A confederacy of cons - critique of different kinds of conservatives who pretend to represent conservatism - Column

National Review, Nov 7, 1994 by Florence King

ON MY GOOD days my definition of a conservative is someone who has ordered a book from Liberty Press and knows who Irving Babbitt was, but as you know, I have very few good days. I have defined some other conservative types of late and they all make me sick.

1. Gump Cons prove that conservatives are like a box of chocolates: you never know when something mushy is going to ooze out.

I met Forrest Gump eight years ago, having read the Winston Groome novel before it was published--i.e., I reviewed it for the Washington Post, which fact alone tells us something: if the book had contained the seeds of a great conservative revival, the Post never would have assigned it to me.

Screenwriters always change things, but even so I'm having a hard time understanding why the movie made Pat Buchanan deliquesce in print. In the novel, Forrest is a grits 'n' gravy version of Inspector Clouseau--which is why I gave it a rave. Farce as farce, farce for its own sake unhampered by lessons and deeper meanings, is a conservative art form. Liberals are the ones who demand that their entertainment be didactic and "worthwhile," but We the Guiltless shouldn't need a message-bearing Forrest Gump. Yet Gump Cons obviously do; they're so busy finding their favorite symbols that they sound like readers of existentialist literary quarterlies.

I am also tired of hearing them attribute Forrest's nobility of character to his IQ of 75. Anti-intellectualism is a tropism of the Right having much to do with the fact that most intellectuals are liberals. Gustave Flaubert, a conservative to the nines, yielded to the same impulse in A Simple Heart, his story of a slow-witted but great-souled maidservant who still reigns as France's Forrest Gump, but hosannas to admirable idiots are not sanctified by being French. Say what you will about Ayn Rand, she always connected virtue to intelligence.

2. Irish Tenor Cons are conservatives with a tear-in-the-voice speaking style. Personified by Oliver North, the Chauncey Olcott of the mawkish Right, this type would rather move hearts than minds. That he succeeds in doing so is the cause of his biggest problem; stuck with a constituency composed largely of people who can be swung like a lariat, he must keep on gulping and swallowing and choking up until cerebrally based conservatives can't stand the sight of him.

3. Connube Cons think you can't be a conservative unless you're married. The Republican Party of Virginia is overrun with Connube Cons. When Democrat Mary Sue Terry ran for Attorney General, a Connube announced that the GOP candidate had more legal knowledge in his little finger than spinster Mary Sue had "in all five [sic] of her ringless fingers." I voted for two-handed Mary Sue just for spite--the only time I've ever voted for a Democrat.

Virginia's Grand Connube is Gov. George Allen, of whom a local reporter wrote during the campaign: "While Allen never missed an opportunity to say he was married, he never mentioned that this is his second marriage." When an Allen aide stated that his candidate was better qualified to be governor because he's a husband and father, Allen repudiated him, but then Oliver North chimed in with a tremolo warning that the governor's mansion must not be "a sterile house."

To spot a Connube candidate, look for the little blond kid--democracy's Plantagenet--on the dais. Supposedly these are sons, but there are so many of them and they all look so much alike that I think the candidates rent them from Little Blond Kid, Inc. Simply give them a call and they'll say, "Yeah, we've got that," just like Staples Office Supply.

CONNUBE Cons have some odd blind spots. They adore Ozzie and Harriet and bray about the other wonderful family shows of the Sixties, even though critics of that era complained that the fathers in these sitcoms were portrayed as hapless Dagwoods perpetually outwitted by women and children. But that's okay: Dagwood is married.

4. Entreprenoor Cons, so called for the way they pronounce "entrepreneur," define a conservative as someone who owns his own business--period. That's all it takes; you don't even have to be married. It's a good thing Entreprenoors are self-employed; if they had a boss they would get fired for spending three hours a day dialing the Rush Limbaugh show. Many get through, which is how America learned to mispronounce "entrepreneur."

5. Con-Con Macoutes wreck Clifton Fadiman's theory that conservatives are wittier than liberals because our freedom from earnestness gives us a deft touch. Deftness dwells not in columnist Sam Francis, who called FDR "Old Rubberlegs" and descended to flat nothingness when he nicknamed the GOP the "Stupid Party." Con-Con Macoutery is the bane of many male conservatives, who associate whiplash retorts with foppishness, but they should remember that the art of the insult is still touched by Versailles.

The best American example of it, which Con-Con Macoutes would do well to study, is Charles Francis Adams' opinion of William Jennings Bryan: "He is in one sense scripturally formidable, for he is unquestionably armed with the jawbone of an ass."