The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 14)

THE LEAVE ME ALONE COALITION br> Re: Lawrence Henry's Talk Radio "Civility" : /p> p>Mr. Henry has hit upon a gold mine. "How and why did you become a conservative?" is the type of question, when asked among friends at a local drinking hole, would make any tavern owner very happy. So here is my story: In 1975, I was a college student with an intense interest in politics. I was predictably liberal. Then one day I accidentally came across an issue of National Review in the local library. There was a section called "The Week." It was a compilation of small and humorous news items of interest to conservatives. But what struck me as odd was the humor. I had always pictured a conservative as devoid of a funny bone; a total bore. After the humor wore off, the logic of the argument never did. I took an economics course and my professor suggested that we read the Wall Street Journal . I never got past the editorial page which became the equivalent of my daily heroin fix. Then, hungry for more political humor, I discovered a rag published in Indiana called The Alternative . It was the intellectual equivalent of shooting spitballs behind the teacher's back in grade school. Every month Bob Tyrrell (or R. Emmett) would make me laugh by deflating some pompous ass (or supercilious popinjay as he would say). An interesting historical aside. In the late '70s, Animal House was a smashing success. I always compared conservatism, then in its nascent stage, to the ruffians of Delta House and liberalism, with all its phony moral posturing, to the school's administration. What made conservatism popular was its ability to blend humor and irreverence with serious scholarship. And having an adversary, the modern liberal intellectual establishment, that was and is so haughtily and arrogantly pompous, only made it that much easier. Limbaugh follows in this tradition and owes his success to his ability to tap into it. As Limbaugh once said, and which explains conservatism's popularity among the masses, liberalism is a war against the average guy who works all day and wants to come home and have a beer and a cigarette and be left alone. br> --

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