Pundits

Jonathan Krohn

The pile-on against this 17-year-old boy is pretty ugly, but I suppose unsurprising. He seems pretty smart and tough, and I imagine he can take it. Nor by the way are his present—pre-college!—views necessarily the last stage in his personal evolution. For all his precocity, he still has a lot of growing up to do.

If there's any story here at all, it is the question. Those people now claiming to have been skeptical of Krohn's mynah-bird performance of 2009: where were they at the time? Listen to this retrospective truth-teller:

But not everyone has always supported Krohn’s ripped-from-talk-radio beliefs and talking points, or the way he chose to deliver them.

“Holy fucking shit,” exclaimed an attendee at the 2009 CPAC conference when told about Krohn’s political conversion and planned postmodern satire in an interview with TheDC.

“The kid was most annoying 13-year-old I have ever met,” said the attendee, who spoke with Krohn before his speech. “He was a braggart. He said something like, ‘Maybe when this is over you can watch me on ‘Hannity’ later tonight.’”

Krohn’s mother, Marla Krohn, an aspiring actress and middle-school drama teacher, has faced similar criticism. On Amazon.com, where Krohn’s self-published book “Defining Conservatism” still sells, numerous reviewers blamed her for allegedly coaching her son and using him for publicity.

The New York Times ran a profile of the Krohns in 2010 — when Jonathan was still conservative — that included numerous details about Marla’s involvement in her son’s life, including her refusal to let him own a cellphone and her insistence on barking at him while he was being interviewed by local news stations.

“Krohn was smug, condescending, and obviously completely ignorant of what he was saying,” the attendee said. “When I spoke with him, I got the impression he was merely repackaging what someone else had told him. He was smart, but almost Stepford Wife-like in how it seemed like he was being used. It was creepy. … He kept talking about the book he had written and how many radio shows he had been on.”

The source then paused, thought for a second, and delivered what can only be described as a positively Wittgensteinian summary denunciation of Krohn’s intellect, personality and contributions to the political discourse.

“To be clear, the fact that he was being used did not make the kid any less of a douche.”

Wow. The Daily Caller's unnamed source felt that strongly—but still held his or her tongue, until it was permissible to let it loose. The mindset of subordination and conformity revealed by the quote represents an even bigger problem for conservatism than its vulnerability to a third-tier stage mother.

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David Frum

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