Conservatives Have Failed at Culture

The other night I stopped by the Strathmore Center, a beautiful arts Mecca and concert hall in Maryland. I was picking tickets for a concert by the Norwegian jazz pianist Tord Gustavsen.

At around the same moment, Megyn Kelly was telling the world that Mark Levin has a “micropenis.” Kelly’s feuded with Levin for months about the war in Iran. The usual suspects are all involved: Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Jack Smith, Dave Rubin, Laura Loomer. Everyone’s yelling at each other. No one’s creating anything new and interesting.

So much for conservatives changing the culture. Despite their ascendancy during the Trump era, despite vast wealth, despite constant complaints, conservatives have never managed to make a halfway decent work of art. They don’t hire and mentor fresh young talent, they hire a mental patient with an atomic mouth like Candace Owens. How did that work out?

Recently right-wing favorite Brett Cooper was profiled in a lengthy piece in The New York Times. Once a conservative star at the Daily Wire, Cooper now works for Fox News. She’ll do whatever other conservative on TV and social media do—sit behind a microphone and react to liberalism. From the Times:

“On YouTube, where nearly 1.6 million people subscribe to ‘The Brett Cooper Show,’ she publishes twice-weekly monologues about celebrity and trending news with a conservative bent. She uses headlines about stars like Katy Perry or Simone Biles to argue against feminism and abortion rights, or the ‘trans craze with young people.’ Ms. Cooper, whom Fox News signed in late June, represents a new evolution of Republican commentators: an entertainer playing by the internet’s rules, rather than the established customs of right-wing media. Her speech is quick and jocular, like a red-state mash-up of BuzzFeed and ‘Gilmore Girls.’”