Eve of Redemption, Dawn of Retrospection

I partied with Yale Party of the Right people, among others, this weekend in DC, and they were pleased that 2000 PoR alum Eve Tushnet (who I’ve mentioned on this blog before) was profiled in the New York Times yesterday.  I’ve noted that PoR contains odd tensions between conservatism and decadence, traditionalism and eccentricity (one of their candidates for Chairman this year was a traditionalistic, lily-white devotee of…Hawaiian paganism), and this piece sums those tensions up in a very sympathetic way — when a left-leaning newspaper could so easily have gone the “hypocrisy” or “hopeless contradictions” routes.

I am pleased, too, that the piece mentions that Eve likes the Smiths (she also likes comic books, like most good people, and once praised a history book by comparing its goodness to chocolate shaped like Sophia Loren with a cameo by Iron Man).

Perhaps fittingly, while I was with the PoR folk, my vaguely Eve-like ex Dawn Eden was co-hosting a 60s-music dance party elsewhere in DC (which my friend Paul Taylor attended, noting a prevalence of mod scooter-riding chicks), such events being the sort of thing Dawn used to find time for with greater frequency back before turning Catholic.  Like Eve and a few other people I know, Dawn may have finally decided it is possible to resolve the logical paradox of something being hip and square at the same time.