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Cruising

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Salon (via WM) notes that “America’s pollster” Scott Rasmussen is going on one of those National Review cruises.

Yesterday I asked about something I don’t understand — the lack of screens in Europe; today, I ask about something else I don’t understand — why do conservatives like cruising together so much? Sarah Palin was birfed as a national political figure on a Weekly Standard cruise. My favorite New Republic piece ever was written about a National Review cruise. Hugh Hewitt and “The Freedom Alliance” are no strangers to cruising.

Why?

Reader Interactions

83Comments

  1. 1.

    BARRASSO

    I think it is because you can go to foreign countries without having to meet all those foreigners.

  2. 2.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    Alas I’m sober, so I can’t quite claim that this is all coming out of my ass, but I’d say it has something to do with conservative’s beliefs that True Conservatism is a bit bohemian-you know, like Belloc’s famous red wine quip. Its like those annoying Brideshead Revisited young conservatives who dress like its 1920s Britain and love drinking and smoking cigars. Cruising seems to fit that bill.

    I think its all a bit meh. I’d rather go to pansexual BDSM parties at a dungeon, thankyouverymuch.

  3. 3.

    Mnemosyne

    Barrasso beat me to it, but I really think that’s it. You can leave your insular gated community and get onto an insular cruise ship where you won’t have to worry about running into any of … Those People.

  4. 4.

    GregB

    Whenever Scottie Rasmussen is mentioned can it be agreed that he should be called Noted Republican Political Hack and Chief Poll Propagandist, Scott Rasmussen?

  5. 5.

    General Stuck

    why do conservatives like cruising together so much?

    It’s not the size of the boat, but the motion of the ocean.

  6. 6.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    Cons like to go on these cruises because:

    1. All the meat served comes from endangered species. You’re not a true con until you’ve had grilled panda.

    2. They each get an orphan to strangle. Sometimes two, if there’s an overstock.

    3. K-Lo cameltoe. What con could say no?

  7. 7.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    It’s a portable country club.

    Basically.

    A golf course that floats.

    Plus the great speakers like Oliver North, who has the courage of his convictions.

  8. 8.

    SpotWeld

    Captive audience, limited means of communication to the outside world, constant “on message” information delivery, huge amounts of alcohol…

    …’nuff said.

  9. 9.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne:

    You can leave your insular gated community and get onto an insular cruise ship where you won’t have to worry about running into any of … Those People.

    Or: You can bring your insular gated community with you, including such pre-vetted members of the Those People community as are required to cook your meals, tend your kids, iron your khakis, clean your pool & fetch your daquiris. So, it’s just like home, except with a new assortment of the same old faces at the club. And if you pick a “political” cruise, you can be double-extra-sure that no hint of an alien idea (or, frankly, any idea not pre-chewed for you) risks tainting the sweet warm jello bath of Group Rightthink.

  10. 10.

    Mark S.

    @Mnemosyne:

    you won’t have to worry about running into any of … Those People.

    You still might run into Dinesh D’Souza, but you’ll learn to take a more nuanced view of your racism:

    D’Souza summarizes the prevailing sentiment by unveiling what he modestly calls “D’Souza’s law of immigration”: An immigrant’s quality is “proportional to the distance traveled to get to the United States.” In other words: Asians trump Latinos.

    If anyone still hasn’t read the TNR piece about the NR cruise, it is well worth your while.

  12. 12.

    Martin

    Cruises are generally still geared for old people. Nothing to take much offense to, no new ideas to threaten the orthodoxy. It’s the physical manifestation of epistemic closure.

  13. 13.

    theletter2

    As a gay man who was closeted for a while, cruising is what I used to do to be discreet. Coincidence? Hmm….

  14. 14.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    @Mark S.:

    D’Souza summarizes the prevailing sentiment by unveiling what he modestly calls “D’Souza’s law of immigration”: An immigrant’s quality is “proportional to the distance traveled to get to the United States.” In other words: Asians trump Latinos.

    D’Souza is from India. Isn’t that a little self serving?
    What a fucking douchefuck.

  16. 16.

    Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle

    @GregB: We should. According to Wikipedia(and that is sourced), Rasmussen did work for Bush/Darth Cheney ’04. He also, supposedly wrote a column in 2000 for WorldNetDaily. The one thing I didn’t know was that Scott Rasmussen was involved in the founding of ESPN.

  21. 21.

    JamesC

    Cruises are dreadfully boring. Having been on one, I frankly cannot understand the appeal in the slightest. Then again, as an un-American liberal deviant with actual interest in local cultures (and food! Oh, the glories of a decades-old mobile food stall~) outside of the tourist traps, they probably weren’t marketed at me in the first place~

  22. 22.

    annia

    Well, they wanted to attend data rich seminars with vigorous debate, address the hard issues of their movement, and challenge themselves to resolve them.

    But cruises have mindless stuff to do and all you can eat buffets.

    It was a tough call, but they went with buffet.

  24. 24.

    Ash Can

    Second the “insular” theme. Cruises can be fun and relaxing, but they’re also an ideal travel alternative for those who want their foreign experience in (very) small doses. In fact, you don’t even have to leave the ship, if you prefer to avoid the inconvenience of being in a foreign land. It’s a perfect vacation for a xenophobic right-winger who nevertheless wants to maintain the illusion of being well-traveled.

  25. 25.

    Platonicspoof

    I thought with only 17 comments and 1:30 a.m. eastern time, I might get to do the waterbed line, but noooo, 17 minutes in, and General Stuck beats me to it.

  26. 26.

    JL

    Captive audience, gated community, free speech zones… take your pick.

    I was once a sea going Union man. I’m serious when I state those people would have been risking their lives talking their shit on the high seas with the crews I sailed with.

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    Cruises don’t have to be horrible — if you’re going to, say, the Galapagos Islands, the best way to see the wildlife is by boat.

    But that would actually require people to be more interested in what’s going on off the boat than on the boat.

  30. 30.

    The Dangerman

    A cruise has it all. Help gets paid for shit and has to live in cramped quarters. Ship is probably registered in Liberia to avoid nasty workplace rules. Ship is probably owned by a company with headquarters in the Caymans to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Get to hit golf balls into the ocean, thus polluting it. I think some have skeet off the back, but ya gotta know that seagulls are the target, not the clay pigeons.

  31. 31.

    Darnell

    If there is a hell, for me it would be an eternity on one of these nightmarish cruises.

  33. 33.

    cmorenc

    @Martin

    Cruises are generally still geared for old people. Nothing to take much offense to, no new ideas to threaten the orthodoxy. It’s the physical manifestation of epistemic closure

    Cruises also tend to disproportionately attract people who are seriously overweight/out of shape because it offers: a) a completely undemanding sort of adventure, where all that’s required is to sit, eat, drink, be entertained and watch the oceanic scenery; b) unlimited 24 hour food gluttony; c) a safe opportunity to get as drunk as you want as often as you want on a ship big enough to dampen the sort of movement that causes seasickness on smaller vessels.

    Not everyone or even a majority of folks on cruises are necessarily overweight or out of shape, but the ones I’ve been on, the disproportion relative to normal land society is quite obvious.

  34. 34.

    Mike G

    @Mnemosyne:

    Ditto for the Inside Passage to Alaska. Really no way to see it except from a ship. Some people on the cruise are just into the casinos, shows and shopping, but a good portion were actually interested in the little frontier towns, nature lectures and the truly amazing scenery and wildlife along the way.

    On the other hand, a ship full of drunks to tropical mass-tourism ports doesn’t appeal to me much. Throw in a population of right-wing assholes and I’d probably jump overboard.

  35. 35.

    eco2geek

    @Anne Laurie: It’s like a bunch of fundies attending a church retreat. You’re totally surrounded by people who think exactly like you do, and you get to attend exciting Bible studies conferences lead by people who preach to the choir reinforce your worldview.

  36. 36.

    fucen tarmal

    @The Dangerman:

    those golf balls aren’t pollution, its a pre-emptive junk shot. which is what my girlfriend has permission to do if i ever suggest we float around on a boat for a week stopping only to shop for trinkets and eat “native” cuisine, prepared and honed over thousands of tour stops to taste like americans think indigenous people of somewhere think said people eat..

  37. 37.

    Objective Scrutator

    By going out onto international waters, conservatives are ready to face the rest of the undeveloped world. If American cruise ships run by conservatives are the only vessels in international waters, can we not claim them as American? Do the British and the rest of the assorted aberrations have any claim to waters 3.1 miles off of their land if Americans are the only ones using them?

    As to Dinesh D’Souza’s claim that Indians are harder working than Mexicans due to their further geographic distance from America, it should be noted that Islamists are more desirable than the British. Most of the Islamists convert to Jesus once they come to America, as they cannot resist our faith, but the English, self-loathing sycophants that they are, smatter themselves sardonically in socialism, and then saturate our sophomoric media with their shitty syllogisms (not at all apropos to Anselm).

    OT: Despite my criticism of our esteemed blog host, I do believe that his advertisers are quite intelligent. The one with the highly unflattering picture of Barney Frank has a link to traditionalvalues.us, where they have a survey with questions such as, “Do homosexuals deserve special rights”, with the boxes checked all checked ‘no’ for your convenience. If they’re advertising here, there must be some Leftist moonbat they’re convincing.

  38. 38.

    sven

    @FlipYrWhig: Wow, like DougJ, I had never heard of a liberal cruise before. I would love to know what the relative number are between The NRO cruise and the Nation cruise. The video provided at your link makes it look like a pretty small group of people…

  39. 39.

    Citizen_X

    why do conservatives like cruising together so much?

    And nobody has, as yet, linked to this?

    (Hey, some righties prefer a wide stance.)

  40. 40.

    Kyle

    @The Dangerman:

    Help gets paid for shit and has to live in cramped quarters. Ship is probably registered in Liberia to avoid nasty workplace rules.

    Knowing that the help are cheap labor living poorly, and that the owners are making massive profits while slickly sidestepping government regulation, gives right-wingers a boner.

  41. 41.

    xochi

    There is no better essay about cruise ships than the late David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” The combination of pampering and tedium that he described seems somehow apropos for the National Review crowd.

  44. 44.

    TBogg

    The Conservative speakers get a free trip subsidized by the rubes who get boners just thinking about rubbing elbows with Nick Gillespie or Jay Nordlinger on the Lido Deck.

    For people like 3rd tier hate radio hacks like Roger Hedgecock, they get kickbacks (along with their free trip with the missus) for convincing their dumbass listeners to join them.

  45. 45.

    JGabriel

    @Joel:

    Once sailed in a Maxi around the Whitsunday Islands.

    I once twirled around in a peddle boat in the pond at Split Rock Lodge in the Poconos. I think I was seven.

    Twirled, by the way, literally. No one else was around, so I took the boat out by myself. But it was of the type that requires two peddlers, so I just sort of spun around while traversing a larger loop, like a slow, out of control, spirograph gear rotating over the ripples.

    .

  46. 46.

    asiangrrlMN

    A cruise is my idea of the ninth ring of hell. Stuck on a boat with a bunch of people I probably wouldn’t associate with on land, doing crappy shit like shuffleboard, and eating overpriced food that is bad for you. Then, to top it off, you have to cram in a week’s worth of sightseeing in a great country in one afternoon. Yeah, no. Although, it this thread does give me the opportunity to link this song.

    This is one activity the cons can keep.

  47. 47.

    Yutsano

    @The Dangerman:

    I think some have skeet off the back, but ya gotta know that seagulls are the target, not the clay pigeons.

    You may have to explain to me why exactly this is a negative. I hate those damn rats with wings with the passion of a thousand suns.

  48. 48.

    JGabriel

    asiangrrlMN:

    This is one activity the cons can keep.

    Yeah, and those “Ride On Top Of A Station Wagon With Mitt Romney Through A State Park” Tours? The Cons can keep those motherfuckers too.

    .

  50. 50.

    HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist

    On Air America I once heard an ad for a cruise with Thom Hartmann and others. I think it’s a Clear Channel thing. Though since AM radio is dominated by right-wing pricks, it’s no small surprise that cruises feature wide among all those rightard stations.

    That said, I think of cruises as incarceration in a floating hotel. I hate hotels mostly, and the idea of being trapped on one for most of my vacation makes my skin crawl.

  51. 51.

    JGabriel

    @asiangrrlMN: What gets me is the twine. They put you & Mitt on top of a fucking station wagon bouncing around a Mass. state park dirt road at 35 mph in a couple of those cheap-ass aluminum and nylon-webbed folding lawn chairs, and then all they secure it with is that brown twine old men use to tie down the lid of over-stuffed car trunks, parcel together used Nat’l Geographics, and repair loose tail pipes.

    I mean, it’s not fucking secure at all.

    .

  53. 53.

    Bob Loblaw

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Hiking the Appalachian Trail

    Oh come on, who hasn’t thought about an affair on another continent before? We can’t really hold that one against the Republicans the way we can for wetsuit/dildo combinations, for example. Sanford was positively wholesome by comparison.

  54. 54.

    Egypt Steve

    Years ago I got a gig on an upscale cruise as a lecturer. They are absolutely full of rich women of a certain age who are there to bed younger men. Remember Continenti and the thrill he got from Sarah Palin’s smile? That’s just the type they’re after.

  55. 55.

    georgia pig

    Conservative generally favor any artificial environment that ensures minimal and/or highly mediated contact with nature, people unlike them, etc. Hence the affection for McMansions, SUVs, RVs and cruises, and the disdain for environmentalism, public transportation and women who don’t shave their armpit hair.

  56. 56.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Bob Loblaw: I actually don’t give a damn about the affair–it was the rest of the repulsive rigamarole concerning his disappearance and his involvement with the C Street mafia that pissed me off. Again, if he were a Democrat, he would have been kicked out of office before he could say Appalachian Trail. Since he was a Republican, it was all just fine and dandy.

  58. 58.

    p.a.

    I think it is because you can go to foreign countries without having to meet all those foreigners.

    while being waited on hand-and-foot by those people…

  61. 61.

    Navigator

    No media, not even a mention of the event with a Google earth inset of the compound before checking tomorrow’s weather forecast or what Lindsay wrote on her cell wall.

    They can talk as crazy as they wanna, without anyone noticing. And with what’s already out there in public these last years, you gotta wonder what counts as the new crazy.

    I smell a Rolling Stone undercover opportunity.
    “Refill, sir?”

  63. 63.

    Albatrossity

    If they really wanted to see their principles in action, they would cruise off Somalia and get some tips from the pirates.

  65. 65.

    catclub

    @cmorenc:
    “Not everyone or even a majority of folks on cruises are necessarily overweight or out of shape, but the ones I’ve been on, the disproportion relative to normal land society is quite obvious.”

    You’re just not from Mississippi. Here, Haley Barbour is lean.

  66. 66.

    EconWatcher

    DougJ:

    Bless you for that link to the TNR story about the National Review cruise.

  67. 67.

    Woodrowfan

    I just came back from 10 days in western North Carolina. I noticed that I had a much harder time finding reduced fat items and sugar-free items in the stores than I have here in Northern VA/DC.

    As for why righties like cruises? 99% of the non-whites they see are servants….

  68. 68.

    phoebes-in-santa fe

    @FlipYrWhig: Just what I want to do, cruise the Atlantic in the prime of hurricane season…Wouldn’t mind meeting Vanden Heuvel and Lacewell, though.

  69. 69.

    Allan

    Ship of Fools

    The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.

  70. 70.

    schrodinger's cat

    Hey I went on a sailing trip on a schooner for 4 days off the coast of Maine. It was great fun, our Captain was a woman, we helped with the sailing and the cooking, we had a lobster bake on the beach, we had a wonderful cook who made fantastic meals on a wood stove.
    Good times…

  71. 71.

    liberal

    @FlipYrWhig:
    Sent my folks on one of those for their wedding anniversary a while back. It was an Alaskan cruise.

    They liked it a lot, though Dad made some negative comments about some Trotskyite idiot they had at their dinner table one night.

  73. 73.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Ash Can:

    True. That and the service. They get to relive the imagined white power glory days of having their every need be catered to by servents.

  76. 76.

    MoeLarryAndJesus

    @ksmiami – Tidal wave? What fun would that be? I hope the Kraken gets them.

  77. 77.

    Glen Tomkins

    “Why?”

    It’s the Ship of Fools thing. They can’t help but aggregate in dank clumps of overripe folly.

  78. 78.

    grumpy realist

    Some cruises can have sufficient science/history/geography to be fun. Wouldn’t mind going on one of those “chase the solar eclipse” jaunts with a whole bunch of astronomers. But going on something to listen to a bunch of political wankers regurgitate the Cliches of the Day, convincing each other what great thinkers ?

    Yeah, right.

  79. 79.

    ed drone

    @Objective Scrutator:

    I also think that conservatives such as myself enjoy cruises because there is the oft possibility that we will happen across oceanic communities dedicated to free markets, balanced budgets, no taxes, and a completely financial economy!

    Sail Somalia!
    NO government control of free enterprise!
    Free (one-way) side-trips in small boats.
    NO Taxes!
    Sunny skies and rolling seas await you.
    “Friendly” natives with unusual, picturesque customs.

    What more could you ask for?

    Ed

  81. 81.

    iLarynx

    Conservatives love cruises because:

    It gets them off
    American soil
    The land they hate
    And work to destroy.

  82. 82.

    Greg

    I went on only one cruise and I hated every millisecond of it. I constantly felt trapped. Add K-Lo and only one of us leaves alive.

  83. 83.

    scarshapedstar

    I bet the tapping in the men’s restroom on these cruises sounds like a hailstorm.

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