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Therieb confronts his addiction...

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They tell me 50% of solving a problem is admitting you have one, so here goes: I'm addicted to internet porn. Not the girlie kind, although I like that too. No, I'm addicted to politically conservative magazines and blogs, and the nastier the better! My addiction has become acute lately, mostly because I can't seem to get enough of reading conservative commentators squirming while attempting to explain the current financial situation in the U.S.. So here is an annotated tour of my conservative porn universe, for all those liberals who would like to join me in masturbatory schadenfreude.

First, a word of caution. Just as in the girlie porn world, there are certain lines therieb doesn't cross. I have no desire to watch girls eating poop, and just so, I'm not interested in those conservative publications that arrive in plain brown envelopes in the first class mail. These are the kind of magazines that a graduate school housemate at the University of Virginia enjoyed, with such headline articles as “I Love the South,” and “The Civilizing Influence of Slavery.” That's too much for me, and it's cheating besides. If it arrives in a plain brown wrapper, no one can challenge how crazy you are. In order for me to be interested, the pundit must have his work out for all to see. Rule number two, I won't pay for any of this. There's lot's of free porn on the internet, becoming a subscriber is definitely crossing a red line.

First stop, the Drudge Report. While Matt Drudge doesn't do any reporting himself, he has become a master at directing readers' attention through selectively placing links on his site to produce mass hysteria. Drudge is clearly in it for himself, but he certainly has rightward political leanings. Today's above the fold headline features a white, female McCain campaigner who was robbed and beaten in Pittsburg. Her photo shows that her assailant scratched a “B” into her face, allegedly after he noticed a McCain bumper sticker on her car. Shocking? perhaps. Front page news? Only in the Drudge world, where banner headlines about all manner of world-ending calamities lead to stories in such reliable publications as The New York Post and The Washington Times.

Next stop is Rush Limbaugh's website. This is where the real porn begins. I know, because I begin to have that delicious feeling of guilt just for reading it. Say what you want about Mr. Limbaugh, he is a tireless worker. Day in, day out, he produces his radio program, two or three hours of rants against all types of liberal threats to God, country, and “achievers” everywhere. Limbaugh is utterly fearless when it comes to changing his position or spinning incredible yarns. He lays the blame on America's current financial situation squarely on the doorstep of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who made reckless home loans to “minorities,” all the time egged on by homosexual senator Barney Frank and the Black Caucus. Ah, sweet, sweet porn! I couldn't write this stuff, but notice how in spite of himself, Limbaugh makes a half valid point. Of course he's race baiting, and a majority of the Alt-a mortgages were offered, bundled, and sold by private banks and securities firms, so that doesn't wash. His paranoid fantasy, however, does point out that deregulation of financial markets in general, and the real estate market in particular, was a completely bipartisan effort, though he doesn't credit Republicans for being complicit. Does he go too far? Of course, all porn goes to far.

Limbaugh is the Hustler Magazine of conservative porn. It aims at an audience who wants simple, graphic entertainment. Rush obliges with shouts and sneers, his fleshy oratory spread wide for people on their drive home from work. Commentators like Ann Coulter and Michael Medved are also in this group. A little more upmarket are the offerings from publications like National Review online. These folks sport writers that can actually put sentences together, and the publication itself has a bit of history. National Review was founded by William Buckley, a Yale-educated architect of the Reagan era world view. Although better written and less spastic then Limbaugh's site, National Review feels like real porn. Dirty, dirty, dirty! I feel like I'm really doing something wrong by reading it. Buckley himself strongly opposed the Civil Rights Act based on the superiority of the White race (he later recanted), and National Review still sports such chestnuts as “Hurricane Katrina wouldn't have been so bad if Black Men had been better fathers.” Here is where you will also see gushing eulogies for Strom Thurmond and Jessie Helms in the “they might have had old fashioned ideas, but they stood up for states' rights” vein. Like I said, really dirty. National Review is the Playboy of the conservative porn world: aimed at an audience who believes they have a little class. Occasionally, it even features writers in its pages who can also get published outside the berserk ideological sphere. I imagine National Review readers as the middle aged Harold Bloom acolytes, those guys who have a special shelf in their houses for faux-leather bound copies of the classics, a set of which they bought on the internet for the low, low price of $189.99, and which they will read someday.

There are also internet only publications that give me a dirty thrill. Townhall.com is an efficient bundler of conservative commentators in the same manner as Drudge, but with an unabashedly conservative slant. Then there's Politico.com, which, while leaning conservative, has emerged this election season as a semi-legitimate source of political news. Politico has its own reporting staff, several of whom are competent writers, and they approach political reporting with humor and good cheer. They have also managed to break a story or two this election cycle, most recently concerning the RNC's lavish spending on Sarah Palin's wardrobe. Just like Playboy, Politico is the site for which I can most easily deploy the excuse: “I read it for the interesting articles...”

I avoid conservative blogs for the same reason I avoid amateur porn. The lighting is bad, the models are ugly, and the action is hard to follow. Why waste my time deciphering Joe from Cleavland's tortured prose when he isn't saying anything I can't read in syndication?

What of TV? Fox News? Screamin' Bill O'Reilly and baby-faced Sean Hannity? Truth be told, they don't turn me on much, or at least not anymore. Any type of porn needs freshness and variety to remain titillating, and the Fox boys can't seem to escape the days of delivering us from the evils of Bill Clinton. O'Reilly looks tired, like a blown out starlet after her first year in the business. Porn isn't forgiving to its performers. Make your money and get out fast. Perhaps these guys will make a comeback during the impending Obama presidency, but for the moment we've seen all their tricks, and their babbling is about as effective as the poorly synced Oohs and Ahhs in a traditional porn film.

Further up the dial we come to the print publications of the Murdoch empire: the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard. This is the kind of publication you read while you enjoy a stiff drink on your sailboat. For the moment, there are a few honest reporters still at the Journal, although most of the editorial staff has headed for the exits. I'm more interested in the editorial page, presided over by Sister Peggy Noonan and a bunch of “free market” types. Watching these people bemoan current conditions on Wall Street provides a few minutes of harmless fun, especially because they aren't allowed to point fingers and the insane bankers who created the mess. Over at the Weekly Standard, Irwin Stelzer is having the same problem. Instead of turning on their investment banker masters, feeble calls for responsibility and level headed decision making are proffered, along with shrill cries about the dangers of over regulation. Things are tough for this group of writers these days. They aren't allowed to dabble in the conspiracy theories of the Limbaughs and National Review writers. They are supposed to be the grown ups of the conservative movement, and they are left having to explain free market behavior of bankers that has been less than adult.

So there it is, a quick tour through my conservative porn universe. There are other stops along the way, those lonely outposts on liberal editorial pages where writers like Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks make a living, but they're always asking for appeasement and understanding from so-called liberal readers, and what fun is that? All Brooks can muster in the face of America's current financial situation is a prescription to tuck up warm in bed with a copy of "Reflections on the Revolution in France."

Why, oh why, do I waste my time reading any of this stuff? What kind of a question is that? Why does anyone indulge in porn of any kind? Because it's nasty! Because it's forbidden! Because it's wrong! I don't read conservative (or liberal) opinion to learn something new or to argue with the writer. I read such writing for the same reason as people watch car crashes, for the pure pleasure of having read something so fantastically wrong.