Right Punks on Dope




"Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing," edited by David Brooks, Vintage, 330 pages.


Illustration by Chris Morris



By GARY KAMIYA






"I once threw a party at my house on Capitol Hill where 40 right-wingers danced with crazed abandon to 'Burning Down the House' by the proto-punk band the Talking Heads," writes John Podhoretz in his contribution to "Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing." "A pretty blonde who worked for then Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole shouted out, 'It's our anthem! Burn down the House! Smash the State!' I can assure you this is not what David Byrne intended what he wrote the song." 

It is a vision that would have terrified Hieronymus Bosch: A roomful of Young Beltway Conservatives in 

[Elsewhere in SALON: N.Y., L.A. -- Cintra Wilson parties down]

heat, doing the frug and other wild, proto-punk dances with crazed abandon, while forbidden thoughts of immoral, value-destroying premarital sex stir deep within and those relentless, hypnotic, jungle rhythms drive them closer...closer...closer to a burning, explosive, proto-punk climax -- "END THE WELFARE STATE!!!" 

Podhoretz's horrifying reminiscence recalls a peculiar beer ad that ran during the Bush administration. In an attempt to prove the dubious and frightening thesis that "The night belongs to Michelob," Anheuser-Busch presented a triumphantly gyrating yuppie, power tie loosened, wailing some heavy rock guitar in a bar. 

"Backward and Upward" tries to do for conservatives what the Michelob ad attempted for beer-quaffing young stockbrokers: make them hip. 

It doesn't work.



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