But I do think Matt raises a pretty good point:
I really struggle to understand why this particular gimmick appeals to conservatives. What does it accomplish to put a 14 year-old front and center at CPAC? What's the message it's supposed to send? That the conservative message is childish? That the right's talking points can be easily mastered by a 14 year-old? That the CPAC audience doesn't care about the knowledge-base of the speakers there, they just want to hear certain ritual beats repeated? I wouldn't want to claim that liberals are so high-minded as to be above all that, but I'm hard-pressed to think of an example of liberals trying to flaunt disdain for knowledge and expertise.And then there is this: When you're young, and you come into some political consciousness, self-assurance, intellectual arrogance, and prejudice come easy. When I got conscious, I would have told you that the Egyptians invented airplanes, black people never had slaves, and that the cold made white people acquisitive by nature. And I would have told you this publicly, in front of a crowd of people. And I'd have slapped you with a Chancellor Williams tome if you dared to disagree. Thankfully, I had parents who protected me from myself. But more importantly, I had people around me who valued reading, listening and life experience over talking, writing and publishing. The dispensation of knowledge must be grounded by the acquisition of knowledge
If you're a conservative and you care about this kid, you don't give him a public forum. You give him your card, and you take his e-mails. You give him a list of books that he needs to read. Then when you see him, you quiz him on those books. You tell him that you're glad he showed the initiative to write and publish himself, but his thesis is actually banal. That if he's going to play in the big leagues, he should expect to get hit and prepare himself thusly. You warn him away from sideshows, and teach him to pride hearing over being heard. You teach him that these are his weapons and his shield in the great war of ideas.
Of course if you did all that, you'd risk turning him into liberal. But that's the chance you take, and that's what a person confident in their ideas does. They don't urge their pupils to turn away from the challenge of foreign ides, but to embrace it, to attack it, relishing the possibilities of how they could ultimately come out. Conservatives should encourage the kid to take himself seriously. Challenge him, and make sure he understands that conservative ideology isn't so rudimentary that a 14-year old could master it.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I like reading this post as an alternative ending speech to "Scent of a Woman," with soundtrack included.
Hoo-wah!
I quite like your blog but I am not one to throw around compliments much. However, I have to say this was truly a great post. You eloquently make an excellent point that I have been struggling to express for days. Quite impressive.
Heyo there:
Great post, tho' no news there - they're most all great.
Where can one find more about this argument that the cold made whites acquisitive? Asking this as a cracker, mind you. I do like crackpot theories.
I suspect that some on the right might well be thinking, "See, liberals are so dumb even a 14-year-old can take them apart!"
Jonathan Krohn: wunderkind.
Graeme Frost: party political prop.
Glad to see the double-standards alive and well in GOP-land.
Yes, exactly. My wife and I watched clips of him, and she said "that could so have been you." And she was correct that I was as arrogant and cocksure a liberal as this kid is a conservative. But I too had people to challenge me and to smack some humility into me. It wasn't fun, but it was worth it.
TNC,
You know, I kind of agree with you on this. I agree that parents should protect their kids from themselves, and I am against child preachers, 5-year old beauty pagent contestents, and teenage pro atheletes. I kind of disagree with you on this because I don't think that reading more and reflecting more will necessarily make you a liberal.
But, no matter what, this just seems like such an obvious gimmick. It's like using Michael Steele to appeal to Black people, or Sarah Palin to appeal to women. It's one of those, "Let's try and appeal to the 'youth vote.'" Or, "statistics be dammned, see, we Republicans are appealing to young people." It's not really about the 14 year old boy. I don't really think that the conservative leadership actually cares what he has to say. They are just using him to score some political points.
I read the NYT piece on this kid over the weekend and felt even more confused about why and how he ended up center stage at CPAC. His parents, especially his father, come across as dismayed and little exasperated by the whole thing. It's odd.
If you value education rather than indoctrination, you likely would have avoided homeschooling in the first place. Sheltering someone from diverse experiences and viewpoints isn't going to produce critical thinking, although it will protect your kids from people who doubt Jesus rode dinosaurs.
I'm also curious about this white people, cold weather and acquisitiveness. I sleep with the windows open in the winter, so I must be a greedy SOB.
All I can think of is Alex P. Keaton. If they are trying to appeal to the "youth vote" with young Mr. Krohn, they are as tone-deaf as they have been with Palin and Steele.
I.e., I agree with you, Fighting Words.
And this is a great post, TNC. I feel sort of sorry for the kid because he is a child prodigy, and it's really hard to peak when 1) you still have a lot of years left to maybe NOT be at the peak, and 2) you really don't have the experience that allows you to appreciate the view from up there.
"...Of course if you did all that, you'd risk turning him into liberal."
Great post, and I agree completely. If I were at that speech, I would be embarrassed to be there, even I agreed with every word the kid was saying.
Very well said. But - as per your discussion yesterday as to the ongoing education of white people I'm afraid I need the reference - Chancellor Williams?
The biggest tell in that NYT profile for me was that Young Master Krohn is also an actor. His views may change as soon as he discovers girls. Girls liberalize.
@ Fighting Words
To me, it's just a return to the question of medium versus message, and which one you value more.
Anon: the argument about cold climates producing white acquisitiveness popped up in one variant stream of Afrocentric thought--when Leonard Jeffries was being slammed in public, one of the things he got attention for was an argument about the difference between "ice people" and "sun people", that ice people were greedy and militaristic and violent, etc.
Silly, I agree, but actually this wasn't much more than an appropriation of a lot of European ideas about tropical exuberance or noble savages on one hand and an ironic reversal of some old, established arguments about the roots of the Protestant work ethic lying in the harsh winters of Northern Europe (e.g., that people needed to have strong social and personal discipline in order to stay inside with each other over the course of a long winter). If one is going to mock, one ought to mock not just the Afrocentric variant but the source material it's riffing off of.
Hey Mr. Burke:
Thanks! And to be clear, I wasn't looking to mock, and am familiar w/ the flipside climate-determinative theories. I just dig reading about them.
I saw clips of the kid, too, and found him off-putting. There are moments, as he paused for his applause lines, when his face takes on an air of smug satisfaction worthy of Eve Harrington.
I think the attraction of the right to this kid is that he IS a kid. It's not about youth vote; it's about the perception that youth are instinctively liberal, and this one isn't. I have an old high-school acquaintance who, in describing himself as a conservative on his Facebook page adds parenthetically, "I was a liberal, but then I grew up." So here's this kid--and not a rural, Promise Ring-wearing, Jesus-spouting right-wing kid--who allows them to fight that perception.
And the kid IS articulate. What he is actually saying may be banal, but he shows poise and good speaking skills when putting it across. There are also not qualities necessarily associated with right-wing youth.
And conservatives do like a Wunderkind, don't they? They had that college kid a few years back, who also write a short tract on the glories of conservatism--I can't remember his name, but his first name was Biblical. And there's William F Buckley jr, too.
It makes a nice break from Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, I'll give them that.
Once during the time I spent in Uganda nine years ago - I had the opportunity to watch President Yoweri Museveni stand in front of a chalkboard and lecture a gathered village on everything from global economics to anthropology to the proper time to bring in their crops - something that he was always doing as he travelled the country. And he made the point at that time that because Uganda was a tropical, agriculturally rich country the children didn't have the same incentive to work or to at times even get dressed. I was a little taken aback but nobody said anything because he was the President. His wife is very born again and he's a little old school. Later on during a rally back in the capital Kampala I also saw him send soldiers into a crowd of protesting University students, knock them down and then drag them off to awaiting police vehicles. Nobody really said anything about that either.
I haven't watched this kid's speech, and I'm reluctant to. This feels way too much like tipsy parents making their son perform in front of their cocktail party guests. I have a feeling it's vaguely embarrassing.
At a time when it's obvious the GOP has no clear leader, no definite direction, and no solutions, I find the idea of thrusting a tween forward to represent the future as ironically appropriate. Four years, in childhood and in politics, is a long ass time. And chances are neither Johnathan nor the GOP will be anywhere close to where they thought they'd end up.
"Challenge him, and make sure he understands that conservative ideology isn't so rudimentary that a 14-year old could master it."
This made me chuckle... you do realize he was speaking at CPAC, don't you? It's not exactly the hotbed of conservative intellectualism... it's just a place for folks to throw around hot-button cliched phrases and be showered with jubilant praise. This kid might as well went up there and juggled... he's a performer; does anyone really take him as a vanguard of thought?
@TNC
Seriously, what passes for conservative ideology today can easily be mastered by a 14 year old. It's a joke. William F Buckley's these folk aren't.
Karen,
I think you are referring to Ben Shapiro. He was a 16-17 year old kid who had a column on Townhall and the Daily Bruin (UCLA's student newspaper). He has, sort of, fallen out of favor because, although he is still conservative, he just is not a kid anymore. Therefore, the novelty has worn off.
Otherwise, I disagree with you. Although not from a rural area, Cohn is actually from the sprawlburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. The kid actually is a Christian, and is homeschooled. His mother is a speech and drama teacher, and I believe he has some acting experience. I believe this is all in the NYTimes article posted above by nina s.
One more thing. I don't know if I am allowed to do this. But, a commenter on Matt Yglesias' blogpost on this same subject nailed how I feel about this issue perfectly. So, with respect to Adam, I am going to copy and paste his post:
"In defense of his homeschooling parents, the article does not suggest that they are responsible for his political direction: indeed, they seem sort of nonplussed about politics in general.
In the narrative I’ve constructed for this kid in my head, I kind of suspect that he thinks his parents are dull and is looking for a peer group to belong to, but instead of learning to write computer viruses or playing soccer he’s being very sophisticated and efficient about it.
He’s found a group that a) enables him to believe that he is as smart and mature as he thinks he is, and b) doesn’t really require him to do anything, because they supply all of his opinions for him.
It’s the best of both worlds: he gets to think of himself as more grown-up and accomplished than other people his age, just by showing up.
Before people say I’m picking on the kid, I feel I should say that I was also homeschooled as a child and, in my high-school years, exhibited similar political tendencies and ideas; mostly what I feel for him is sadness."
Great Post. One of your best. I'm a regular reader but I don't usually comment here. Like many I've been trying to define why I was so bothered by this story. Finding out that he is a child actor doesn't surprise me and the comparison to pageant kids, etc is quite appropriate. It is sad to see his parents putting their child out there in the hard, ugly world of politics for what? To live vicariously through their son when they should be protecting him and letting him be a kid? I think the Cons were hoping that the Libs would go after this kid so they could demonize and distract. For the most part that hasn't happened which is good for everyone.
This was a very kind and balanced post. The kid is somewhat gifted, as well as being smug and annoying. Of course, life has a way of knocking some of that smugness out of us as we wind our way down the road. I am always amazed that no one shot me, when I look back on the things that I said and thought....In fact, I'm a little amazed that more folks don't want to shoot me now.
I, too, used to sneer at homeschoolers until I actually met some of the kids. The ones I have met were very impressive.
His parents, especially his father, come across as dismayed and little exasperated by the whole thing.
Sounds like the typical parent of a 14-year-old boy!
That post was spot on.
AliHajiSheik,
You say that as if the alternatives to homeschooling were not more about indoctrination than education. I mean, the median public school might be less indoctrinaire than the median homeschooler, but talk about a tallest pygmy.
One idea that I haven't seen in the comments is the appeal of having a child prodigy in the party. Who's more brilliant than a child prodigy, right? Like Bobby Fischer, they can see things that us slower, normal adults cannot see. And when the child prodigy is a Republican and can articulate your platform, it just goes to show that the real smart folks are on your side.
Not true, really, but I think that's part of the subtext.
I kind of disagree with you on this because I don't think that reading more and reflecting more will necessarily make you a liberal.
TNC said "you'd risk turning him into liberal."
Not "necessarily." The point, I think, is that once you send a kid on an intellectual journey, you can't guarantee that he's going to agree with you when he returns.
"If you're a conservative and you care about this kid, you don't give him a public forum. You give him your card, and you take his e-mails. You give him a list of books that he needs to read. Then when you see him, you quiz him on those books. You tell him that you're glad he showed the initiative to write and publish himself, but his thesis is actually banal. That if he's going to play in the big leagues, he should expect to get hit and prepare himself thusly. You warn him away from sideshows, and teach him to pride hearing over being heard. You teach him that these are his weapons and his shield in the great war of ideas.
Of course if you did all that, you'd risk turning him into liberal."
You've got to be kidding me.
If I'm that kid's parents, I'm proud of him for showing great interest and passion in a legitimate pursuit.
But instead we get a paternalist lecture from the one who declared, (I'm paraphrasing), "I'm not a conservative because I believe in whatever works."
No, I don't buy it, I don't buy it at all.
They like this kid because he makes them feel like they have a future at a time when even the staunchest of them are secretly worried they don't.
Besides, the young were part of Obama's coalition, a theme in the flavor-of-the-day conservatives we've been seeing.
@Kuros: Despite paternalism's negative connotations, isn't it kind of appropriate to act paternal towards actual, you know, children?
What does it accomplish to put a 14 year-old front and center at CPAC? What's the message it's supposed to send?
Youth? Palin covered women, Steele blacks, Jindal immigrants. They are SO a party that looks like America and the future. People do keep asking where the next generation of the GOP is going to come from.
...That's what a person confident in their ideas does.
If there's one thing that comes across from every conservative who's apologized to Rush lately, it's being uncertain in their ideas.
On the parenting part I pretty much agree with you. Maybe the kid has talent. (Being a prodigy is a curse. Eventually you aren't an amazing pianist/mathematician/preacher given your age and are just another 20- or 30-ish pianist/mathematician/preacher.) But it is really weird to put him out there (with Bristol?) as the face of Republican youth.
If I'm that kid's parents, I'm proud of him for showing great interest and passion in a legitimate pursuit.
I'm sure there are some folks here who would argue that the current iteration of conservatism is less than legitmate, but I see what you're saying. Encourage your kid to reach for the stars.
At the same time, it's possible to be proud of your child without allowing him to be paraded like a conservative Britney Spears. When I was a kid, I watched Tony Brown's Journal, Face the Nation and Meet the Press with my dad every Sunday. My political knowledge was in no way close to this kid's, but my 12 year old political identity was a hell of a lot different than my 18 year old political identity--and Joonathan's mind is going to absorb a huge amount of information before his identity is solidified. I agree with TNC: let the kid learn and explore without making him someone else's mouthpiece. He's a child--and children grow and change.
I wouldn't let my 13 year old daughter near something in a public forum, but then again, it is easy for me to say that because she is a normal teen who doesn't seem to want that type of thing. If she had some gift for whatever, then it becomes complex. I imagine every parent has dreams of their children become the next genius or Tiger Woods, but if you push, the fear is that you might raise the next Todd Marinovich.
@ Kuros: I didn't read TNC's argument as precluding such pride. What makes you think it does so?
@Kuros: I agree with DB Cooper, the risk of exposing a child to a lot of ideas other than your own is that they will come to disagree with your ideas. Not that everyone will default into the liberal state.
On home schooling: When my daughter was little and we hit a Boston museum at least once a week, usually twice, I discovered that I could pick out homeschoolers. They were calm, engaged, gaining something from the exhibit. Siblings interacted like classmates. It was impressive. When they discuss homeschooling on the radio the homeschoolers who call in are always impressively self-possessed and can make their point in an adult fashion. (Worst case they are adjacent to a caller who babbles along the lines of "Like, I dunno, but is like it a good idea, you know? Like maybe it is, but I dunno, maybe it like isn't?") So while the idea of homeschooling to give them an inadequate science education worries me, most of the actual results, rather than anecdotal, that I've seen suggest it can be a good thing. (The Christian homeschooling movement is recent, anyhow; it used to be a very liberal hippie thing. And now it's the Christianists who are most visible; if parents work in areas where the schooling would just be inadequate, like missionaries or archaeologists or doctors in the same place, they would homeschool.)
He might also be reminded of Churchill's aphorism:
"If you are not liberal in your youth, you have no heart, if you are not conservative in your old age, you have no brain."
Not entirely sure I buy it, but Churchill is one of their intellectual mentors, not so much mine.
I dunno. I was impressed. I was simultaneously a little embarassed for him as he was doing his dorky but spot-on imitation of much older and more educated pundits. But despite the dose of boilerplate and earnest naivete in his speech, he also seems to have grasped that the central questions that conservatives have to ask themselves right now is, 'what does it mean to be a conservative today?' This is what I found impressive - even if you don't know the answer, and even if you're heading in the wrong direction while looking for it, asking the right question is the beginning of knowledge and understanding.
My mom, who cares nothing for politics but loves precocious children, adored this video, but wisely expressed the same doubts that his parents likely hold about someone so young getting into the political game. She brings with her from the old country the not unreasonable mental association between politics and thuggishness or sectarian, trouble-attracting discord and strife.
Of course if you did all that, you'd risk turning him into liberal.
Nice bit of condescension there, TNC. I realize that you have an out since you used the word "risk," but c'mon.
That said, the kid was exceptionally annoying and his parents probably need a smack to the back of the head.
Excellent post TNC. I have a brother-in-law in his mid twenties struggling to find himself a mentor since his dad (my father-in-law) seems to be oblivious. I have a good rapport with the guy and he is interested in everything about life other than getting a "real job" and moving out of his parents house or attending college full time.
Shades of my own past there.
Gonna go buy some books for the man and start emailing him before he falls off the grid.
BTW, if it doesn't work I'm holding you responsible. LOL ;)
I feel very sorry for this kid. He is on a terrible path. He is heading for a fall. If fate is kind the fall happens when he realizes how foolish rush and co. are. If not he stands a good chance of being a second rate radio personality that makes the world that much more bitter angry and hateful with each work day.
I really feel bad for children who parents shove their religion into with such force. Poor Jonathon thought it would be a good idea to be a christian missionary in arabic speaking countries.
Joshua Lyle, you may be right. I'm thinking less about education through curriculum and teacher perspective than the education you receive by interacting with peers in a group setting. I am suspicious of parents who don't want their children to learn in a group setting, whether it be a public school or a group of gifted or religious students.
I think you're giving "conservatives" too much credit. Since when does this crop of conservatives care about fostering ideas and creating intellectuals?
Seems pretty clear to me they want to trot him out as proof that the conservative movement has a future. Ironically, the sheer gimmickry of it makes the opposite point. This kid's a token just like Steele is a token.
I've have been toiling to find the proper way to articulate this very argument. Lo and behold! You do it perfectly! Thanx for this posting. I would like to link this to my blog if you don't mind.
AliHajiSheik,
I'd agree with that; in my evaluation, most wise decisions to homeschool children are oriented towards putting them into a group of peers, which they may not get in conventional American public education.
@FightingWords
No, definitely NOT Ben Shapiro. Because he is clearly not the brightest candle in the menorah. Now, this was some guy with one of those Jedediah/Zachariah/Obadiah-type names, who wrote a tract that was tearing up the conservative booklists about 5 or 6 years ago.
And while you are absolutely welcome to disagree with me (!), I think you may have misunderstood my point. You write "Although not from a rural area, Cohn is actually from the sprawlburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. The kid actually is a Christian, and is homeschooled." I wasn't saying that the kid wasn't a Christian or that he was particularly urban; just that his shtick was articulate political commentary, not half-hysterical exaltations of Jesus and chastity, the way so many right-wing youth come across. YMMV, of course; that was just my take on the kid.
@Karen,
Got it. I just misunderstood your previous post.
The only other ones that I know are Ben Ferguson or Kyle Williams. Of course, they don't have those Biblical names that you point out. But it is funny because all of these conservative pundits for the tween set seem to have the exact same background.
"Of course if you did all that, you'd risk turning him into a liberal." TNC
TR: So long as the corollary is that if a liberal parent did this they'd risk turning the kid into a conservative, or libertarian, the statement is acceptable. (I certainly know parents who have their kid, younger than 14, spouting off about the Republicans and the conservative)
I don't know how I feel here. I do know I dislike kids doing politics. However this is not because I think they'll automatically be bad at it or because it implies it's childish. Although it's rare there are fourteen-year-olds who are well-read people with fairly good, if mostly theoretical, views on politics. William Cullen Bryant wrote political satire when he was thirteen and John Stuart Mill was credible on political matters at about the same age.
I think it's more the emotional stuff, which in fairness you also indicate, that makes me against it. Let's say a fourteen-year-old conservative kid has ideas just as well-formed as any scholar at the Claremont Institute or Heritage Foundation. Well how will they react if someone bashes them the way most here would bash a conservative or Republican? Same goes for liberals. Mill's hypereducation left him emotionally exhausted for a time. Politics just seems too weighty, and stressful, to place on kids that young. (Not saying this kid is a prodigy, just that if he is/were...) I had serious political discussions at fourteen, but they'd sometimes end with me bawling when someone would say we should kill all the Arabs or whatever. (In fairness this was effective and an opinion like that maybe justifies an extreme reaction. Still it was unpleasant for all concerned and I can't imagine what it'd have been like if it was done in public)
@Karen,
I think you're thinking of Jedediah Purdy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Purdy
@ Padge
It is not appropriate for parents to act paternalist in terms of ideology once children pass the age of reason; I'd argue that neither is it possible, effective, or desirable. But the point here is that this kid has chosen this passion itself, it wasn't foisted upon him. Frankly, I have to read TNC's criticism of the parents as partisan-motivated. Apologies to TNC if he thinks that's ungenerous. But I think its ungenerous to the parents of this teen to imply that he might seek a wider range of ideas.
@ Deborah
Do we have any indication that the parents have not exposed him to a wide range of ideas? Again, he's 14, old enough to have come to his opinions on his own. One assumption that I do think is warranted: this kid wasn't forced to read the material, he obviously had the initiative to do so on his own.
TNC,
Have to agree with you completely. Further, I would point out, your political views are less than useless until you've lived a little, paid taxes, been in a real relationship or two, seen the world and made a lot of observations that they don't tell you on tv or even in books. When you repeat what some jackass told you as your own opinion, you're not contemplating the world as it is. Reality has a tendency to come along and smack you across the face - and half the time you deserve it. This kid may or may not end up a good writer/philosopher or tv hack, but regardless, he doesn't know a damn thing about the world that he's figured out for himself. If I were a "conservative" (whatever that term means these days) I'd be embarrassed for the publicity this kid's gotten - but not half as much by how my 'leaders' had carried the standard for the last decade plus.
It was great post
He still needs a wedgie!
"So long as the corollary is that if a liberal parent did this they'd risk turning the kid into a conservative, or libertarian, the statement is acceptable. (I certainly know parents who have their kid, younger than 14, spouting off about the Republicans and the conservative)"
It most certainly is, and I'd same the same if the situation was flipped.
My 14-year old son was fond of extreme rightwing opinions. I don't know where he got them, maybe from school. I am teaching him to actually learn something before speaking and not make a fool of himself. I think I'm making progress.
I very much liked your post today and couldn't agree more. I was utterly annoyed watching this kid and had to turn him off after about 45 seconds into the clip.
But to return to my central point, you were doing so well until you undermined your own argument in the final paragraph. I'll be generous and assume you didn't really mean that Liberals are just Conservatives with a good education. But you should be more careful than to say something like that (or even imply it). Perhaps it is the euphoria of the end of the Bush era, when the Republicans are at the nadir of their fortunes, and of Obama's ascendancy and the Democrats moment. That's all fair enough but please, let us be careful not to make childish statements.
"Do we have any indication that the parents have not exposed him to a wide range of ideas?" K
TR: Good question. I do have to say though that, in my experience, homeschooling is often about wanting to shelter the child from something. Sometimes it's a legitimate, or at least understandable, fear of violence in the local schools. (Or drugs) Other times it is about politics or religion. That can go either way. I read somewhere about a famous surfer-type who homeschooled his kids so they'd get his surfing/New-Agey mostly Left-wing worldview.
Granted there are exceptions. I saw something about parents of Tourette's kids, at one time anyway, homeschooling because regular schools wouldn't accomodate the disorder. I was not homeschooled as such, but much of my elementary schooling was at home because I had a good deal of bone fractures in my youth some severe enough I couldn't really go to class. In certain cases gifted children are homeschooled because they are deemed a disruption to class. (Sounds weird, but some teachers dislike a kid who is "too smar"t or finishes his/her work too fast and they make their displeasure known)
I'm not precisely against homeschooling, but I'm not precisely for it either.
I teach gifted students in AP and Honors history classes. When I saw this kid the first thing that popped into my head was "Asperger's!" Asperger's Syndrome kids are intelligent, have high verbal skills, and often focus on one subject relentlessly. They'll spend hours telling you all about it if you let them.
Granted Jonathan seems to have better social skills than many Asperger's kids, but his interactions seem to have been limited: Christian theater groups, other home schooled kids, etc. The NYT piece says his parents started homeschooling him in the 6th grade. I wonder if his elementary teachers were reporting some issues that could have led to an Asperger's diagnosis, and the parents didn't want to hear it?
He seems exceptionally sheltered, even by homeschooling standards. He'll probably have a breakdown whenever he emerges from his parents' cocoon.
It is similar in my mind, to arming children with weapons as some groups do in Africa or Asia. You can give them a gun, point them in a direction, get them to do heinous things and they will only much later begin to understand what they have done - or hopefully in this case said. It is the lack of reflection and ease of control that these groups seek in creating child soldiers. I think it is no different in this case as well.
@Andrew:
Jedediah Purdy! That's IT! Thanks--this was driving me crazy.
Not as young, of course, as Master Krohn, when he first made his mark, but I do recall his marketing (not by him, I hasten to clarify, but on his behalf) was very much "Young men his age are usually frivolous and liberal, but he is conservative and thoughtful."
Thanks!
Oh, and @Fighting Words: glad to see we've reached resolution!
Excellent post. Specifically, this right here's damned quotable.
"I had people around me who valued reading, listening and life experience over talking, writing and publishing."
"Of course if you did all that, you'd risk turning him into liberal."
Great post up until that sentence.
I don't think that TNC is arguing educated=liberal and ignorant=conservative. Only that if you challenge his certitude rather than enabling it, he might end up shifting his position. And the same would hold true if he were a liberal being forced to either up his game or drop it.
Great post. I couldn't help thinking while reading it that your son is in excellent hands.
Man, what a smug, annoying little snit. And that's just in the first 10 seconds. The rest (unsurprisingly) continued in that same tiresome line. A wedgie, at least, is long overdue.
I mean yes, today's conservative "principles" are so simple that a 14-year old can master them, obviously, but seeing that actually displayed is gag-inducing.
Wunderkind, you say? No, I don't think so. A real wunderkind is not so thoroughly embarrassing at displaying whatever it is they're so brilliant at as young Master Krohn here (playing a virtuoso violin, blowing away everyone else at the Science Fair and getting into Caltech early, etc.).
I believe just about every junior and senior high school of any size has at least a few kids just like this. They're the ones doing the oh-so-clever "Morning Crew"-style PA announcements, who are trotted out at pep rallies in the gym, who cringeingly over-act in the school play, and so on. I know my inner-city Cleveland public high school of a generation (or two) ago had them (though I've long forgotten who they were) and my daughter's and son's high school had a veritable surfeit of them, making their graduation ceremonies even more tedious than the norm (though that's probably just a feature of living in Snotsdale, AZ).
And Republicans trotting him out in a setting like CPAC to share the stage, as it were, with Limbaugh and Coulter and all the lesser lights of the thoroughly disgraced and just plain crazy horror show that is modern movement conservatism? Shameless exploitation of the most simple-minded kind (they are conservatives, of course).
To believe otherwise is to pretend that Republican operatives at all levels are something different from what they've shown themselves to be over and over again lo these may years.
Wait, really? I think you're knee-jerking here, Ta-Nehisi. Jump on CPAC for allowing such a neophyte into their midst at their big annual gala, sure, but how do you know that his backers aren't doing all those things you mention, aren't nurturing him the right way?
What do you know about him? What do you know of his world view, of his "arrogance"? He seemed to me a confident, polished son of a bitch with a good head on his shoulders. In interviews he seems well-adjusted, rather than socially inept, and the stance of his parents seems a reasonable combination of wariness, head-scratching and support.
CPAC is in disarray, but that doesn't mean we have to throw the kid in with that lot. Jonathan might well be in over his head, and opening his mouth more than his ears at an age at which this is particularly risky, but without more information it's impossible to know whether his handlers are mishandling him. He's not 7 or 11, he's 14. If he's got good people around him -- a big if, I'll admit -- I say let him go, let him be Doogie if that's what he wants to be, and let him fail, too, if that's what he needs. Nothing would be more instructive, for him or his fellow conservatives.
Three words:
ORGAN GRINDER MONKEY
That's what I call children whose parents only give them positive reinforcement or attention when they perform for other adults.
They tend to grow up to become awkward in the spotlight and even just socially. Al Gore and John Kerry always struck me as people who went through this as kids. I see the youngest Palin daughter as this being treated like this too. And plenty of children of non-famous parents. They are used by their narcissistic parents as props and it's a shame.
Al and John seem to have come out of it ok despite their awkwardness so maybe there's hope for the little organ grinder monkey children out there.
Deleted.
This boy looks like he was diapered in chain mail. I am hoping that he gets corrupted by some insatiable 14 year old who gets him high, screws his brains out and cleanses his wretched, anal soul. Youth is wasted on the young, and so is middle age.