The Strange Appearance and Disappearance of “The Conservative Teen”

Late last month, one of the most unintentionally funny publications I’ve seen in some time made a splash and then just as quickly disappeared without explanation. It was The Conservative Teen, a magazine with a incredibly oxymoronic title, the slogans “fostering conservative values” and “countering liberal bias” (not exactly burning issues on the teenage agenda) and wholesome-on-the-verge-of-delusional articles that most certainly were not written by teens nor anyone who’s even had contact with a teen. (They might have had fantasies about teens, but that doesn’t count.)

Among its articles are such gems as:

• An unsurprising condemnation of Glee, complete with a special mention of Katie Couric, whom the writers still haven’t forgiven for embarrassing Sarah Palin with a so-called “gotcha” question (Palin claimed to read a lot of news but couldn’t name a single newspaper, despite having majored in journalism).
• Why Abstinence Works. It clearly doesn’t, and it turned out that the article was contributed by the Family Research Council.
• Ronald Reagan: The First Black President?
• Libertarian View: Government Creates Poverty
• How to Draw Obama

Many of the articles, either in deference to teenager’s inexperience or to John Stuart Mill, many of the articles came with definitions for some of their tougher words (such as “cameo” and “Judaism”). Perhaps it didn’t occur to the writers that kids these days would Google any unfamiliar terms. Then again, they may have wanted to spare the young’uns the terror of Google returning some liberal results for their searches.

The back cover features this full-page photo which works best if you imagine it read aloud by Sam the American Eagle from The Muppet Show:

I’d link to the magazine itself, but its site lived for less than a handful of days. According to this Buzzfeed article, the reason why depends on whom you ask:

• Ask the contributors to the magazine and they’ll that it ran out of money. You probably can’t find a more ironic example of the free market in action.
• Ask the publisher and he’ll say that he’s unable to continue with the magazine due to illness.
• Ask the guy who registered the site and you’ll get nothing. He’s nowhere to be found, and his (presumably former) employer would like him to explain why he registered The Conservative Teen using company resources without authorization.

The disappearance of The Conservative Teen leaves a void for some enterprising, politically active publisher to fill. My suggestion: get some actual conservative teens — tricky to find, but perhaps you can find the loner in the high school cafeteria plotting revenge, some homeschooled kids or visit a militia training ground — to write at least a few of the articles.