On Friday a Federal grand jury in the DC US District Court hit L Brent Bozell IV, son of Christian Conservative leader L Brent Bozell III, with six felonies related to his involvement in the Capitol riot, including disordery conduct, destruction of federal property, unlawful entry, and disruption of an official proceeding. Read the complaint here.
The younger Bozell was filmed in the Senate chamber and later exiting the Capitol building. He has been charged with obstructing an official proceeding, entering a restricted building, and disorderly conduct. Wearing a sweatshirt from the Hershey Christian Academy, a school in Pennsylvania is daughters attend and where he once served as girls basketball coach, the younger Bozell also posted clips of his activities in the Capitol to his social media accounts.
What’s interesting here is how much the traditional “family values” conservative world surrendered to the nihilism and malevolence of Trumpism. And it goes back to WWF (now WWE) pro wrestling. Around 1999 to 2001, Bozell III’s “Parents’ Television Council” group (PTC) waged a protest campaign against the WWF accusing the wrestling company (correctly) of promoting violence and indecency to children, with the goal of getting Karens to call the USA Network and pressure them to cancel the weekly WWF broadcasts. It went pretty much nowhere.
WWF CEO Vince McMahon responded by having one of his mid-card performers Stevie Richards – a punkish headbanger type wrestler – rebrand himself as “Steven Richards, head of ‘Right to Censor’ (RTC)” who would run out wearing an oxford shirt and tie to ruin other wrestler’s matches or whatever scenes between matches that were staged in the ring with women in bikinis and what not. It was a good laugh, with WWF “Attitude” mocking those Evangelical moral crusaders, but what’s funnier is that a decade and a half later Vince McMahon was one of Trump’s biggest supporters and his wife was a cabinet-level federal department secretary in the Trump Administration for four years – until shortly after Bozell’s adult son was committed a felony for attacking the Capitol as commanded by Trump. How’s that for Christian conservatism?