CPAC Superfreaks
What fresh hell?
“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” Little Jack Posobiec said to Steve Bannon. The squirrelly influencer and the felonious werewolf were the opening act of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. Performative fascism guarantees attention from the libtards — video of it has been shared widely online:
“We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here,” Little Jack said, holding up his fist. "That's right, because all glory is not to government, all glory to God," he added.
As he spoke, Bannon laughed and said, “Amen!”
CPAC is the annual casting call for inclusion in American Political Freakshow.
See-pack.
The Star Wars bar of American right-wing extremism.
The first time I went to CPAC, I was writing about how and why young conservative women were hating on “feminism” - a movement that had arguably enabled them to get out of the kitchen, don the F-me shoes, and mingle with the likes of Ted Cruz and the John Birch Society. In my memory, the bowels of a DC convention hall were thick with vendors who got weirder the farther into the hallucinatory fug you walked, where finally there was a table with a larval-complected trio in white robes and red crosses … members of one of the medieval Catholic orders last heard from in the 15th Century until Leonard Leo raised them up from obscurity when he bought the U.S. Supreme Court.
Somewhere in that circle of hell is where I first encountered future NRA shill and school shooting apologist Dana Loesch. The footwear of choice for her and most of the women was the red-soled Louboutin stiletto. The chief complaint the young femme extremists had about feminists was that we didn’t know how to be sexy and that we hated men. They refused to believe that wasn’t true, evidence of liberal babies notwithstanding.
Perhaps because I entered this subculture through that lens, I have always seen the extreme right as a product of repressed attitudes toward gender and sex. Prick a rock-ribbed right-winger and watch the kink ooze out. What is the urge toward autocracy but a craving for the master, the spank, the big man who will keep you in line?
With apologies to Rick James, rarely are more kinky super-freaks seen all in one place.
🎶 She's a very kinky girl / The kind you don't take home to mother 🎶
I wrote about Little Jack Posobiec a few weeks ago. He is one of the three right wing influencer Bobblehead Dolls whose hysterical machismo and online trolling have won them money and huge followings. Little Jack sports the same right-wing revolutionary Ahmadinejad beard that Donald Trump Jr. started wearing after Dad got elected.
Little Jack has some serious issues with women. How many men can boast that they were kicked off Bumble? His most popular podcast is one titled “Do Women Even Know What They Want?” When it became clear to him that no self-respecting American woman his age wanted anything to do with his truculent kick-me face and career in rightwing ratfuckery, he managed to round up a Russian bride who tweets as Tanya Tay. He claims they met at “Bible study.”
The happy couple cosplays white Christian happiness on Instagram. When Jack teased his “end of democracy” speech on Xitter (“I will be speaking at CPAC today at 12:30p With a special message about democracy See you soon!”), Tanya Tay (her Xitter profile is decorated with a Russian Orthodox cross and an American flag) hit the RT button, adding a pious overlay. “A nice message I bet since it’s still Lent. Can’t wait to hear!!”
Lent? Huh?
We have neither world enough nor time to figure that out here — because we need to move up the CPAC Freak chain. CPAC is organized by the American Conservative Union, whose chairman is Matt Schlapp. You can be forgiven for — while trying to keep up with the fake businessman’s felony charges and the adventures of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Porn App)* — maybe missing the sordid saga of Matt Schlapp.
Matt is a hot mess. He, his wife, and now CPAC are being sued by a younger Republican strategist Carlton Huffman, who claims Schlapp sexually assaulted him - “groping and pommeling” his crotch in a car after a hot Georgia night of bar-hopping - while Huffman worked on Herschel Walker’s 2022 Senate campaign.
Schlapp lawyered up, denied. His wife - another dolorous Catholic Madonna like Boohoo Brett Kavanaugh’s consort - even called the Daily Beast “Satanic” after it broke the story. But the Washington Post subsequently found six family members and friends of Huffman and three Walker campaign officials (that makes NINE witnesses) who confirmed that Huffman told them about the incident the night it happened or the next day. The Post also viewed materials Huffman shared - texts, phone logs and videos that “broadly match his accounts of quickly sharing the allegation.”
More recently, the Washington Post reported that Schlapp has a history of sexual misconduct against men and that on at least two occasions the incidents were reported to the American Conservative Union. In one alleged incident, during a fundraising trip to South Florida in early 2022, Schlapp was accused of stripping to his underwear and rubbing against another person without his consent, according to the filing. In 2017, at a CPAC after-party, Schlapp attempted to kiss an employee against his wishes, the lawsuit claims.
Huffman has since added CPAC as a defendant in his lawsuit, claiming the organization knew of another alleged sexual assault. His lawyers have subpoenaed a CPAC honcho who directly oversaw interns shredding documents in or near her office shortly after Huffman filed suit. According to the Daily Beast, which reviewed the documents, shredded items included personal documents belonging to Schlapp, parking tickets and business records related to the private lobbying concern Schlapp and his wife operate.
Huffman refused a settlement offer, and one CLAP board member has quit over the affair, claiming that Schlapp’s defense is “bleeding CPAC dry.”
Schlapp, like Posobiec, is a lifelong Catholic, born and educated at a Catholic high school and Notre Dame, within the creed. He even called in a Catholic priest to do an exorcism on the CPAC offices at some point in 2022, after complaints about staff treatment and inadequate pay led to a mass resignation of staffers. The priest reportedly doused the place — and any employees he encountered — with holy water, and placed medallions depicting Saint Benedict, the patron saint of exorcism, above the doors.
It was “the weirdest thing I’d seen,” one person who witnessed the ritual said.
Transgressive desire barely held in check with fake piety. Hot! This is the level of batshittery that undergirds modern American rightwing dictator worship.
The next day at CPAC, with Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA blasting, Trump strolled onstage and gave the keynote address. He struck the usual notes of dementia, rage, and narcissistic despair, and the audience, tormented like Schlapp and Little Jack by the contradictions between desire and the ravages wacko religion and extreme patriarchy have perpetrated on their souls, were soothed by the balm of nihilism. “Our country is being destroyed,” Trump warned. “And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me.”
*Stealing that from the great Rick Wilson in his column Children with Chainsaws
You outdid yourself with this critique of CPAC and it’s denizens! Louboutin 👠!
Thank you for a new word: ‘batshittery.” I think that clears the way for “crackpottery,” which I’ve been reluctant to use.
As for all the sexual kinks and hijinks, for some reason they most often seem to lodge in Republicans or Catholics -- or, if you prefer, Catholic Republicans.
Which brings us to today, though not in the literal sense. It is beyond me why a bunch of (mostly) Catholic men want to stick it to women (no, not in that sense)
about sex and reproduction. They’ve miscalculated greatly, which one hopes will be proven on Election Day when all, or most of these freaks are not reelected. I leave it to future historians and shrinks to determine why all these Catholic men want to get into women’s bedrooms and regulate what goes on with their cooches.