March 02, 2009

Too Easy

A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook, a thirteen-year-old kid addressing this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He's even written a book. I was prepared to be impressed. And I was.



I was utterly blown away by the word salad.

Come on, people. Yeah, he's a cute kid. Yeah, he has poise. Yeah, he can throw the buzzwords around. But do you really not understand that there was not one bit of content to anything he said?

You want to know what's wrong with the "conservative" movement in this country? Try the fact that a thirteen-year-old on his way to an audition can engage an audience at the same intellectual level as the movement's professional thinkers.

Of course, the kid did do one thing better than all the adults at the conference. He left early. Smart boy.

Thanks, Laurie.

7 comments:

Juniper Shoemaker said...

LOLZ!!!!11111ELEVENTY!!!

I shouldn't have laughed, but I did. "The principle is the filling"? I laughed because all those adults clapped so enthusiastically.

It frustrates me that many Americans view "personal responsibility" as the sole province of the right. So politicized, "personal responsibility" starts to mean "refusal to admit that everything's complicated". My conservative father sometimes betrays hostility toward "intellectuals" (like me) for this very reason.

Anonymous said...

He was throwing the same red meat the rest of CPAC was dining on. Conservative "values" and their subversion.

The first thing I thought? Home schooled. And yes, he was.

Anonymous said...

Totally off topic, sorry:

I tried to throw a person your way, hope he shows up... You can have fun with him for a while, I'm surprised he's not here yet, he's been following me all over the dang internet! :) Literally!

Anonymous said...

I've been e-stalking you too, Sunny, haha.

Stephanie, I thought I'd check out your blog after Sunnyskeptic posted it on my blog.

Anyway back on topic! I wonder if the book 'Define Conservatism' is a colour between the lines, picture book? And I wonder if it comes with the red and blue colour pencils to form the American flag?

Stephanie Zvan said...

Juniper, yes!!! Personal responsibility definitely includes the responsibility to deal with the world as it is, complications included, rather than pretend it's as simple as we might want it to be.

Laurie, I was getting a definite stage-parented vibe too. I wanted to tell him to go take a walk by himself and get into a little trouble.

Crystal, still nothing. Either he's got to work up to it, or I really am that scary.

Odd, welcome! I like the idea of the color-by-numbers book, but I suspect it's basically a cutting and pasting of the most content-free statements from every conservative book released in the last two decades. Come to think of it, that might be an improvement over all those other books.

Anonymous said...

Great, now OddInn is stalking me as well... lol. :)

I think alan is gone for now, I probably scared him away myself by pointing out that he was probably searching for bestiality links when he found my blog... lol. Next time I gets a trollz, I will send them to you before I eats them. :)

Stephanie Zvan said...

Good luck with that, Crystal. I don't know why, but they really don't like me.