I finally got around to reading the Sunday New York Times piece on Jonathan Krohn, the 14 year old who spoke at CPAC. The kid sounds impressive; I wouldn’t have chosen Bill Bennett as a role model, but kudos to Jonathan for making the connection.
The whole piece is worth reading, but the last section had me in tears of laughter.
Jonathan also sees room for improvement: “I have good voice inflection, that’s why I’m good on radio,” he said “But on TV, I look too big because I move my hands around a lot.”
He still has the zeal of a missionary. His voice rising to a wobbly squeak, he grabs any opening to press the cause. “Barack Obama is the most left-wing president in my lifetime,” he said.
Ahem.
laurel says
And he wants to get back to the good old days of just civil unions for gays too, i bet.
marcus-graly says
I was born in 1982. I will be disappointed if Obama is right of Clinton.
tblade says
Obama’s not the most left-wing president of his lifetime, Obama is the third-most conservative president of his lifetime.
tblade says
It reminds me of those charasmatic 10,12-year-olds who become ordained evangelical preachers. Jesus Camp, anyone?
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p>To steal a line, what does it say about conservative punditry that a 14-year-old can do the job just as effectively and eruditely as anyone else? I wish they offered conservative punditry in my high school in place of wood shop – that would have been vocational training with a far more employable and lucrative outcome.
kbusch says
One could say that the tragedy of liberalism is that it is too complicated for 14 year olds to give a good account of it.
christopher says
Public policy is complicated. Some of us actually want nuance that maybe most 14-year-olds wouldn’t understand. I think it’s a tragedy of conservatism that their ideas are so simplistic that an early teen CAN understand them. Given the choice between soundbites and nuance, I’ll take nuance any day.
kbusch says
Agreed: public policy is complicated.
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p>You don’t get to make public policy unless you win elections.
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p>You don’t win elections unless your message is easy to grasp.
laurel says
Sounds more like mindless regurgitation to me.
lightiris says
of his party. We all know how that ended.