Performing child-pundit no longer conservative

[Anarcho-Socialist]

Jonathan Krohn, now 17, is embarrassed by his precocious, creepy CPAC performance

In February 2009, a 13-year-old boy named Jonathan Krohn gave, for some reason, a big televised speech at CPAC, the conservative movement’s annual convention, in which he expounded on “the future of conservatism” in a sort of political version of a creepy child pageant or impressive performing animal act.

Lots of liberals said that Krohn would eventually regret being thrust into such a prominent venue at such a young age, and it turns out we were to be proven right much faster than we expected. Krohn is now 17 years old, and he is so much more mature and wise now, as all 17-year-olds are. He tells Politico’s Patrick Gavin that he is no longer a conservative.

“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.”

Krohn’s still a remarkably precocious young man, having completed the David Frum/Andrew Sullivan conversion process before he can even register to vote. He’s now pro-gay marriage, pro-Obama, and headed to New York University to study philosophy and (hah) filmmaking. (Last time we checked in on Krohn, he was planning to attend Princeton, home of conservative legal scholar Robert P. George.)

More: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/performing_child_pundit_no_longer_conservative/

[MADem]

1. He was on TV this evening. He's going to college soon, lucky lad.

I'm guessing the poor schmuck wants something resembling a social life. With that fourteen-year-old's conservative, mean, shitty worldview, he was likely to be spending a LOT of time all alone.

[Kalidurga]

2. ''I understood it enough to talk about it but not really enough to have a conversation about it...''

Well there you go. We need to have some real conversations and not just spout talking points.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. The braces were removed from his brain.

No wonder so much effort is made to destroy public schools. That's where critical thinking lives.

No one brainwashed this kid not to be conservative. He just read and thought and thought more.

He stopped believing and started thinking.

[jerseyjack]

4. While the kid read and thought a lot.....his peers were watching Amer. Idol.

[BREMPRO]

5. his conversion after reading and "thinking about things" is an indictment of the conservative movement

that isn't about thinking at all, but rigid ideology divorced from reality and empathy. Also say a lot that this "wunderkind" was elevated and credibility and respect with conservatives because he parroted what the RW likes to hear instead of being an original thinker. Most conservatives in the media seem to have the maturity of a 13 year old, this guy just grew up! Got to give him credit for going against the forces that were certainly pressuring him to remain in the comfy fold and evolving and embracing a more personal, thoughtful and compassionate view of society and politics.