TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO CONSERVATIVE HAS GONE BEFORE

It takes a be,ating nearly every day, this “Washington culture” of ours. Mostly, it is thrashed by aspiring practitioners, like Steve Forbes. “The culture of Washington is not the culture of America,” Forbes intoned at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (known as CPAC). Not true, Steve-o. Not only does the culture of Washington bear more than passing resemblance to that of America, it is America in miniature, in that it is the sum of its subcultures. America is nothing if not its Elks Lodgers and Barbecue Pitsters, its Holy Rollers and Tupperware Ladies, exploring every glorious nook and crevice.

No one has more effectively documented modern subcultures than Tom Wolfe in the 60s. Trolling high and low society across the country, he met up with muscle-car enthusiasts, the Hair Boys, and Pump House gangs, who developed their own leisure classes or “statuspheres,” enabling them to unplug from traditional institutions (family, religion) and create tailor-made universes where the new rules were their own.

It is the same in the political class — not just those who are members by vocation, but those who are so consumed by all things political that they might as well be. Take CPAC, the three-day highlight of the conservative calendar, which recently held its 23rd annual conference in Washington. There, ruling-class elites mixed it up with hoi-polloi activists and various rubberneckers who lend the scene a certain grit.

Someone once said — no one knows who it was — that covering a CPAC crowd is the closest thing you’ll find in the political game to a Star Trek convention. A ratings flop in its network run from 1966-1968, Star Trek has spawned something unique: a mass-market cult. The mass-market followers are suffciently nuerous to support three spin-off series and seven movies, while its cult followers can and do descend into radical sectarianism bordering on religious fanaticism. Trekkies can gather weekly at one or another convention somewhere in North America — according to one estimate, Star Trek generates a billion dollars a year in income for the convention industry — where they can sit catatonically enraptured through endless blooper reels and perform in sound-alike contests. On any given weekend, workadaddies and hausfraus sporting acetate Vulcan ears spend half their paychecks cleaning out stacked-to-the-rafters merchandise.

In short, Trekkies are to average television fans what Iranian Shiites are to average Muslims — or what CPAC attendees are to average Republicans. In that spirit, we attempted to boldly cover CPAC as no one has ever covered it before, by attending both a CPAC and a Star Trek convention for a straight-up comparison.

In 1992, W. Hampton Sides wrote a book called Stomping Grounds, a study of subcultures featuring everyone from aging hippies in the Rainbow Gathering to geriatric caravans cruising the country in Airstream trailers. “We’ve become a land of refined fanaticism,” Sides wrote. “We choose our flavor of lifestyle and go deep in.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone as deep-fried as CPACers, many paying thousands of dollars and travelling hundreds of miles to sit through panel discussions such as “Restoring American Citizenship,” “Whither Whitewater?” and “Agenda ’97: Holding Government Accountable.” Of course, there is the additional puppy treat of meeting the rock stars of the conservative movement, like Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Floyd Brown of Citizens United, and Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus.

While interviewing subjects, I made no bones about the analogy I was exploring. I quickly became known as “the Star Trek guy.” Said one former conference organizer: “Good, you’ll be doing all normal people who attend a valuable service.” But Catherine Dawson, who was manning a vending station in Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel, cautioned me: “I’ve been to Star Trek conventions,” she said. “Sure, at both conferences you get a lot of people that think they are a Klingon or they are Buchanan — but it’s not like CPACers are going around wearing uniforms or anything.”

Maybe not to the untrained eye. But as in any burgeoning subculture, dress is a primary characteristic. In the wider world, CPACers dress to profess individuality-their elephant ties mark them on campus or in carpools. But amongst the brethren, it is all about conformity-and the whole place becomes a poly-blend mass, with nuanced types emerging only upon closer inspection.

First the ladies: There is a strong blue-hair contingent, as well as some surprisingly attractive talent for an event with the same stud quotient as a chess tournament-although they often look like rhinestone beauty queens, oversprayed and sporting George Hamil-tans and clingy skirts usually done in some Stars’n’Stripes motif as a curvaceous display of patriotic bona fides. The idea, it seems, is to get Jack Kemp to notice you from the dais.

The males are a little more complicated. Like Trekkies sporting I.D. bracelets made of neon, many CPACers prefer clunky black digital/calculator watches, presumably ensuring promptness for the “Government Is Not God” Tex- Mex buffet. Their uniform is your basic College Republican rig: white oxford button-down, blue blazer, rep tie, and go-to-hell khakis, often worn with Blackwellian no-nos like Timberland boots. Also, many of the more aggressive populists have what Paul Fussell calls “Prole jacket-gape” — the 1 to 2 inch spread between jacket collar and shirt collar that results from trying to sheath ill-fitting synthetics over Cro-Magnon frames.

Since the uniform is widely adhered to, the haircuts are the giveaway, with three primary types. First, there is the Bill Weld Shag, preferred by establishment elites that have prepped on the Eastern seaboard and fed it is crucial to maintain their thick coats through beer-drinking season. Also popular is the Chia Pet look — buzzcuts for ROTC types or (and you don’t meet as many of these now as at CPACs of old) those who prefer to bypass our armed services and freelance their killing skills (honed in off-campus bars and Steak and Ales) alongside Jonas Savimbi.

Third, and most widely worn, is the Aqua Net Hair Helmet, variously modeled by Ralph Reed, Trent Lott, and a large swath of the Texas delegation.

The ardent cultist Trekkies I met in Greenville, South Carolina, the next weekend weren’t nearly as well travelled as the CPACers. Most came from no farther than 70 miles away, despite the fact that this was the show’s 30th anniversary and that the featured speaker was the captain himself, James T Kirk (William Shatnet).

Unlike the CPACers who at the very least had “Go Pat Go” buttons or GOP braces, very few Trekkies came in uniform. Most just sported their all-season patio wear, with only about half wearing Star Trek T-shirts and maybe one tenth in actual gear. But the ones who dressed really dressed. There were young children in prosthetic foreheads to simulate their inclusion in the hostile Klingon Empire, complete with bad skin and funky receding hairlines. This was a fate suffered by many of their non-costumed elders, who looked very much the same, no doubt from excess pot-smoking and lack of sunlight. There were grown men in New Balance running shoes and flood-panted Next Generation jumpsuits, skintight around the Goober water pouches developing beneath their mid-20s beer paunches.

I met two of them, Terry and Tony. Both Hardees cashiers in their 20s who say their only interests are “Star Trek and pro wrestling.” Cross-eyed Tony was the leader, commander to Terry’s captain. (There are very few ensigns at Star Trek conventions, since ranks are sold by vendors, and you can pretty much buy your way to the top — “just like Steve Forbes,” as one cap-tain put it.)

“I’m his first officer,” Terry said.

“On what?” I asked.

“On the USS Leviathan NCC-1095,” said Tony.

“We just moved our ship down from Franklin.”

Note the word “ship.” Trekkies in uniform are never part of a “fan club” or “support group,” but a ship. Just as at CPAC, where attendees are cogs not in the party, but in the “movement.”

Language, of course, is the essential cryptography subcultures use to further cordon themselves off from dominant culture or to serve as a kind of verbal secret handshake for those who find themselves immersed in the dominant culture.

Though many of the terms are now standardized politicalese, CPACer good words are: Revolution, Devolution, The Cause, The Fourth Great Awakening, The Eleventh Commandment, and Con-Cons (or those favoring a constitutional convention for a balanced-buget amendment). Bad words include: Rockefeller Republican, the even worse McGovern Republican, the downright libelous Neoconservative, the Potentates of Pork (favored by Ollie North in rousing speeches or in radio shows he broadcasts from the exhibition hall), and the Imperial Congress (archaic since the ’94 election, even in term limit debates) .

Trekkies have their own vernacular as well, one with some amazing pseudo- scholarship behind it. The Klingon Dictionary and Conversational Klingon, for example, document the fictional language of a fictional species. It’s all highly systematic and taken very seriously, as any language with its own syntax and useful expressions should be. (Sample: qaStaHvlS wa’ ram los SaD Hugh SIjlaH QaQqu” nay” means “Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man.” There are also phonetic translations for “Surrender or die!” and “Revenge is a dish which is best served cold.”)

Tony didn’t lay any Klingon on me but did share: “We’re locating crew members interested in discussing Next Gen (that’s spinoff series No. 1, Star Trek: The Next Generation), watchin’ videos, that sort of thing.” It seems a lot of Trekkies are also interested “in the commands and engineering aspects of the ships, how the physics, per se, of runnin’ a ship relates to what we’re doin’ now.” Of course, since none of the Star Trek ships has ever actually achieved space travel, Tony has a color-penciled cardboard console based on the ship Voyager (that’s the craft in spinoff No. 3, Star Trek Voyager) so he and crew can replicate flight right there in his mother’s living room.

And that’s not all they have. They’ve got the seven movies, 120 Next Gen videos, 30 more of the originals, at least eight or nine games. They have everything — exept girls. “That’s one I talk to and used to go to school with,” Tony said pointing.

“You’re not going out with her?” I asked.

“Shoot, I wish.”

Their prized possession: the Next Gen crew action figures. “We collect ” em,” says Tony.

“And we play with “era,” adds Terry, somewhat sheepishly.

“A little bit of both,” Tony says.

“You’re grown men,” I pointed out. “What do your parents say?”

“My stepdad came in the other day and caught me playin” with my stuff, and he said somethin’,” Tony admits. “But I said, “I’ll tall you what: I’ll sell all my Star Trek stuff and go out and spend it on dope and come home stoned.” He said, “Keep it.'”

Scoff if you must, it may sound a bit nutty — but no nuttier than sister subculture CPAC.

The best thing about the conservative summit is its inclusiveness. All factions are represented. The worst thing is its inclusiveness. No factions are excluded (save dread Rockefeller Repubs and neocons). I sat with a Buchanan supporter in a ruffled tourister shirt and baseball hat, wearing sneakers purchased at Piggly Wiggly’s and eating Toblerone. He never looked at me but sat there sipping gratis icewater, taking scrupulous notes on a Media Research Center luncheon leaflet (“If you believe the Liberal Media — Don’t come,” it read) during the “Truth about Ruby Ridge” panel as if he were going to be tested.

They’re all over the place, these guys, hitting even true believers like me with hot blasts of earnestness that can open the pores on the back of your neck. They stand at attention, screaming for the Forbes gold standard like their uvulas are going to burst, banging their mitts together till their hands turn crimson from their class rings. There are young men with prominent Adam’s apples basking in the glow of Sen. Fred Thompson’s perpetual tan or trying to touch the hem of Jeane Kirkpatrick’s garment.

There were young honeys with thick foundations being held at bay by well- mannered uniformed Citadel volunteers. “I love Arlen Specter — because I love the way he worked his Judiciary Committee during the Anita Hill hearings!” one told me. (Even an Arlen Specter speech at CPAC draws 6 laughs and 14 applause lines.) They carry around programs signed by Rep. Bob Barr and Joe Sobran as if they were trophies. They shout “I love you, Ollie!” as North takes the stage. They are pushed back from the speaker’s holding pen so as not to put a crease in Kemp’s suit.

“I’m excited about listening to Kemp speak about the flat tax,” said an Ohio College Republican. As one who sat through many of the panels, I can affrm that this is nothing to sniggle about. It’s infinitely preferable to, say, listening to Larry Horist from the Illinois Public Policy Caucuses talk about “Communicating with the Grassroots.”

Kemp, like many others, is in no hurry to stick around. “We were staking out the back, and his little aides or whatever said he had to go,” said one flushed co-ed from Liberty University. “We almost got close enough to touch him, but he said, “I have a plane to catch,” and walked off.”

“I love to go to CPAC,” one panelist told me. “I get up, I do my panel, I fix my eyes on the exit, and get there in a hurry.” Most of the prominent speakers follow suit — except for Steve Forbes, who elected to meet his public. This, as can be imagined, caused great titters and an imposing mob, which pushed me right into Forbes’s pinstriped chest, where we were locked, breastplate to breastplate.

As we did a slow, sweaty tango, unable to shake each other in a hallway that let him pass about as fast as a kidney stone, I was the envy of all the young coeds who dreamed of the flat tax delivering 4.5 percent 30-year fixed- rate mortgages. “So Steve, do you like Star Trek?” I asked, resigned to not going anywhere.

“No, but I like Star Wars, i.e., the anti-ballistic missile system,” he said, flashing his malocclusive grin.

At least Forbes went out like a man, through the lobby. It seems a common trait in both CPAC and Star Trek subcultures is the behind-the-scenes disdain many leaders have for the rank and file. Such was the case with William Shather, who identifies himself as “your captain” but is notoriously bad about actually meeting his crew.

He arrives just before he’s to speak, always under tight security. His toupee is intact, he’s got the relaxed unbuttoned shirt layered over another shirt. He’s quite the magnanimous guy onstage, bragging about birthing horses, about 120-degree shoots in Bakersfield, about his bow-hunting prowess.

His anecdotes are orotund, meandering, and pointless (perfect for a CPAC panel), and they always wind up plugging one of his multimedia ventures. ” Make sure you check out my — ” and he mentions his line of (ghostwritten) novels, CD-ROMs, comic books, phone cards.

During Q&A, a young lass said, “I would like to shake your hand and ask you a question.”

“Let’s save the handshaking for later,” Shatner said.

Of course, he didn’t shake hands, rarely does. He got there a second before speaking and left immediately after. Didn’t want any dust-ups with pot- bellied, brylcreemed versions of himself. Otherwise, he was generous with a compliment or a constructive criticism, as with one interrogator who popped up in a uniform shirt.

“Oh yeah, looks good! Stick out the chest!” Shatner said, leaning into the microphone “But I got a piece of advice — suck in the gut. It really looks bad.” Of course, one can hardly blame Shatnet for being a bit skittish. It’s like what Smilin” Dave, a longtime Star Trek vendor, said: “The nicest people I know are at these shows. There are also a lot of goofs. Anywhere I go in the country, they’ll give me a meal. Of course, a lot of “em live in their mommas” basements. One guy I knew was 45 years old and he celebrated when his parents died because he could move his collection upstairs.”

Vendors like Smilin” Dave are a feature of both subcultures — they peddle the artifacts and paraphernalia that are vital to both the “movement” and the world of Trek. CPACers have their elephant brooches, their “Feed the Homeless to the Hungry” bumper stickers, their “Wee-Publican” bibs and Gordon Liddy boardgame, “Hardball Politics ’96,” with 54 Dirty Tricks cards. No playing ages are listed, but a Buchanan supporter told me, “If they’re going to public school, they should be playing by at least 5 or 6.” At the Star Trek convention, they save the choice items for auction: versions of the crew in porcelain or DeForest (Dr. McCoy) Kelly’s autograph, very rare because of his arthritis.

However extreme the Trekkies are in their obsession with a fictional future, they’re not much more so than many of the fringe organizations relegated to the kook corners of the CPAC exhibit hall. There’s the Bircher table selling the latest in U. N. and Oklahoma-bombing conspiracy theories. Or you could meet Officer Larry Powell over a cash bar at his legal defense fund-raiser (he was Rodney King’s chief tormentor during the beating, although I met him and he’s a real pussycat without a nightstick).

Then there are the Tenth Amendment absolutists (usually their own best arguments against devolution), like Gordon Lee Baum of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a St. Louis personal-injury lawyer chain-smoking offbrand cigarettes and chewing my ear beneath a sprawling display of the Stars’n’Bars. His gripe? International job flight: “I know a guy, laid off, McDonnell Douglas, master’s degree — he’s workin” as a condo janitor in a colored neighborhood — and glad to get it. Where does a 57-year-old man go?”

To CPAC, if he can afford it, where people aren’t treated differently because of their occupation. Dolphin Schreiber, who had a gold tooth, a USA hat, dirty fingernails, and jheri-curl locks, told me: “I am a candidate for president under the United States Century World Political First party.” Unconcerned that he was missing vital pre-Super Tuesday primaries, he added that he and his running mate, “the honorable George Bush, Jr. of Texas, will have universal victory for everybody,” noting also, “I am the President of Peru.” Schreiber walked the halls unmolested, although he could become the first person to hold the Peruvian and U.S. presidencies concurrently.

Which is not to paint CPAC with a broad brush. These are just a few fringe elements. The real meat’n’potatoes guys are there too, like Jim Martin of “60 Plus.” Though he stands about 5’7″, Martin looks like he could take you out with a piece of discarded chaw, which is why he’s the right guy to bang under the boards with the AARP,, fighting for Social Security privatization and against the inheritance tax.

Trench warfare isn’t for weak sisters and is often won on sheer determination rather than style. Unlike the Trekkie subculture, which is all about withdrawal from the world, CPACers are interested in expanding theirs beyond the hotel lobby. And many of the old gut-fighters are now enjoying the fruits of their success. Sometimes they’re crotchety, maybe unpalatable, but where would the movement’s followers be without the Reed Irvines, the Morton Blackwells, the David Keenes?

At a Star Trek convention, no doubt. Most of the Trekkies I spoke with have little interest in politics. When I asked two of them if they were concerned about missing that day’s action in the South Carolina primary, one replied, “To be honest with you, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass?’

“Yeah,” agreed the other. “I’m afraid if this was a plumber’s convention, I’d still be more interested.”

But there was a disproportionate number of Trekkies at CPAC. One was Grant Greffey, a systems engineer for Lockheed Martin, who attends both conventions.

“A lot of Star Trek people have an idealistic sense of the universe, which I do, and I believe in a future,” he said. “Plus, manned space flight tends to be a Republican trait.”

Then in a strict political deconstruction, would the Democrats be Klingons? “No,” Grant said defiantly “Klingons are a fierce warrior people, pro- military guys. Democrats don’t have the “nads to be Klingons.”

By Matt Labash

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