An incoherent governing philosophy and some extraordinarily bad rap, apparently. That, plus a perfect summation of the conservative movement’s stagger toward irrelevance:

Dan and George Hawley have already said most of what needs to be said, but a few more thoughts:

1. No, this is not a joke. At least, I don’t think it’s a joke, and if it turns out to be a joke after all then it will have been on all the right people.

2. That that question – the one about whether it’s a joke, I mean – is one that occurs and reoccurs a dozen times or more in the course of that 4:38 (full disclosure: I don’t think I even made it halfway) is the perfect illustration of just how awful the act really is. That movement junkies find themselves compelled, as Hawley notes, to pretend that they like it is the perfect illustration of the movement’s absurdity. Not just anyone can rap, folks, and for proof of this please see the above.

3. At the risk of taking this too seriously, let me add to Dan’s remarks on the clash between the irony of the form and the earnestness of the content the observation that in this case even the “white rapper” form isn’t really ironic in the strict sense, as the rappers – unlike, say, Eminem – seem blissfully unaware of any discordance between their self-presentation and the audience’s take-up of it. It’s as if chopping your hands in the air and tugging at the lapels of your coat immediately makes you look like a rapper, when of course that couldn’t be less true. Again, for proof of this please see the above.

4. As to the content itself, in addition to the incoherent content it’s the preachiness of the whole affair that makes it so epically absurd. I can easily imagine a “conservative” musical act that did an effective job of satirizing, perhaps along these lines, some class of liberal cultural or political pretensions; and with somewhat less ease I can imagine someone effectively using a medium like rap to convey some conservative insights in a much, much more subtle way. But putting the GOP platform into rhyming couplets and laying a clumsy rhythm underneath it? Not so much.

5. Finally, and with apologies for the mild crudeness, let me predict that when these guys play CPAC in the next couple of years, the after-party extracurriculars will rival anything at all that Stephen Glass could have come up with.

But anyway – eat your hearts out, liberal America. If this isn’t the conservative low point, I shudder to think of what will be.

Filed under: conservatism, media/culture