RIGHT WING'S HIP IMAGE
HUEY Lewis may have been right when he sang that it was "Hip to Be Square." Gavin McInnes, the co-founder of Vice magazine, a hipster bible that caters to the too-cool-for-school Williamsburg set, has proclaimed it cool to be conservative. Writing in the new issue of Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos' American Conservative, McInnes says its "become fashionable to link liberalism with weakness and conservatism with honesty. Underground film iconoclast Vincent Gallo ("Buffalo 66," "Palookaville," "GoodFellas") is now quoting Nixon and Reagan as if they were Wordsworth and Yeats. Fashion photographer Terry Richardson (Gucci, Sisley, Levi's) is showing up at conservative book launches and publicly trashing Clinton. Even high school students are getting in on the act, like the southern California artist collective called Sofia that made T-shirts and panties with the illegal-immigrant-crossing logo on them." McInnes says conservatives still have much work to do. "I would estimate that only 12 percent of our readers would dare call themselves conservatives - but that is at least twice what it was five years ago."