NYC Libertarian Convention

I don't usually preface the articles I put up here, but I want to qualify this one a little. It was the first cover story I wrote for a publication. I was kind of green as a journalist at the time, and I think it shows in some parts of the article. I still like it a lot, but there are things I could have done differently.

Drugs, Guns & Smokes for the Libertarians.
By Adam Bulger
New York Press, 2004

"Excuse me, do you mind if I ask what you’re talking about?"
The voice belongs to Neil Saunders, a British performance artist with shoulder-length blond hair who is sitting alone at a nearby table, eating a salad. He’s politely interrupting my interview with Jim Lesczynski, the newly elected chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party.

Jim gives him a business card-size explanation of Libertarian philosophy and answers some simple questions. Saunders nods and returns to his table. It was a strange encounter: a pudgy middle-class man with a precision-cut beard giving a scraggly bohemian lessons in freedom.

Unlike Neil, most people have at least a cursory knowledge of the tenets of Libertarianism, especially those attending today’s Manhattan Libertarian Party Convention. The concept is basic and seductive when explained in broad strokes: less government, more personal choice. It’s a simple mantra that attracts, repels and splits people on every frequency along the political spectrum. Free marketers want government out of their business dealings and paychecks, but might not approve of gay marriage; marijuana decriminalization activists like the Libertarian drug stance, but probably don’t support relaxing gun laws. And the "right-wing" Libertarian position on abortion? As one Libertarian told me, "We’re pro-choice on everything."

With such a philosophy, you might expect a Libertarian convention to look like Beyond Thunderdome’s Bartertown. Or, at the very least, like the interrupting Neil Saunders. But aside from one tragically comic mullet (sparse spikes on top, ponytail in the back), Manhattan’s Libertarians are white, middle-aged, professional males. There’s one Asian man in attendance and, among the handful of women, one is the spitting image of Onion columnist Jean Teasdale. I can’t take my eyes off her.



The convention was held on a bitterly cold January afternoon at the 10/50 Restaurant on the first floor of the Skyline, a Midtown hotel whose concrete box exterior would fit nicely alongside an interstate outside Tulsa. Inside, the 10/50 has the ambiance of a country club bar or a cruise ship. Before the convention, 10/50 had recently hosted a few retirement parties and a christening. For today, a podium has been set up across from the door, behind which hangs a banner featuring the Statue of Liberty. The walls are lined with poster-sized enlargements of Libertarian press clippings.

I arrived during elections for state committeeman—the person who will represent Manhattan at the statewide meetings. Thomas Robert Stevens, an adjunct lecturer at Briarcliffe College in Bethpage, is campaigning for votes, expressing his passion for Libertarian politics and describing his ethics lectures, during which he instructs, "Individual freedom is something that is desirable instead of government-supported morality." He would later win the vote.

Earlier, Joseph Dobrian had been elected media relations director. Dobrian is wearing a navy blue three-piece suit and a starched white shirt. His pale complexion and slicked-back hair smacks of a young Dan Akroyd reinvented as a Midwestern funeral home director. A native of the Midwest who moved to Manhattan in 1983, Dobrian has been active in the Manhattan Libertarian Party since 2001, though he has been "a Libertarian at heart for some time."

I ask if New York is a good place for the Libertarian party.

"It’s as good a place as any," he replies. "In large cities, you’re gonna get a lot of people who depend on government services, and that’s why they live in big cities. Traditionally, Libertarians tend to do their best recruiting in small towns, rural areas, in states where there are fewer government services and more personal freedom."

His Midwestern roots show when asked if the Manhattan Libertarians support the legalization of marijuana.

"Darn right we do!"

And crystal meth?

"You bet! I think it should be just as easy to get a fix at Duane Reade as it is to buy a tube of toothpaste."

I thank him for his time, turn the tape recorder off and ask him if he knows where the bathroom is. Turns out, he’s on his way there himself; I should follow him. (Not too close, though, ha ha.)

At the urinal, Dobrian spots an advertisement for a website selling cigars. He finds it ironic that such an ad would be placed in a restaurant/lounge where it’s illegal to smoke.

"This whole smoking ban," he observes, "is Bloomberg’s way of keeping the niggers down."

I look over at him, wide-eyed, as I wash my hands at the sink. This is the organization’s media rep talking. To a journalist.

"I mean that metaphorically—it’s about keeping the riff raff down," he adds.

Oh, I think. Thanks for clearing that up.



Jim Lesczynski is recognizable from his many tv news appearances. For the past few years, he had been the party’s media relations director and the public face of the Manhattan Libertarian Party. During his stint he promoted several high-profile, yippie-like publicity stunts designed to publicize the Libertarian philosophy in New York. The one that received the most attention was the "Guns for Tots" charity drive.

"As you may know, the NYC council introduced a bill last year to make all toy guns illegal," Lesczynski tells me. "We wanted to make a mockery of this, so we sent out a press release saying we’re going to collect toy guns and give them to poor children in Harlem. The press went out of their mind, obviously."

The reporters and cameramen weren’t alone.

"It got so much advance press, we had a whole counter-protest," he boasts. "A lot of activists were coming from outside that neighborhood just like we were; it was a big street theater scene."

Other media stunts followed. Outraged over the cost of cigarettes in New York, Lesczynski staged a cigarette giveaway in Bryant Park. "We had, like, 400 people show up. There ended up being a scuffle among the people there for the free cigarettes."

A more recent event took a turn for the bizarre. In response to the proposed construction of a Jets stadium on the West Side, the Libertarians hired a witch to cast a bad luck spell over any team that played on the grounds. Even though the woman was not a real witch and the hex was pointless—and redundant, as the Jets already have bad luck to spare—Lesczynski relishes the coverage. "We got a write-up in some of the community weeklies and stuff."

At today’s convention, Lesczynski is elevated to chairman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party, and he’s bubbling with enthusiasm.

"My goal is to give Gifford Miller and Mike Bloomberg ulcers," he declares. "I want them to be like Dean Wormer when the Animal House float is coming down the street in the parade and he says, ‘I hate those guys.’"

He predicts success as a political nuisance, though less at the ballot box. Their most recent three Libertarian candidates for city council posted in the single digits.

"We’re gonna run candidates, but we run candidates because it’s a free microphone," he says. "And at this point, it’s about getting the word out to people: Freedom is good, government is bad, we have way too much government in this city. We have too much government in this country and New York City is off the Richter scale."

Later that afternoon, Lesczynski takes to the lectern to introduce the guest speakers, starting with Bernard Goetz. In his introduction, Lesczynski mentions Goetz’s subway shooting and subsequent trial, noting that the "only thing Bernie was ever convicted of was exercising his rights as an American." (Goetz was sentenced to nine months at Rikers for two misdemeanor possession-of-firearms charges.)

Bernard Goetz never stops moving. He has a rare metabolism, as if his body holds an organ that naturally generates methamphetamine. When speaking, his ideas come in frenetic blasts; he uses the same words over and over, making the same points, shifting the phrasing only slightly.

After apologizing in advance for rambling, he gets to the topic for the night: jury rights. But first, he wants to say a few words about "media manipulation." The media he had in mind was New York Press—which he called the "worst form of yellow journalism."

A week earlier, I had promoted the Libertarian Convention in these pages. Goetz reads the modest item to the audience, granting some gravity to the part where I jokingly—and, yes, erroneously—referred to him as "former subway killer turned insane vegetarian."

"I didn’t kill anybody," Goetz emphasizes, eyes darting around the crowd. "And I don’t think I’m insane."

(Mea culpa, Bernie. Indeed, you are no subway killer, but a subway shooter. I hereby offer a rewrite: "Former attempted subway killer with bad aim turned questionably insane vegetarian, Bernie Goetz...")

The bulk of Goetz’s presentation concerns jury rights, but the scattered presentation makes it hard to grasp, much less locate, his thesis. Jury members, he says, are encouraged to vote with the law whenever their conscience is in conflict with it. He sees this as a rank injustice.

An audience member suggests that people lie to get on a jury and then later vote their conscience. "That’s what I’m saying," he replies emphatically. He believes that serving on juries is the easiest way to impact society. "If I were on a jury for drug sales, I’d vote not guilty," he says—to loud, resounding applause.

This is not only a noble act, Goetz claims, but a safe one. It’s not likely that the state would go through the expense of prosecuting someone simply for withholding information.

An audience member brings up the case of Colorado woman Laura Kriho, who had deadlocked a jury presiding over a drug case; it was later discovered that she has a prior LSD conviction and a history as a hemp legalization activist. She was then taken to court. Goetz, unfamiliar with the case, views her as an anomaly that didn’t impact his argument.

If legal precedence couldn’t hinder Goetz’s argument, technical difficulties could. When the room’s air vents threatened to drown him out, he opted to talk over them, noting that the sound was "not as bad as a subway train." (Unfortunately, he did not go on to say, "On a subway train, I can barely hear myself think over the sound of my own gunfire," or "Thanks, I’ll be here all week.")

Goetz ended his talk with a short discussion about his proposed 2005 mayoral run, reminding everyone that he ran as an independent in 2001.

Next was David Kaczynski, Ted Kaczynski’s brother. The Unabomber’s brother. The younger Kaczynski was thrust into the national media spotlight in 1996 when he squealed on his brother to the FBI. A practicing Buddhist, he speaks in soft, lulling tones that match his earth-toned sweater. Tonight, he gives a well-rehearsed speech about Ted, his own interactions with law enforcement officials and his thoughts on the death penalty. As the executive director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, he’s no slouch on the subject.

Kaczynski’s not a Libertarian, but he knows how to slant his schtick for the crowd. He begins by asking, "If we don’t trust [the state] to deliver the mail, we trust them with the decision of who should live or die?" Nods of agreement all around. He then segues into his life story and thoughts on capital punishment.

The cash bar had been open for a while, and its effects were apparent in the unruliness that met Goetz’s speech. But something about Kaczynski’s demeanor lulled the crowd.

The restlessness re-emerges when Tim Bailey, a representative of the NYC Bill of Rights Defense Campaign, speaks about the Patriot Act. Like Goetz, Bailey’s presentation is jumbled and full of false starts; unlike Goetz, he lacks the charisma and tabloid cred. When a long stretch of stuttering and dead air is capped off by Bailey’s inability to remember the name of the judicial branch of the federal government, the audience turns on him, volleying a series of hostile and often nonsensical questions. Joseph Dobrian shouts a request for the crowd to settle down. Amidst the crowd’s indifference and microphone feedback, Bailey ambles to a painful finish.

The evening is capped off with a speech from keynote speaker, Saying Yes author and Reason magazine’s senior editor Jacob Sollum. His speech concerns what he termed "voodoo pharmacology," or "the idea that drugs control people and force them to do evil."

This, he says, is "one of the central premises of the war on drugs."

I couldn’t agree with him more, but I’d also spent more than five hours at the 10/50. I bailed on Sollum’s talk. I bailed on the free steak. There’s only so long one can sit in a restaurant packed with Libertarians preaching about freedom.
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Right Wing Counter Protest

Where Eagles Dare
The Counter-protest Group The Gathering Of Eagles Cause A Ruckus As Bush Comes To New London's Coast Guard Ceremonies.
By Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate May 31 2007 (No longer online)

The first encounter I had with right wing protest group the Gathering of Eagles was watching an Eagle upbraid young, female demonstrators outside the New London Coast Guard Academy.

The demonstrators had come to protest President Bush’s visit as commencement speaker last Monday. The heavy-set man with a personal PA system challenged the “hippy girls’” loyalty to their “homo,” “girly-man” boyfriends. Later, he accused the anti-war protesters of getting paid to attend the May 22 protest. An anti-war protester yelled that he paid $20 for gas to get there. The Gathering of Eagles member suggested he “should have driven a hybrid vehicle.”

He ran out of steam, one-liner-wise, after that, but he and other less-light-on-their-feet Eagles with megaphones and speakers droned on for the next hour or so, including a long droning “swim to Cuba” chant during a Latino anti-war speaker’s speech.

Before the protest, the group’s Web site, gatheringofeagles.org, said the group planned to “welcome the families of the graduating Coast Guard academy” and “support … these families and graduating cadets.” The group, at least nominally, was worried the Coast Guard graduation would be unfairly disrupted by the anti-war rally planned by the ANSWER coalition and other anti-war groups, including Veterans for Peace and Connecticut Opposes the War.

“We believe that ANSWER’s protest was very ill-timed, and a very bad location. … For ANSWER to protest the President on what’s supposed to be the happiest day of these people’s lives so far, that was shameful and very disgraceful,” Connecticut Gathering of Eagles organizer Jim Bancroft said. (Turns out he shouldn’t have been so worried — the Presidential motorcade avoided the protest. Neither the demonstration nor the counter-demonstration impacted the ceremony.)

Bancroft claimed an early remark by an anti-war speaker changed the Eagle’s gathering’s purpose from a celebration of the cadets to a hectoring of the anti-war demonstration.

“We were there to welcome the President. When we got there, the first thing that happened was someone called us baby killers,” Bancroft said, adding that the slur was stated sometime between 7:30 and 7:45 a.m.

His claim seems extremely unlikely, in light of an ANSWER’s spokesperson’s version of the timeline.

“Our sound permit didn’t start until eight. We might have done a sound check, but they would have just heard ‘Check, check,’” ANSWER organizer Tahnee Stair said.

Elliot Adams, a Vietnam veteran and the president of Veterans for Peace, attended the rally, and said he viewed the Eagles with resigned sadness.

“I feel sorry for them. A number of them are vets, and I understand the misplaced anger associated with [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder],” Adams said. “With PTSD, you have what’s called misplaced anger that goes off in all directions. It’s a real common thing.”

He added, “Also, they believe in the American dream, and they don’t just see that we’re losing it.” Read more!

Immigration Rally

The Immigrant Throng
An Anti-immigration Rally Meets An Immigration Rights Rally.
By Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate August 17, 2006

The anti-illegal immigration rally held at the Capitol building in Hartford on August 8 was political spectacle of the purest sort, as was the counter demonstration organized by local activists. Held in the shadow of the state’s Democratic primary, the event was coordinated by part of a national anti-illegal immigration group called the 21st Century Paul Revere Riders. Like the Minutemen, the riders are opposed to illegal immigration, only they express that opposition by traveling the country on motorcycles.

Hartford was their 40th, or maybe 41st stop — event organizer Frosty Wooldridge wasn’t sure. It was the first time the counter-protestors had encountered them, though, and they took advantage of it, outnumbering the Riders two to one.

The counter-demonstrators had gathered at Minuteman Park outside the Armory when I arrived around 11:15. I recognized a lot of faces from other demonstrations. They were seasoned veterans, and had come prepared. Seven “peace keepers,” who were there to marshal the protesters, wore bright yellow vests and talked with members of the crowd. They had professional-looking signs and banners, along with immigrants’ rights literature and shirts.

Organizations ranging from Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) to the Connecticut Chapter of NOW endorsed the rally. Maggie Russell of Latinos Contra La Guerra (Latinos against the War) was partially inspired to protest the event by her parents, who are immigrants.

“A lot of groups in Hartford are enraged. We live in such a diverse city,” Russell said. “It’s filled with immigrants, from the North End to the South End.”

Hartford activist Jerimarie Liesegang, who came along with Queers without Borders, said there were parallels between immigrant struggles and those of gay people.

“The issue affects a lot of people in the communities. There are gay people in the immigrant community and immigrants in the gay community,” Leisegang said, noting that the protest represented “general bigotry.”

There was evident energy in the crowd, and they looked ready to face the Riders and pronounce their counter message.

“By no means am I saying that they don’t have a right to talk. I’m just going to talk louder,” Russell said.

The counter-rally was primarily organized by Peter Goselin of the National Lawyers Guild’s Connecticut Chapter. Thanks to a tip off from local activists who monitor anti-immigration web sites, he heard about the event. The loose-knit coalition protesting the event formed quickly.

I asked him if anyone in his coalition brought a chopper. He apparently didn’t think the question was as funny as I thought it was.

“This whole business of motorcycles is they’re trying to make a fake working-class statement. But they’re not working people,” Goselin said. “These are people who are able to take the summer off.”

At a quarter after 12, no motorcyclists had shown up, and it looked like maybe none would. The six police officers stationed by the north entrance to the Capitol looked bored and drank Gatorade. Just as I was working out an angle about a motorcycle immigration rally that didn’t happen, Earl Jackson and Bruce Coolbeth pulled into the Capitol building’s parking lot on their bikes. Jackson, who wore a yellow T-shirt reading “no amnesty for illegals,” had heard about the rally through an XM Satellite radio show hosted by Libertarian Rollye James. Coolbeth, whose arms and neck were covered in tattoos, had “South Vietnam University” written on his bike windshield.

“I’m more socially liberal than you’d probably expect,” Jackson said. “It’s not so much about immigration as it is about border security. If your basement is flooded, you should plug up the hole first.”

Waiting for the motorcycles to show, I walked back to the counter-protest. On Capitol Ave, I saw Diane and Bob Black and Larainne Bellito walking towards the Capitol building holding anti-immigration signs. The trio, who looked as suburban as a minivan, told me they came from Danbury, where they were a part of an anti-immigration group with hundreds of members.

“Obviously, not everyone shows up at every rally, because they have to work,” Diane Black said.

As we spoke, the counter-protest marched by, and the Danbury group’s comments were lost in the din of megaphones, chanting and drumming.

“These are the people who call us racists because we’re trying to protect our country,” Bellito said.

Maybe it was the sun, but when I met Frosty Wooldridge all I could think was that he looked like Will Ferell in some Grizzly Adams-themed comedy sketch. He wore an American flag bandana on his head and a leather support belt around his waist. His face was red from sun and wind, and he seemed a little rattled. Before handing me a list of six illegal immigration bullet points he wanted to impart, he tried to recite them from memory. This led into a great exchange where I would tell him he was on four, not three, and so forth.

“We don’t know the intentions of millions of illegals. We don’t know their terrorist intentions; we don’t know what kind of diseases they’re carrying,” Wooldridge said when he got the order right long enough to stay on point.

I asked him what diseases illegal immigrants were carrying over the border. After a short, but dramatic pause, Wooldridge blurted out “leprosy,” like it had only just then occurred to him.

Which, of course, did absolutely nothing to kill the Ferrell comparison. Incidentally, John Shanley, professor of medicine and director of infectious disease at the UConn Health Center, said that while leprosy does still exist and is found in immigrants from South and Latin America, it is far less contagious and easily treated than its scary Biblical reputation implies. Shanley said tuberculosis, the other disease Wooldridge accused illegal immigrants of infecting Americans with, presented far more of a health risk.

Wooldridge and his crew started the rally. Until they plugged in a megaphone they were in danger of getting drowned out by the counter-protesters, who had finished their march and gathered nearby. The anti-immigration people mostly wore jeans and T-shirts, with the notable exception of one gentleman who wore an Uncle Sam suit over an Iwantyououtofmycountry.com T-shirt.

The speakers were more boring than scary or funny, with the exception of Rick Chiesa, who ripped out a Larry the Cable Guy “git-r-done” during his speech.

Speaking after the event, Goselin cautioned me against writing Wooldridge and his group off as a collection of buffoons. Goselin said that in his writings and public statements, Wooldridge has dehumanized illegal immigrants, portraying them as scum and carriers of disease.

“This is not the language of immigration reform. This is the language of eugenics. This is the language of the master race. That’s what Frosty Wooldridge is,” Goselin said.
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Connecticut For Lieberman

Whose Party Is It?
The two leaders of the Connecticut for Lieberman party -- one who is for him, one against -- squabble over who gets to be chairman
By Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate August 16, 2007

It's difficult, perhaps impossible, to forge accurate declarative sentences about the Connecticut for Lieberman political party. It seems that every attempt at a simple statement of fact needs to be qualified. Attempt to list a series of facts about it, and you end up with a paragraph pockmarked with parentheses.

Fairfield University politics professor John Orman is the elected chairman of the party (but he opposes Lieberman).

Cheshire resident and medical physicist Stuart Korchin is the chairman of the party (but no one elected him).

The party exists to advance Senator Lieberman's political career (except it doesn't, and Lieberman doesn't support it).

The second annual meeting of the party was held on August 9 (except one of the battling party chairmen contends it wasn't really a meeting at all).

There are two men claiming control of the party, which was started by Lieberman supporters after Lieberman lost the democratic primary to Ned Lamont on August 8, 2006.

The party is simultaneously one of the smallest political parties in Connecticut, with a membership numbering in the low two figures, and one of the most powerful, as it holds one of the highest offices in the state (sort of — sorry, last one.).

The man the party is named for is not a member of the party. And Korchin says he didn't consider inviting or even informing Lieberman about the Aug. 9 meeting when he planned the party's most recent event.

"[Lieberman's people] don't have much interest in doing much with the party right now, and I can't blame them to tell you the truth," Korchin said. "The party is really very small. I don't know that they're terribly interested."

Korchin, who some have accused of being a shill for Lieberman, denies having a relationship with the senator.

"I've met him. I've met him on more than one occasion, but not recently," Korchin said. "And he and his office have certainly not given any endorsements to what I'm doing or what the party's doing."

Korchin said he contacted party members about the event. Since Lieberman is a registered Democrat, that means he's likely blissfully unaware that the meeting took place. Actually, more than likely, as Korchin opted to not send him an invitation.

"I have no reason to contact his people," Korchin said.

Speaking before the Aug. 9 meeting, Korchin said he expected about 30 party members to attend the meeting. Assuming that's true — Korchin wouldn't tell me where or when the meeting as held — that would represent a 1900 percent increase from the previous CFL meeting Korchin organized; below the minutes from that meeting, held August 9, 2006, are reproduced, almost in their entirety.

"A meeting of the CONNECTICUT FOR LIEBERMAN Party was held at [Korchin's home in Cheshire] at 4:30. Membership currently consists of Stuart R. Korchin, a registered member of the party, attended. There being no current business, the meeting was adjourned."

Speaking before the meeting, Korchin promised this year's event would be much more involved. Lieberman isn't up for re-election until 2012.

"I have some items on the agenda, mainly about the future and what we're going to be doing in terms of activities," Korchin said. "I don't think we're going to make any endorsements this meeting, but I'm open to suggestion."



Another notable non-attendee to the meeting was nominal party official John Orman, who said he was not informed about the gathering.

"I'm the chair of the CFL, and it's unusual that the chair wouldn't be invited to a CFL meeting," Orman said.

Orman, a longtime state political activist, joined the party after Lieberman was elected to the Senate. Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz's office told him that no one was registered with the party, and Orman — who opposed Leiberman's bid for the senate — took the opportunity to "punk" the newly independent Senator by hijacking the party.

"What we said was that if the state was going to allow a fake institution to exist, we were going to turn that fake institution into a real party to hold Joe accountable," Orman said.

The political punking hit a snag after Korchin saw a New York Times article about Orman's takeover.

"First of all, it wasn't true. I was already a member of the party. Obviously, he was declaring he was the only member of the party, which was false," Korchin said.

Evidently, there was a problem with Korchin's registration.

"I don't know if it was the town registrar or a mistake at the Secretary of the State's office," Korchin said. "The people at the Secretary of the State's office were unaware I was already registered with the party."

Subsequently, Orman held his first party convention, which Korchin attended as one of the six registered party members. Korchin contests the legitimacy of that convention, saying that Orman took control of the party illegally.



While both men enjoy using interpretations of fine points of election law to their advantage, they sharply contrast in attitudes towards Lieberman.

Korchin is a Lieberman supporter. Orman switched his registration as a Steven Colbert-style political joke, and a way to protest what he views as legislative improprieties on Lieberman's part.

"He had this promise to start a new party. I consider that to be a false petition. He told the Secretary of the State he had every intention of forming a new party, but then didn't. To me, that was like electoral fraud," Orman said.

The Secretary of the State's and Lieberman's offices did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Read more!

Right Wing Comedy

Laughing Matters
The vast right-wing comedy conspiracy.
By Adam Bulger
New York Press, Oct. 14, 2003

Julia Gorin is onstage cataloguing the gory side effects of RU-486, the morning-after abortion pill. She waves her arms emphatically as she describes the blood and doctor’s visits the pill would entail.

"What are the NOW ladies going to be happy about next?" She pauses, then continues: "Wire coat hangers?"


Two tables from the stage, where in a typical comedy club a boozed-out fratboy might be heckling, sits a man who is the spitting image of Carl Reiner in the Ocean’s Eleven remake. The crowd sweats modest urban affluence, with men dressed in Brooks Brothers’ dress shirts tucked into unwrinkled khakis, and women in wool slacks and high heels. The American flag is the accessory of choice: One male audience member wears a flag pin on the lapel of his Patrick Bateman-style pinstripe suit; opening act Robert George had tiny flags on his tie; and Gorin, the headliner, wore a bead-encrusted choker with an American flag centerpiece.

This is not a typical comedy crowd. And this is not a typical comedy show. This is Republican Riot–comedy for and by political conservatives–held last week at the Don’t Tell Mamma cabaret on 46th St., a sublevel club around the corner from a porno emporium.

In addition to topping the bill, Gorin also organized the night, with an eye toward monthly shows and a run that will hopefully culminate during the 2004 Republican convention. She’s a seasoned stand-up comic whose act evolved from observational humor and jokes about dating into political humor during the late 90s.

"Bill Clinton was in office, so there was always something funny to say… The audience responded pretty well, so that encouraged me to move in a political direction. I happen to be right-wing, so my observations are always coming from that perspective."

That same year, she started writing opinion pieces for conservative outlets, and has since written articles such as "Not at Albright" and "The Hours: I Am Woman, Hear Me Bore" for Jewish World Review, FoxNews.com and Opinion Journal. The Republican Riot was her first attempt at producing a show.

"I suffered through nearly a decade of listening to other people’s acts, when they bash Republicans. Conservatives are the butt of all their jokes. And they defend Bill Clinton and talk about how his penis was good for the economy. And the audience cheers."

To counter what she views as a pronounced liberal bias in stand-up comedy, she created a routine demanding that Americans get their heads out of the gutter and instead wrap their arm around President Bush–or her "Georgie," as she refers to him during the act. Democrats ("You gotta love ’em") were frequent targets of jokes, as were immigrants, Iraqis, Europeans (specifically, and obviously, the French) Palestinians and, of course, Bill Clinton.

Sex is an oft-returned-to topic. "Libertarians are Republicans with an unhealthy preoccupation with sex," she jokes, and "the Democrats are against the missile shield because they’re so busy having sex they won’t notice that the bombs are dropping." She defines liberal ideology as "give me liberty or give me tyranny, as long as you give me sex."

This anti-sex slant is a tough sell for a room full of comedy-hungry drunks no matter what the ideological makeup of the audience, but Gorin draws upon years of experience on the comedy circuit. She knows how to brand an identity: onstage she becomes a Chuck Jones sketch of a New York Jew, effecting a high-pitched tremolo voice and kvetch-me-if-you-can nervousness. She airs her insecurities to get the audience on her side, tightly intertwining jokes about her self-image with her right-wing observations.

Her opening act, Robert George, lacks Gorin’s streamlined stand-up mojo; his act is a scattershot volley of one-liners devoid of her smooth transitions. He’s a professional television commentator and a writer for the un-bylined editorial page of the New York Post, which he refers to as the second-least credible paper in New York. The first? The New York Times.
George is a black Catholic Republican, and he opens his set with jokes about the inherent conflicts in his racial, spiritual and political identities. He equates his multilayered personality with the Republican party’s broad diversity, then jokes that the party has some diverse broads, while winking at a lady in the front row.

With the California recall election just one day old, George takes the opportunity to riff: Arnold won by courting the Cali hiphop vote with a band called "Schwarza-niggahs with Attitude" and a song called "Straight out of Austria." After a rendition of that song, he adds, "I might be black, but I’m not crazy." The crowd wants him to succeed, wants him–and Julia–to kill, to be hilarious, to be funnier than Garofalo and Carlin and the other liberal giants of standup. So when Julia’s punchlines flatline or when George’s voice stammers, the crowd is uncomfortable but patient.

The Republican Riot show may just be the New York tip of the Republican comedy iceberg. Brad Stine is a conservative comic who tours with the Promise Keepers, playing to arena crowds numbering in the thousands. A veteran of the secular circuit and the 90s cable-tv comic boom, Stine has found his "very pro-Patriot, very pro-theism, very pro-God" personal philosophy to be in opposition to the stereotypical comedian.

"Comedians are thought of as rock ’n’ roll, spoken-word, edgy, pushing the envelope," he observes, "but to do that from a conservative, Judeo-Christian point of view is unique."
Around the 45-minute mark of his act, Stine will often point out that he hasn’t used a single curse word. No matter which club he’s in, he says, that factoid never fails to garner applause.
He currently brings his brand of pro-American jokery to churches and religious functions, noting he doesn’t "do as many clubs now because [he doesn’t] make as much money."

Stand-up comedy is a format that’s ready-made for conservatives. There’s allowance for the Limbaugh monologue/rant, spots for one-liners and ample space for Fox News-style soundbyte ethos. Comedy club audiences respond to shouting and invective and, really now, how far of a jump is it from Bill O’Reilly to Sam Kinison?

As Stine told me, "There is certainly a huge constituency of conservatives in the United States who have made Fox News the number-one news network… There are millions of Americans saying ‘speak for me, speak for me,’ and they’ve never had a comic do it." Read more!

Barack Obama, UCC Synod

Obamamania
Does the Right Wing own religion? Barack Obama comes to Hartford to address the United Church of Christ Synod. While the emphasis was on faith, politics crept around the edges.
Adam Bulger
Hartford Advocate, June 28, 2007

Within hours of his keynote speech at the United Church of Christ Synod, presidential hopeful Barack Obama was a top story on the Drudge Report.

According to the headline on the right-leaning newsfeed website, the junior Senator from Illinois claimed during his speech in Hartford that the Christian right had "hijacked" faith.

The headline was prominently displayed on the site through late Sunday, underneath a headline about Republican former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney complaining about attacks on his religion; the stories seemed meant to be read against each other — in other words, making Obama out as the aggressor.

Seeing the Obama story on the Drudge Report surprised me. I attended Obama's speech along with a reported 8,000 UCC members and, according to the church, 166 registered journalists, in Hartford on June 23, and the hijacking comment didn't register with me at all. I was surprised when I checked my notes from the event that I had even written the comment down. It seemed like a boilerplate stump speech comment, an example of one of Obama's great political skills — the ability to comfortably mix Christian language with political ideas. It fit into the day's agenda of liberal Christian ideals.

Looking over the transcript of the speech, it was at least partially clear why I ignored the comment that would later be drudged up. First, it was a few words in the middle of a paragraph, couched within a statement about the need for unity and the ability religion has to unite.
"Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart," Obama said

Obama mentioned the Christian right, but it wasn't the shot across the bow Drudge implied it was.

"Part of [the reason faith has become divisive is] because of the so-called leaders of the Christian right," Obama said.

The church members I spoke to after the speech didn't seem struck by the hijacking comment, either. A couple people said, that comment was very much in keeping with the rest of the Synod.
"With the UCC, for the most part, we agree with that, so it didn't hit us as anything out of the ordinary," UCC member Nicolle Dahlen said.

The 45-minute speech, which was met with several standing ovations by the crowd, set Obama's personal journey of faith against what he saw as a "hunger" in America for "a sense of purpose" among many Americans to "relieve a chronic loneliness."

Obama recounted how he was raised without religion, and became a churchgoer late in life, partially out of expediency. As a community organizer in Chicago, he dealt with several churches. Obama said that at that time, a pastor told him that if he was organizing churches, it might be helpful if he "went to church once in a while."

The catalyst for Obama's involvement with the church was his work with community action. Touching on speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Obama talked about the relationship between social progress and faith. The Christian right, Obama said, has worked to erode that relationship, exploiting peoples' faith to fight Democratic political initiatives.

"I think he was talking about how the radical Christian right has used faith to divide. How can we say that everyone does not have a spirituality around them? Religion doesn't belong to just a few people," said Nancy Rucker, a UCC member from Storrs.

To me, the most striking thing about Obama's speech was how eerily relaxed he seemed giving it. He was speaking in front of thousands of people, and seemed about as anxious as someone talking to a beloved house pet. Even when he made a mistake — like when he said he earned $13,000 a month (instead of a year) as an organizer in Chicago before quickly correcting himself to say $13,000 a year — it didn't look like his heart rate was raised by even a beat.

The content itself was fairly unremarkable, not because it was bad, but because it wasn't anything Obama hadn't said before. Much of it was taken almost verbatim from Obama's autobiographical book The Audacity of Hope.

It wasn't supposed to be a political speech, as several UCC officials made pains to say. Several church members emphasized to me that the UCC had asked Obama to be the keynote speaker before he announced he was running for president.

A speaker announced early in the day that Obama campaign buttons and T-shirts were not allowed within the Civic Center.

However, signs of political maneuvering were evident. Campaign staff manned Obama tables placed outside the building, across the road from buildings tagged with Dodd's '08 political graffiti.

Two politically minded entrepreneurs from Brooklyn were hawking American Apparel style T-shirts with hipster silk screen renderings of Obama's image outside the civic center entrance.
Sarah Gager and her boyfriend Andy had traveled up from New York with bags of silk screened T-shirts.

Gager laughed when I asked when the Dodd version of the shirt would be ready.

It's probably the fallout from getting up at seven on a Saturday, but I was initially irritated to high hell by the Synod. Watching two singers stand against a backdrop reading "Let It Shine" sing "Solar Power, inexpensive energy" to the tune of the hymn "Angels We Have Heard on High" (you'd know it if you heard it — it's the one that goes "Glor-or-ee-or-ee-or-ee-a), I thought the group combined all the annoying aspects of earnest liberals with all of the annoying aspects of Christianity. I warmed to the idea, though, when the entire crowd, numbering in the tens of thousands, sang along.

Partially it was the effect of being surrounded by thousands of voices in relative unison, but mostly it was the realization that with the critical mass of these numbers, something constructive might come out of these kinds of ideals.

Shortly after the holy solar power sing-a-long, Bill Moyers, the former host of PBS's news magazine show NOW and the current host of Bill Moyers Journal, was introduced as the first keynote speaker. Raised a Baptist, Moyers has attended services at a UCC Church for over 40 years.
But even if he wasn't involved with the church, he would fit the UCC's vibe perfectly, mixing a liberal slant on current events with literate references and a deep religiosity. He talked about the biblical figure Saul and Emily Dickinson in the same sentence, and deftly connected
spirituality with social action. Speaking of the conflict he saw between power and justice, Moyers said that "nothing seems to embarrass the political class in America." Not the disparity of wealth in America, not the Iraq war, not the response to national crises.

"It's justice that measures the worth of a state, not empire," Moyers said to a standing ovation shortly after a Tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies passed through my aisle.

This paper's own columnist, Alan Bisbort, was quoted in the material handed out to the Synod-goers. In his last column, he suggested the UCC adopt "Christian but not insane" as their motto, and that quote was excerpted in the "General Synod Digest." If nothing else, this shows the church's ability to tolerate even the craziest op-ed columnist in the country (Just kidding — nobody beats the Biz!).

But in all seriousness, the church's embrace of the quote speaks volumes about its views and its character. Embedded within the statement is the supposition that Christianity has become, at least in some quarters, insane. Including the quote was a sign that the UCC is separated from the Christian right.

"That liberal Christian voice is one that isn't heard that much. What's mostly heard is a rather strident right leaning voice in America," said Philip Price, a UCC member from Atlanta, Georgia. "So it was exciting to hear so many folks affirming their faith, not with a leftist view-point, necessarily, but with a compassionate viewpoint."

At times the Synod seemed more like a political convention than a religious one. There were conferences on topics such as immigration, gay rights, and morally responsible business.

The UCC members I spoke with uniformly embraced the church's liberal stances. However, those views rankle at least one member. Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan White House political director, wrote in the latest issue of conservative magazine The American Spectator that he and other right-leaning members of the church had objections with the church's liberal bent, writing he decried UCC officials' "zealous insistence on presenting the UCC to the national media as a liberal church" and using its member's money for "liberal political causes."

Lord claims the liberal bent has had an adverse effect on the church's membership, writing that: "as a direct result of the liberal politics running the hierarchy, the church has lost over one million members in the last four decades."

One church member suggested that the right wing hold over American Christianity is a question of perception and marketing.

"I can't blame them if they're more media savvy. I can't blame them if they're better at getting in front of the cameras," said Atlanta's Philip Price. "I think the progressive voice has not been as astute or smart at getting the message of what we believe out there in the same way."
The people I met were almost all self-described liberals. One young church member said that issues aren't always addressed.

"The church is pretty liberal and supportive. But there are some people who try to stay away from it and pretend it's not an issue," said Nicolle Dahlen, a 20-year-old church member from Rochester, Minnesota. Dahlen had spent most of the Synod working an LGBT booth. "In the last three days we sold $3,000 worth of buttons and T-shirts and stuff. The turnout's always really awesome at Synod, but because this year is our 50th anniversary, there was about 8000 people here," Dahlene said. "Which was pretty intense."

At the encouragement of the event's speakers, many of the 8,000 attending the Synod spilled out of the Civic Center and onto the surrounding streets. On Saturday, the streets and restaurants of downtown Hartford were packed with church members. My heart swelled with civic pride at the prospect of someone telling their friends back home in Sioux City, Iowa about the great chicken curry quesadilla they had at The Russell.

Jordan Polon of the Greater Hartford Welcome Center said she was overwhelmed by the number of people asking for her assistance. She didn't mind the crush, though.

"These are the nicest people I've ever met," Polon said. Read more!