A pair of articles are getting a LOT of play in a few corners of the blogosphere.   Eve Fairbanks, a reporter for the left-leaning New Republic was recently sent on assignment by her editors deep into enemy territory.  Evoking Jane Goodall observing primates in the wild, our intrepid reporter signed up for a conservative dating site - ConservativeMatch.com - and went out on a few dates which she dutifully documented -

About a month ago, I signed up for ConservativeMatch, one of the biggest conservative dating services on the Web. In recent years, a whole cottage industry of politically and socially conservative dating sites has flourished...I couldn't help wondering if conservative bachelors and bachelorettes, trading on their own meat market, have distinctive dating rituals and ideals for a mate. In other words, how does Ms. Right go looking for Mr. Right? I put up a profile, trolled the listings, and went on three dates to investigate

This being the age of the web one of Eve's dates immediately recognized the article and posted a rebuttal on Slashdot -

Penn Gillette does not believe in G_d or coincidences. I believe in both, the latter on rare occasion. This is how I, unknowingly, became a story in The New Republic and the "Hydrogen Powered Jeep" came to the Rescue.

Warning: this is a super-long post.

He goes on to provide a detailed account of his encounters with "The Courtesan" and the factual errors she makes in the article.   As they say, if the errors were random, they'd be distributed all over the map;  but, when they all sorta push the story in a certain direction....  call it press bias writ small.

Very well.  For me the really interesting thing about this little episode is the window it provides into how the deepest blue's see the reds.  I'd conclude, that our TNR "courtesan" is ultimately a little disappointed that the conservatives into whose den she so boldly ventured weren't the mean, rigid, homophobic bastards she'd fantasized about.   You can positively feel some of the wind being let out of her sails when the "enemy" doesn't reveal themselves to be the evil she perhaps needed to believe in.  She notes -

They are not, for the most part, serious values conservatives [VV: whatever she thinks that means]. Over half of the 30 men I initially viewed believe that sex before marriage is OK (”Heck,” one wrote, “I think that some marriages are immoral”), and twelve–or 40 percent–believe abortion may not need to be illegal. Their conservatism manifests itself more in a libertarian sensibility, in diehard patriotism, in the desire for a strong defense, even in matters of taste, like an appreciation for country living. Widening my search, I found that the ConservativeMatch man reads National Review and that, on any given day, you might find him “in a scholarly discussion of Supreme Court decisions at the Cato Institute or … tearing out walls in an old house.” Inexplicably, he has a fascination with all things Italian.

When asked what kind of woman they're looking for, the men judge the stereotype of the meek conservative woman with scorn. They tend to prefer an “intellectually aware” and “self-assured” woman–perhaps even a woman who “dresses … provacatively [sic]”: “[A] little bit of an uptown girl,” one wrote, “with a downtown spirit.”

And perhaps most disturbing - when confronted with a bunch of guys who don't fit her preconceived notions about "conservatives", her retort is that perhaps they aren't really conservatives after all -

A subversive note or two of liberalism is a feature of many profiles on ConservativeMatch–and of everyone I went on dates with. Shooter told me he drives a hybrid car. One poster does yoga..The edge of guilty-pleasure liberalism in people’s profiles creates an interesting tension on ConservativeMatch....Some of these betrayals are not so benign.

Methinks she might wanna adjust her ideas instead.