperation.

How do I keep getting myself into these predicaments? Like the time my car broke down on the way back from the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa, and found myself using the wifi in a McDonald’s to write a post called “Fear and Loathing in a 2004 KIA Optima.” Less than 24 hours earlier, I’d been watching Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech from a skybox, enjoying free beverages provided by coal industry lobbyists, but there I was in Ocala, broke and desperate. And yet the regular readers came through to get me back home. Or like the time I flew to Alaska in 2010 on a one-way ticket, with no idea whether I’d be able to pay for my return flight. Four days later, I was hanging out with Todd Palin in Wasilla, and it was contributions from readers that made it happen.

When the going gets weird, et cetera.

Preparing to depart from BWI Airport, circa 2011.

Readers have been crowd-funding these gonzo road trips since 2009, but since the exhaustion of the long 2012 campaign, I’ve mainly been content to work from home and babysit my grandsons. Speaking of which, I just heard 18-month-old Alexander getting into mischief. Hang on . . .

Changed his diaper, fed him lunch, gave him a bottle and laid him down in his crib for a nap. But that has nothing to do with CPAC, except that my daughter-in-law will be coming to pick him up in about an hour, and then drive me to National Harbor, so I’d like to be able to give her $20 for gas, and then five days amid the right-wing carnival called CPAC. My share of the hotel room, split four ways, will come to about $400, which means that if 20 readers hit the tip jar for $20, or if 40 readers hit the tip jar for $10, I’m covered there. Hotel meals run about $15, so that’s probably going to cost me another $100-$150, depending on how many receptions with free buffets I can talk my way into. As for beverages, well, a cup of coffee goes for about $3 at the hotel. Last week, this blog got nearly 60,000 page-views, and so each reader doesn’t have to give much — $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford — to make this trip happen.

Oh, Alexander’s not napping, which means I’ll have to wrap this up quick, with the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Thanks in advance, and God bless you.



 

UPDATE: Here’s my latest on the latest:

What happened to Milo Yiannopoulos this week illustrates many problems in 21st-century culture, including the way the Internet has created a dangerous mob mentality. Justice Clarence Thomas famously called his Senate confirmation ordeal a “high-tech lynching,” but advances in technology have shortened the rope, so to speak. In a span of 72 hours, Yiannopoulos was disinvited from speaking at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, lost a book contract with Simon & Schuster, and was compelled to resign from his job as tech editor of Breitbart News.
Milo’s sudden downfall was precipitated by his remarks about pedophilia and child molestation in an interview he did in January 2016 with a YouTube program called “Drunken Peasants.” Yiannopoulos has complained that his remarks were taken out of context, and so the context is important to consider. Yiannopoulos gained prominence for his writing about the so-called “GamerGate” controversy in 2014 and 2015. This included two September 2015 articles about Sarah (neé Nicholas) Nyberg, an anti-GamerGate activist who in 2005 had described himself as a “transsexual pedophile” with an attraction toward a young female relative.
During the “Drunken Peasants” interview, the hosts asked Yiannopoulos to address an accusation that his criticism of Nyberg was hypocritical, because Yiannopoulos himself had previously confessed that he first had sex with an adult at age 13. This led to a five-minute discussion in which Yiannopoulos, who is homosexual, made comments that he himself later recanted as “outrageous.” . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator. Thanks to Jerold, William and Daniel who’ve already hit the tip jar quite generously. My wife might even get a bouquet of roses if this trip goes well.

UPDATE II: Well, my daughter-in-law decided my son should drive me down instead, so my departure has been delayed, but that gives me time to thank more tip jar hitters: Roman, Cheryl, Randall, Daniel O., David, Dana, Robert, John K., Jeffrey and my good friend John Hoge.

 

Category: Fear and Loathing at CPAC 2017

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One Response to “Fear and Loathing: CPAC Calls Me, and How Can I Answer the Call?”

  1. #CPAC2017: Witches vs. Trump : The Other McCain
    February 25th, 2017 @ 9:16 pm

    […] Feb. 22: Fear and Loathing: CPAC Calls Me, and How Can I Answer the Call? […]