Pre-Conference: This Current Administration
Senator Blowjoback: Kansas, Corn, and the Culture Wars
Frank Lee Thomas
Going beyond the thesis that a declining Midwest takes its solace in social conservatism even as it is ill-served politically by conservative politics, Thomas contends that it must be this way: eventually the Stockholm Syndrome takes over, and vast swaths of High-Plains learn to become Big Business's bitch. After all these years in the prisonhouse of poverty and dependence, they've learned to like it. Asks Thomas, what would they do with their economic freedom now if they had it?
Self Actualization with Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush: the Power of the Will is the Will to Power
Abraham Mazelove
Combining Nietzsche and a national sense of purpose, Mazelove almost makes imperialist aspirations seem wholesome. And it makes its own kind of distorted sense: we take you over and kill a few thousand people and liberate your oil because we care. How else will your poor, backward, freedom-hating asses ever realize your full potential? Plus, we liked the maps with all the cool arrows and stuff.
The Known Knowns, or It's Hard to Know Your Knowns: Self Help from the Secretary of Defense, or a Primer in Epistemology from Donald Rumsfeld
Wren A. Daycart
This paper just goes to show you that plain language and short sentences, taken together, can still absolutely fail to make a lick of sense.
Uncle Colin's Cabinet: how Condi, Clarence, and the Secretary of State Achieved the Status of "Most-Favored Negro" in a Conservative Multiverse
H. Pap Brown
O, dear Uncle Colin! do wake, - do speak once more! Look up! Here's Mas'r George, - your own little Mas'r George. Don't you know me?
Condoleeza Rice Burroughs: Authoring America's Latest Adventure in the Savage Lands After Affirmative Action
Sisyphus "Retread" Jones
In yet another incisive shot of Neo-Pantherism, Jones shows how a PhD, a bigger gun, and a de-boned nose can quickly make you just like Whitey - and how a massive education can still not offset, and sometimes encourages, a staid belief in quick, pulp mythology. The tribal drums could be heard across the Seine.
The Boy Who Cried Wolfowitz: Tenet, Slam-Dunks, and the Limits of Credibility
A. Voight Responsibiliegh
This paper contends, using sociology, demographics, and sophisticated ray-tracing, that those limits are very near. The laser show was compelling, but the polls don't lie.
Abu Grave: Total Wartime Buzzkill - a Bummer on Baghdad Beach
Biff Carnauba
Like, dontcha' just hate it when you're catching some gnarly approval numbers and then, crash-ola, the whole groove-tube collapses into foam?
The Bookie of Virtues: William Bennett Gambles on 4 Giveness
P.B. Wombat
We could tell that Wombat was disappointed in his erstwhile pop hero, but the raffle at the end of the presentation to win round-trip tickets to Vegas were well worth sitting through the otherwise dry talk.
Mustard al-Sadr: the Future of Free-Market Condiments in a Liberated Iraq
Frenchy L. Di'jon
Will the Iraqi people ever learn to love the hot dog with the fervor a free people must? This is the question that Di'jon tackles with culinary accuracy and gastronomical scope. The hot dog, of course is more than mere metaphor: if democracy = commerce, and commerce = loving freedom, then all morality and tradition are secondary to free trade. So the success or failure of a campaign to democratize Iraq can be judged by how quickly they forget those old, backward, freedom-hating traditions like not eating pork. Truly a rhetorical tour de farce - er, force, rather.
The United States of Arabia: Financing Our 51st StateThe United States of Arabia: Financing Our 51st State
Gusha Uncaped
Uncaped is genuine here: if we are serious about weaning ourselves off foreign oil, and most of the world's supply is in Saudi Arabia, the only sensible solution is to make Saudi oil domestic. Annexation, given the attitudes of the pesky Saudi people (Osama bin Laden being merely the grouchiest example), is out of the question, argues Uncaped. It will have to be a leveraged buyout. It was so much simpler when we could bilk Native Americans out of vast tracts with just a few beads, wasn't it?
The Enron Dictionary of American English
Sumdum Blonde
When "arbitrage" is code for corporate destruction, and "Grandma Millie" is a pejorative for the clueless consumer, and the end results of this odd semiotics are blackouts and impossible electric rates, such a primer comes in handy. The "spin-the-rate" Wheel of Fortune game was particularly instructive and gave us all a chance at playing evil for awhile, and, just like in real life, our "just a game" version of capitalist rapine was virtually without personal consequence.
Bush Drilla': Oil Rights and Turf Wars, or How to Traffic in Black, Liquid Crack
Iys Teh
By not-so-subtle but painfully accurate comparisons, Teh shows how the Bush foreign policy is not just aggressive, it's totally "gangsta." If you ever thought there was official separation between criminality and statecraft, think again. The Medellin vs. Halliburton flow charts kept it real. Teh's paper represents.
The Prince and I: Paul Wolfowitz as Post-Colonial Machiavellian Anti-Hero (Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein)
Gilby Sullivan
We're pretty much always up for a rousing song and dance number, and Sullivan's paper delivered the goods. The number with Rumsfeld whirling around Chirac singing "I'm gonna' wash that old Europe outta' my hair" had us all swinging. And the tap number with Bush dancing with an oil rig was enough to make even the most hardened politicos among us weep. We can't wait for the cast album.
Richard The Pearl: Neoconservatism as the Grand Steibeckian Villain
Lenin V. Redsickle
Yeah, you get the picture.
Ditzy Blonde and the Three Trophy Animals: Neocon Revisions of Classic Fairy Tales
O'Reilly F. Buchanan
Goldilocks too P.C. for you? Jack and the Beanstalk too rewarding of undeserving minorities in your fairy-tale meritocracy? Mother Goose smack too much of the welfare state? Then this paper might just be for you. Buchanan's re-re-revision, or, as he says, his attempt to "take back Western Culture from the liberal elite," had us really questioning our positions, but we can't help but think that rewriting Pinocchio to reward his greed as cornering the market and rejigger his lies into "image management" goes a bit too far. And what's the point of fairy tales when the moral is always the same: "you're always beholden to the bottom line"?