Politico reports the breakout child star of CPAC 2009, Jonathan Krohn, has given up on conservatism and become an ardent Obama supporter:
Jonathan Krohn took the political world by storm at 2009’s Conservative Political Action Conference when, at just 13 years old, he delivered an impromptu rallying cry for conservatism that became a viral hit and had some pegging him as a future star of the Republican Party.
Now 17, Krohn — who went on to write a book, “Defining Conservatism,” that was blurbed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett — still watches that speech from time to time, but it mostly makes him cringe because, well, he’s not a conservative anymore.
“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”
This really should serve as a lesson for every conservative who humored Krohn, praised him as a child prodigy and applauded the wisdom in his book on conservative philosophy. Not that the Right should have attacked his work, but the condescension was grating (the greatest honor for the 13-year-old Krohn was when Jeremy Lott actually took his tome seriously and panned it for The American Spectator).
You also don’t have to disagree with the politics of Krohn’s CPAC speech to find it a little creepy — maybe because there’s something creepy about child political activists in general. Most appear to have been pushed into it by politically-overzealous parents, and they all seem to serve one of two main purposes: 1.) shaming political leaders or the public into doing something vague and idealistic, i.e. stopping world hunger, saving the polar bears or transforming the Korean DMZ into a “World Peace Park.” 2.) encouraging other activists by saying the “next generation” cares about their cause.
In reality, all child activists prove is that children are still able to regurgitate facts fed to them by activist parents.
And that’s where the real tragedy of the Krohn story lies. What were his parents thinking when they pushed him into the national spotlight as a “conservative pundit” at just 13-years-old? He’s clearly embarrassed about it now, judging from his comments in the Politico article. But his short stint was profitable. Krohn had a book tour; he plugged his work on Fox News; he got a gig with the Premier Speakers Bureau. It also resulted in plenty of attention for him and his parents. Now that Krohn claims he didn’t really grasp what he was saying at the time, the questions remain: why didn’t his parents realize this and put a stop to it? What were they getting out of this?
It’s a shame Krohn still has to live with the mockery that comes with that attention, especially because he never really asked for any of it in the first place. The Right should keep that in mind next time a “conservative child prodigy” comes along.
In a society that worships youth and is embarrassed by age, that finds it illegitimate to have one standard of conduct for adults and another for children (whether banning smoking scenes from movies and censoring cigarettes from historic photos, or whether giving a green light to children having sex), is it any wonder that we forget that children are children? n nConservatives, in particular, should know better.
David Brock is another example — in his '20s, he was a research fellow at Heritage, in his '30s he wrote about Anita Hill & Troopergate — and when he turned 40, he went to the other side and founded Media Matters. I always suspected he was there in the first place — and I wouldn't be surprised if this kid was too. n nHis beliefs were available to the highest bidder. Personally, I go with what Morton Blackwell says — don't trust anyone until they have stuck with a loosing cause or campaign because then you know they are not just a mere opportunist. And why does the right so value youth when things like this keep happening to us? n
David Brock was sincere. Anyone who reads his autobiography, "Blinded by the Right," knows this. He moved to the Right at a young age after witnessing Leftist extremists intimidating guest speaker Jeane Kirkpatrick off the stage during his student days at Cal-Berkeley. Many years later he moved leftward when he realized that a lot of "investigative" reporting by conservatives was actually political warfare dressed up to look objective. n nI disagree with Brock on any number of issues, but he wasn't anyone's journalistic whore.
I have two words for you: Ben. Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro is different — he stood his ground when it cost him — he was kicked off the UCLA paper for complaining about their refusal to print his column accusing Muslim student groups of supporting terrorism. He was conservative when it WASN'T to his benefit — in his classes, in his writing, in his life. n nI personally know about a dozen "twentysomethings" who went through incredible hardship as undergrads because of their conservative views, and I have no doubt that their views are genuine because one simply could not put up with what they did as a ruse. n nBut the "Conservative Golden Child" is something else entirely. All I can think of is Bob Dole's circa-96 denouncement of Bill Clinton and the Baby Boomers as a "generation that never sacrificed, never struggled, never suffered and have never seen hardship." They are told what to say and rewarded for saying it — psychologists call that "operant conditioning" — I call it "brainwashing" — and it well may be a distinction without a difference. n nAll of the young conservative women's groups have some version of "she thinks" somewhere in their introductory literature — yes it is a parody on sexism but it also implies that these are women who are conservatives because of their intelligence — because they "think" and not just "recite." Again, this is different from what Ms. Goodman perhaps best describes as the pliant child pushed into it by "politically-overzealous parents." n nIt is the same thing as the beauty contests for 6-year-olds and at what point do we start talking about "child abuse"?
One adult after another gives a similar speech before CPAC as Krohn did in 2009. All are just as childish.
I think the first was Samantha Smith back in the early '80s — this was when everyone and their brother was trying to sandbag Reagan's ultimately successful eAfforts to actually end the cold war by WINNING it. Smith became the center ring of a media circus, and then Hollywood gave her a TV series, and then she died in a plane crash flying back from filming the show. A stupid crash actually as that plane ought not have been up in that weather, not to mention all the cumulative errors beyond that. But her mother wound up loosing both her daughter and her husband that night.