Chapo Trap House - Seeking a Fren Episode 3 Teaser - Con Online

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Felix recounts the rise of Obama-era conservative online media in this teaser for Episode 3 of his series “Seeking a Fren for the End of the World.” The full episode and rest of the series are available for subscribers at patreon.com/chapotraphouse.

But back to right-wing websites, let's go down the greatest hits. In 2010, former NBC contributor Tucker Carlson started The Daily Caller, a site that he hoped would break news rather than aggregate it, and maybe even take some Republicans to task as well. But ended up in practice being a blog for esoteric neo-reactionaries like Scott Greer and Kustin Alamaru and the world's largest repository for photos of Kate Upton. The site tried and failed to recapture the magic of Andrew Breitbart by inventing a fake prostitution scandal for Bob Menendez, which is really just getting greedy.

The Daily Caller is best understood as a make-work foundation for members of the Claremont Institute, a stroussian think tank that would be one of the first to support Trump and further push the party into true believers of screeching neo-reaction. As we'll discuss later, much of the modern right's hysterical obsession with social issues comes downstream from this specific place. And to make the continuity between the religious right and the third generation even clearer, Lee Fay reported that both Claremont and the Horowitz Freedom Center received training and support from both FreedomWorks and state policy networks, a Heritage Foundation outgrowth that grew extensively in the 90s through the

support of Dobson's Family Policy Councils. But despite its journalistic intentions and esoteric columnists, its connection both to the world of evangelicals and the Bush administration were even stronger than its affair with the far right. Its co-founder, Neil Patel, was a policy advisor to Dick Cheney, and one of its key financiers was Foster Freese, a former president of the Council for National Policy who bankrolls much of the evangelical right, including Ralph Reed and Charlie Kirk's turning points to USA. Freese also said, you know, back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraception.

The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't costly. PragerU also started up in 2010. Most of the series documents failures, especially during the old bubble bath years, so let's give Dennis his due. He is really good at convincing his wife to have sex with him. He also created one of their most effective and well put together propaganda outlets. Maybe one of the first conservatives on the internet who mastered YouTube with punchy, slickly produced videos that could be consumed in five minutes or less, modeled not after

talk radio, but Buzzfeed, AJ+, and Gawker. PragerU also benefits from extensive funding and support from an older generation of conservative operators such as the creationist Discovery Institute founder George Glider and Ginny Thomas. An astroturf so perfect, it's surprising DeRay McKennison wasn't involved somehow. PragerU stood out, as conservatism on YouTube was mostly limited to stuff like this. Yo, this one's for all the young conservatives. Yo.

One time. I've repped the Northeast and I'm still a young con. Let your voice release. You don't have to be Obamacons. I debate any poser who don't shoot straight. Government spending needs to deflate. Your ideas are lightweight. Your careers are check-made. I frustrate. I increase their pulse rate.

I hate when government dictating making Statements about how to be a merchant how to run a restaurant how to lay the pavement They're out of business, but can't protect it if it deficiencies are bleeding young car treatment or Steven Crowder Are you guys ready to party? Obama in 2012? That's racist. Oh man, we've got a good group. Glad to be here. Do we have anyone here who's served in the United States military? Anyone here? A round of applause?

Yeah, give them a round of applause. I really appreciate it. Army, Air Force, Navy Corpsman. We got a corpsman here? Hello, Corpsman. Guten tag, Corpsman. That's how you say it in Austrian. Folks, I've got to tell you, really, the only reason I'm here is because recently a job application of mine was declined by Acorn. So to be fair, I did show up for the job interview dressed as a prostitute.

They didn't have a problem with the hooker thing. They were just looking to go younger. Steven Crowder is God's gift to anyone making a case study of the American right. He has been, from his early upstart years to his tenure at Fox, to his dominance on YouTube, to his Cassavetes-esque meltdown, absolutely dripping with bizarre sexual pathologies and barely concealed neuroses. In one tearful video from 2015, he owns up to his insecurities and failures and cajely admits that he had a bisexual phase, making him the least convincing bisexual since Elton John.

He has been crossdressing in public to prove incoherent or outright non-existent points, and years before bathroom hysteria became a conservative issue. He bragged about successfully resisting the urge to have premarital sex with his then-wife, marking the least impressive feat of willpower since Christopher Hitchens vowed to stick with beers until noon. Crowder was, initially, a failed actor. After a childhood stint on the TV show Arthur, he could only land jobs in pure flicks films or indies made by his literal brother.

In 2009, he finally hit gold by uploading videos to YouTube. These videos are not really any different from what a precocious 10-year-old with an airsoft gun, a flip video camera, and an MP3 of Paralyzer by Finger 11 would upload. But so scan was the field for young conservative talent that he was signed to the Little Green Football's outgrowth, PJTV, before getting scooped up by Fox News. And assigned for astute listeners, PJTV was also the American home to beloved Israeli comic strip Dry Bones. Anyway, here's a little clip of Crowder's early work.