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Hip to Be Square Two years later, we ran an article on

Its get- cooler to be conservative. an artist who painted women with


incredibly large rear ends. Gay men and
By Gavin Mclnnes straight women found the depictions
revolting. Straight men loved it. In the
article, the writer went so far as to
I F YOU ASK the average American Call me a blind optimist, but I see a blame the heavy concentration of gays
Conservative subscriber about the kids light at the end of the anti-American tun- in the magazine world for brainwashing
today, he will probably put down his nel, a new trend of young people tired of women into thinking men dont want
cigar and complain, Theyrea bunch of being lied to for the sake of the greater them to be at least a little bit porky. He
knee-jerk liberals still brainwashed by good.The New York Times dubbed them talked about how men bought more hair
the communist propaganda that worked Hipublicans.Demographicsexpert Mich- products than women last year and how
so well on their parents. Theyre against ael Adams labels them SocialHedon- heavy grooming like hair dying, chest
invading Iraq because all war is bad. ists, and when our magazine did a fea- waxing, and even eyebrow plucking
Theyre against Israel because when it ture on them we called them The New have become de rigueur for straight
comes to light skb versus dark skin,the Conservative.We did the piece because men. He claimed the gay community
latter is always right, and theyre pro- it became impossible to ignore a differ- had recreated straights in their own
immigration for exactly the same rea- ence in the reactions to some of our more image. Predictably, our readers were
sons.Id like to argue,but hes right. right-wing reporting. A new group was outraged. But something was different
I should know. I run a $10 million cor- emerging, and the vitriolic YOU dudes this time. On our Web sites message
poration called VICE that has been deep are all Nazis letters were being replaced boards, advocatesof the Right started to
inside the heads of 18-30s for the past 10 by ones saying You dudes are finally appear. For every three people who
years. Accordrngto the Cassandra Report telling the truth. called the article homophobic, there
(a trend-spotting cool hunter that Five years ago, we did a two-page was at least one saying, Whatabout the
charges corporationstens of thousands spread on how Project USAs Craig part where its true? Isnt that worth
of dollars to tell them whats hip), our Nelson was brave enough to take on something?-a comment that beauti-
magazine is the number one read for Americas seriously damaged immigra- fully sums up the difference between lib-
women aged 19-24 and for men aged 2 5 tion policies. (We are immigrants our- erals (equality first, truth last) 5nd con-
30. Thats better than Maxim, Jane, or selves and were therefore not the least servatives (truth first, everything else
even the New Yorhm.Since the Cassan- bit afraid of being blackballed as anti- second).
dra Report was made public, our maga- immigrant.)The responses were hys- It was as though Bruce-Banner con-
zine has branched out into retail (stores terical. Formerly loyal readers called for servatives had been prodded for so long
in Toronto, Los Angeles, and New York), boycotts. They annoyed our advertisers they were startingto get very angry. And
film (four in production including direc- with silly rhetoric and called us racists. you dont want to see them when theyre
tor Spike Jonzes next picture), and TV Needless to say, we were shocked. Like angry. The final straw was an article we
(on Showtime).We are a successful com- Toby Young in How to Lose f i e n d s and ran a few months ago called TheMerits
pany that has made its money recogniz- Alienate People or Peter Brimelow in of Was. It featured The American Con-
ing cool, and the one thing that has been Alien Nation, we were new immigrants servatives executive editor Scott
painfully clear to u s over the years is that who couldnt understand why Americans McConnell, Coloring the News author
it is not cool to be conservative. In fact, were so determined to favor PC postur- Bill McGowan, and an incredibly drunk
the majority of our readership (white, ing over simple facts. Immigration is out skateboarder named Throatie. Scott
straight, middle-class, American) is only of hand, and its only going to get worse. was against, Bill was pro, and the irrev-
totally positive about one thing: being Where were the young conservatives to erent skateboarder held our readers
white, straight, middleclass, and Ameri- come to our defense? Was the dumb com- MTV attention span for five pages of
can is wack--or, at least, it was wack. munity in control of the entire country? political discourse. The reaction was

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amazing. Of course there were the typi- and watching your education slip ing conservatism. They are admittedly
cal anti-Americanbrats calling Bill and through your,fingers,you tend to-bea lit- few-I would estimate that only 12 per-
Scott stupidwhite men and uneducat- tle more pragmatic. The same goes for cent of our readers would dare call them-
ed academics raving about the lack of affirmative action. Who was laughing selves conservatives-but that is at least
liberals in the debate, but, more than the loudest when Jayson Blair was twice what it was five years ago. Finally,
ever, there were young people respond- exposed? The journalism students who the dumb communitys days are num-
ing with favor to a predominantly right- were forced to intern for us because bered. They are slowly but surely being
wing discussion. They lashed out at our they couldnt get paying jobs in the replaced with a new breed of kid that
liberal readers, Whats with all the mainstream press. isntafraid to embrace conservatism.Im
peace and love crap? You sound like a These kids, the New Conservatives, not saying I had anything to do with this
bunch of pathetic hippies. dont have the luxury of idealism that newborn counterculture, but I do have
This wasnt a group of already estab- even the youth of the 1980shad. Due to this strange compulsion to start handing
lished conservative kids making a the overwhelmingglut of information on out cigars to all my friends. W
cameo on our Web site and our maga- the Internet and an unprecedented bar-
zines letters page just to bash liberals. rage of marketing, these young people GavinMcInnes the colfounder of VICE,
These were a new group of kids sick of are more aware and more cynical than a youth culture brand that was found-
how intellectually lazy (to quote the any generation that came before. W i W ed ,inMontreal and is now based in
Hipublicans) the Left had become. They this group, more and more are embrac- Netu York City.
werent necessarily for invading Iraq.
Theyjust wanted to discuss the pros and
cons in a rational and calm forum, with-
out the liberal hyperbole of their peers. I
felt like Dr. Frankenstein-Its alive!
ITS rn!
Throm to the Lions
And it wasntjust VICESreadership.
Suddenly it had become fashionable to NLzdeast Christians are more endangered than ever.
link liberalism with weakness and con-
servatism with honesty. Underground By Daniel McCarthy
film iconoclast Vincent Gallo (Buffalo
66,Palookaville,Goodfellas)is now
quoting Nixon and Reagan as if they THROUGHOUT T H E HOME are under- one of Husseins palaces, in what was
were Wordsworth and Yeats. Fashion stated pieces of Christian iconography: eviclently a childs room, was an Advent
photographer Terry Richardson (Gucci, a small portrait of Christ, a Virgin Mary calendar. Far from being persecuted,
Sisley,Levis) is showingup at conserva- figurine in the kitchen and a wallet-sized Christianityin Husseins Iraq was a visi-
tive book launchesand publicly trashing photo of an Eastern Orthodox priest ble presence even within the dictators
Clinton. Even high-school students are attached to a mirror in the bedroom. own household.
getting in on the act, like the southern The words are Jonathan Finers,writ- Iraqs Christians have been less than
Californian artist collective called Sofia ing on the front page of the Washington visible to the American public. Indeed,
that made t-shirts and panties with the Post, and the description is of a resi- Christian minorities everywhere in the
illegal-immigrant-crossinglogo on them. dence in Baghdad that once belonged to Middle East have received little attention
You wouldnt have seen anything like the deposed Iraqi regimes most famous from the public and the press, while U.S.
this five years ago, but now it seems that Christian, deputy prime minister Tariq policymakers have acted with indiffer-
the reality of theboomersliberalism is Aziz. That Aziz, a member of Saddam ence to fate of the regions Christians.
slowly startingto affect the livelihood of Husseinsinner circle, was a Christian, Israel, conronted with suicide bombers
Generation X. The joy of mass immigra- and apparently a serious one, gives and hostile nations near and far, has
tion is easy to talk about when you live some suggestion of the place Christiani- garnered considerable sympathy and
in the suburbs and benefit from cheap ty had in pre-liberation Iraq. But some- support from Americans,and from evan-
housecleaning, but when you are going thing else that Finer reports may give an gelical Christians most of all. But the
to schools that are 50 percent Spanish even better picture: sitting on a desk in Midtile Eastsown Christians, faced with

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