What?s really cool in youth culture today? Mixing libertarian/jingoistic conservativism with a porno aesthetic, according to this article in Newsweek online. Tim Wilson scanned half a dozen magazines, including Tokion, WYWS and Vice, and found a weird combination of explicit BDSM sexuality with homages to Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy. The makers of these popular magazines identify with conservatives? ?outcast? sensibility and indifference to political correctness. Plus celebrating the invasion of Iraq dovetails nicely with articles about ?resentment sex? and images of naked women holding steaks to their black eyes. Apparently the chicks dig it.

Wilson?s theory is that the consumers of these magazines are trying to overcompensate the uncoolness of being straight, white and middle class by embracing the most shocking expressions they can find. My feeling is that he might have come up with a different analysis if he?d left out Vice magazine, which is by far the most extreme magazine, in both conservatism and in raunchiness, of the six he covers. There?s a reason I haven?t read Vice in ages.