The Washington Post sent a reporter to cover the screening of the Ayn Rand fan boy project. I though they capture the essence of CPAC and the so-called conservative and/or glibertarian movement:
Perhaps you should elbow your way into the standing-room-only conference room on the mezzanine level, where herds of eager viewers are preparing to watch a sneak preview of a selection of scenes from the long-awaited movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”
__
Because inasmuch as the audience is made up of a group of people who have organized their entire belief system around a novel, this screening ultimately amounts to the equivalent of a Harry Potter screening at Comic-Con.
Their entire belief system is based on fantasy. That about sums it up.
And in another bit of circle closing detail: the producer of the fan boy fantasy worked with Jack Abramoff to co-produce Red Scorpion back in the day (yet another effort to bring fan boy conservatism/glibertarianism wet dreams to the silver screen).
Cheers
dmsilev
Oh my. During the Q&A session, this from the audience:
Sadly, the producer’s answer is not reported.
dms
Cat Lady
Mutton chops are in for conservatives? No spats?
Mr Furious
Perfect. They’re second-rate Scientologists.
Mary G
That is extremely unfair to Harry Potter fans like me.
ETA: I will be sending you a curse as soon as I can find a big enough envelope.
Shalimar
@dmsilev: I think the only proper answer is with 30 minutes straight of a train going through a very long tunnel.
zattarra
Obviously written by a reporter who has never been to Comic-Con. You’re typical comic con audience is much more grounded in reality and the way the world works that people who believe Atlas Shrugged. I go to Comic-Con, the Comic-Con attendees are much better than these people at distinguishing fantasy from reality.
hilts
The CPAC conference is 100% Grade-A CCRAP
dr. bloor
So where do you suppose that reporter will be working next week?
Folderol & Ephemera
Except without all the cosplay, slash-fic, and casual hookups.
. . .
At least, I hope not.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mary G: Do you have a large enough owl?
Dennis G.
@zattarra:
The comparison was a bit unfair to fans of Comic-Con and Harry Potter in so far as the vast majority of them can separate fantasy from reality. OTOH, the folks at CPAC have parted ways with the real world a long time ago.
The comparison was a good way to try and illustrate the rich and active fantasy life of your average glibertarian and modern conservative.
I’m sure there are others that would work as well.
evap
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article, it read as one long snark. Or maybe that’s just me.
JMC_in_the_ATL
In defense of Potterdom, at least its moral lessons include:
1. It is better to do what is hard and right, than to do what is easy and wrong.
2. Love triumphs over hate.
3. Talent should trump bloodright.
4. Slavery is wrong.
Oh, and Harry Potter has inspired its own brand of social justice activism: http://thehpalliance.org/
Roger Moore
Of course you could say the same thing about the theocons. It’s just the crazy, badly written book they’ve based their lives on is old enough to have some respectability.
harry
Wait a second….are we talking about politics or religion?
Roger Moore
@Folderol & Ephemera:
Sure there’s cosplay. They’re cunningly dressed as human beings, rather than evil lizard people who want to eat the rest of us for breakfast.
Roger Moore
@Dennis G.:
Yeah, like hearing about the latest Republican sex scandal. They have active, rich, disturbing fantasy lives.
Barry
@Shalimar: “I think the only proper answer is with 30 minutes straight of a train going through a very long tunnel.”
A very looooooooooooong, thiiiiiiiiiiiiiick (dare I say ‘Galtian’?) train roughly bashing it’s way through a tight, snug tunnel by brute (but Galtian) force.
Jim Kakalios
@zattarra: Moreover, despite the sterotype of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, the average comic book fan at Comic-Con is in better shape than what I’ve seen of the average CPAC attendee.
Spandex is a very unforgiving fabric, after all.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Physics Professor,
Jim
Cacti
The difference with the Rand fanboys is, they’re convinced the reason they’ve never felt the touch of a woman is because they just haven’t met their Dagny yet.
Cacti
@harry:
Potayto/Potahto
In 1000 years, people will probably be hearing stories of how Ayn Rand could turn water into wine and raise the dead.
Chris Wolf
@dmsilev:
Maybe they hired the narrator from SpongeBob….
“One Hour Later….”
Walker
Bear in mind that in order to make Galt’s Gulch self-sufficient, Galt had to invent a perpetual motion machine. That is how disconnected from reality Rand was.
jpmeyer
@Cacti:
It’s because they haven’t met a woman like this: http://nymag.com/news/features/artifact/51814/
Shalimar
@Cacti: And we’re all happy the cowards haven’t decided to start taking their women by force. Though I do wonder if things like the not-really-rape bills introduced this year are designed not just for anti-abortion crusaders but also to make the Randians feel more comfortable that they can pursue their fantasies without worrying about consequences.
Mike in NC
One of the stars of CPAC this time was Ilario “Psycho” Pantano, the Iraq war criminal and all-around creep who missed getting elected to Congress by the teabaggers in my district. He’s collecting undisclosed amounts of wingnut welfare and prepping for another run in 2012. He’s also working on his act as a Born-Again Christian and wannabe redneck to burnish his lunatic appeal.
Michael
@Folderol & Ephemera:
I can tell you haven’t been to CPAC. I have – it is like a pathetic singles joint at closing time.
Hann1bal
I object, Dennis. You’re being too harsh…to fantasy lovers. I learned valuable lessons that helped make me the liberal I am today from my voracious reading of fantasy. All they’ll learn from Atlas Chugged is stupidity and self-righteous selfishness.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cat Lady:
I saw (I think it was) Matt Kibbe, Dick Armey’s puppet for Freedumb Werks, on with Tweety while sportin’ a pair o’ chops.
I think they are regressing and in the early 1970’s now. I can’t wait for the bell bottoms to come out.
Jorge
This is the equivalent of the Kirk Cameron Left behind movie –
Definitve proof that what fundamentalists treat as a revelatory prediction of the future is really a fanciful allegory about a very specific time period.
RSA
“Dagny Taggart mustn’t be angry with Moochy. Moochy did it for the best.”
rreay
Ah, one of my favorite quotes for a great writer.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” – John Rogers
Pongo
Do these people actually know anything about the woman they idolize? Like that her idol and the ‘manly’ man upon whom she based the male heroes in her books was a psychopath that kidnapped, murdered and mutilated a 12 yo girl? Or that she herself abused the men in her life to an absurd degree?
This whole Randian thing has a very cult-ish flavor to it. It’s really no different than Scientologists, Branch Davidians, JWs, Ralians, etc. who refuse to acknowledge the seedy, criminal, mentally ill and even dangerous nature of their founders and continue to blindly and ferociously defend the indefensible. Rand takes it a step further by appealing to personal ego and greed. Her followers collectively think way more of themselves and way less of everyone than reality would dictate. I sometimes think the only way to break through the cloud of denial is to let them all ‘go Galt’ and when the vast majority realize that in her vision of a privileged class with everyone else subservient to them, they will not be among the ‘Galts,’ it ought to clearly demonstrate the narcissistic poison that was Ayn Rand and her malignant vision.
Or else that awful looking movie will do the trick…
gelfling545
@rreay: I saw that quote some time ago & wanted to send it to a libertarian of my acquaintance but could not locate it. Thanks for providing it.It sums up the situation nicely.
Nicole
@Pongo: I realize every time there’s an Ayn Rand post, up I pop with a comment. I swear I’m not being an apologist, as I don’t like her writing, but I’ve read a lot of it (fiction and non-) and three biographies of her and this isn’t quite accurate.
Rand didn’t base her male heroes on a murderer. She was enraptured by what she interpreted as that guy’s (I can’t remember his name) disdain for society’s rules. Which is stupid, but she didn’t base her protagonists on him; he was a guy who happened to fill a fantasy she constructed in her head. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I think it’s because he was handsome. Rand was very, very shallow about beauty.
If anything Rand based her heroes on the hero of a children’s story she read when she herself was a child.
I’m not certain what you consider an “absurd degree” of abuse to be. Her relationships with her husband and her young lover were bizarre, to say the least, and in the case of Nathanial Branden, she certainly took advantage of his hero-worship of his idol, but the abuse in the relationship came as much from the fact that he was her number two in the Objectivist movement, had a fair amount to lose in terms of money and power by breaking things off with her, and was no saint himself (as I’ve done before, I highly, highly recommend any of the biographies on her. The one written by Branden’s ex-wife and the one he wrote are more biased than the newer ones, but very entertaining).
I do agree with you 100 percent that Rand lorded over a cult made of lonely young people seeking someone who they thought had all the answers, and I also agree she was mentally ill, due in no small part to her addiction to uppers.
She also spoke out publicly in favor of legal abortion, during a time when it was still illegal, saying flat out that fetuses are not people and therefore the woman’s right to her life as an individual outweighed any “rights” people claimed the fetus had.
She was also ardently in favor of civil rights, believing that biases against someone based on their skin color were an unforgivable assault on those persons rights as an individual.
Yet she thought homosexuality was a mental disorder that could be cured by resolving conflicts in one’s premises.
She was an ardent atheist, and some of the biggest villains in her books are Christians.
And I stress again, she was a brilliantly intelligent Jewish girl born into an anti-Semetic nation, whose family lost everything in a revolution. That’s bound to mess up a kid’s thinking. From personal experience, my stepmother, whom I adore, is a survivor of a genocide and there are some things that come out of her mouth that I dearly hope she never says in public.
Rand, like all of us, was a complicated individual, and I think those of us who consider ourselves liberals owe it to what we consider the “correct” side to not play the conservative’s game of misrepresenting and simplifying people on the other side. It makes it as easy for them to dismiss our arguments when we say, “Rand abused men!” as it is for us to do when they say, “Obama’s a Soshulist!”
As a much better writer than Rand said, it’s the sign of a first-class mind to be able to hold opposing opinions in it and to give equal weight to each. By understanding where Rand came from, it’s much easier to successfully defeat her arguments, usually made by those who support them without actually understanding them or where they came from.
Which is not to say I don’t love good snark about her writing- it’s every bit as delicious to me as all the hilarious snark about the Twilight novels. I love the Rogers quote, too. And I’m soooo going to the movie and will blog a review. Cannot WAIT.
Hungry Joe
The movie could become a cult classic — midnight shows at the art theater, chanting of key lines of dialog, knocking back of smuggled-in shots every time a character says “Who is John Galt?”, ritualized flinging of caviar at the screen … or something like that. Anyway, I’m THERE.
JGabriel
WaPo via dmsilev:
Instead of doing whole thing, they’ll just show a montage of people hearing it on the radio, then going out and changing their lives by getting rid of the parasites — you know, warm and fuzzy clips of WASPs kicking their parents out on the street, sending their children to the orphanage, and shooting IRS auditors and Census takers.
.
JGabriel
Monica Hesse, WaPo:
Ooh, this is gonna be fun.
(Gets popcorn, leans back.)
Okay, now, someone tell Glenn Beck that all the Egyptian protesters are Ayn Rand fans. I wanna see his head go all explodey.
.
Baroness
@Hungry Joe:
A la Rocky Horror I’m sure that James Taggart will be labeled “asshole” and Lillian Rearden “slut.”
(If I could have that book wiped from my memory, by God, I would.)
Rick Massimo
Finally someone else is saying it. I’ve been shouting this for years.
Centuries from now, when the history of the American Empire is written by people who aren’t covering their own asses, it will say “They built up the greatest standard of living the world had ever known, and then they pissed it away because of a novel.”
AAA Bonds
What a slur on ComicCon. I don’t think you’d be able to find a single person who thinks policy should be guided by the work of Geoff Johns.
AAA Bonds
@Nicole:
You should volunteer at a women’s shelter; they’ll teach you some choice terms for this kind of reasoning.
Rand is accurately described as a social-climbing barbarian, fueled by resentment, who wouldn’t be remembered if it weren’t for a gaggle of other resentment-fueled, social-climbing barbarians such as Alan Greenspan.
And abusive? Certainly, Ayn Rand was an unrepentant abuser who endorsed a philosophy of abuse. David Miscavige comes to mind as a proper comparison.
AAA Bonds
I think it’s very important to understand that Ayn Rand was not just the founder of a vile and reprehensible system of belief, not just the addled and paranoid dictator of a vicious cult, but also a pathetic, petty, stupid brat whose personal behavior should be openly scorned by any responsible adult.
joe from Lowell
@harry:
Ayn Rand was atheist.
Congrats.
bjacques
@Hungry Joe:
Johnny Dearest!
Wile E. Quixote
@AAA Bonds:
Well of course not, Geoff Johns fucking sucks. Have you seen what that mustard did to The Flash. Now if you were talking about Warren Ellis or Grant Morrison that would be different.
DougW
Oh Ayn to think that I used to like you… But you’ve taken the days of the Fountainhead to a whole new plateau. One plateau that is insurmountable by any reasonable person, or for that matter, even unreasonable ones… Nobility no longer counts in your book (let alone the asshats in the House of Representatives)… The House no longer represents anything accept their puppet masters… They do the bidding required of them, hope to God that they can deliver in order to get tons of money for the next election cycle…
Very American isn’t it?
Jay in Oregon
@Wile E. Quixote:
Or John Rogers, who coincidentally brought us this gem:
Kathy in St. Louis
Read this book over 40 years ago. My sister asked me what I thought of it. I told her that if the world and the people in it were as the book depicted, I’d just as soon shoot myself. I was just a kid then, but having met an assortment of libertarians since then, I’m still of the same opinion. All about their rights…no a word about responsiblities.