Postscript to the previous post: gonzo conservatives

I just finished reading Pat Dollard's War on Hollywood. It's good but it's disturbing to an old fuddy-duddy like me.

P.J. O'Rourke coined the term "Republican Party Reptile." Ace recently promoted the term "dirty conservatives." There is a strand of American conservatism that is a little too macho for me. It's a muscular, rude and crude conservatism. Dollard's "conservatism" reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson's "gonzo journalism" such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I may not like "gonzo conservatism" but youngsters inured to the coarseness of Internet porn and the violence of inner-city thuggery probably will.

Here are two snippets from the last page of Wright's essay:

Despite his outrage, Breitbart advocates a right-wing version of the Merry Pranksters led by people like Coulter and Dollard. Perhaps America has experienced a circular movement in its social history. The freaks are now on the right. Dollard takes this even further. With his drug-fueled excursions into combat zones, his lust for booze and hookers and porn, and, above all, his madness for life, he is an authentic anti-Establishment figure and is certainly in the running to be the first true gonzo journalist to emerge from this war. And yet he supports the Republican Party platform, George Bush, and the Pledge of Allegiance.
...
In mid-January, Andrew Breitbart hosts a conservative coming-out party for Dollard to celebrate his upcoming Fox deal. (According to Dollard, Fox News head Roger Ailes was “stoked” about bringing him into the Fox fold after viewing his Web site.) About 30 people gather at Breitbart’s hillside home in Brentwood to view Dollard’s clips. When I enter, Ann Coulter stands by a bowl of guacamole, eating tortilla chips and venting about the lack of spine shown by her own partisans. “I meet so many conservative men afraid to say they still support the war,” she says. “Conservatives are pussies. That should be the title of my next book.”