Any organization that places a fourteen-year-old in a position of influence or leadership is either a monarchy, a junior high drama production, or an island where the fat kid gets hit in the head with a rock and dies.

And that’s the current GOP: Lord of the Flies (Special Going Galt Edition) and without a winning Presidential ticket not featuring a Bush or Nixon since Herbert Hoover won.

He’ll lose his virginity to himself and implode because of the scandal.

His balls will drop, and he’ll discover hedonism and liberalism about the moment he discovers the opposite sex.

Or the same sex.  Anyone THAT tightly buttoned…

OMG.

I’m afraid I’ve lost track of whoever Ben Shapiro may have been. Probably that’s a brain self-defense, conserving what few neurons I have left for more interesting things like geographic gnomonic projections and other Google searches I’d rather do.

[OK—curiosity and academic diligence eventually got the better of me; now I know more than I wanted to. Sigh. As far as the first page of Google links I found indicates, the SOB hasn’t “flamed out” yet, though I imagine he is not getting the attention he once did.]

As for this kid—well, we can’t really judge him as a person until he has a chance to actually become an accountable adult. I know a thing or two about parroting one’s parents so enthusiastically it embarrasses even them; one gets over it when one has an actual life to live of one’s own. Or not; the point is we have to wait 6-10 years. That will be the better part of a decade of his being annoying, obtuse, and trollish.

So unlike me, he’s going to spend a lot of those years basking in mass approval (and still more massive scorn) and so realistically the clock on his responsible adulthood will start all the sooner, and I expect him to be locked in this dead-end position of his for the rest of his life. Unless his flameout is truly spectacular.

At least he won’t be voting yet in 2012.

I’m awful glad in retrospect I wasn’t eligible to vote yet in 1982; by 1984 I had already picked up a different perspective than the one I left high school and family home with, so all the votes I actually cast—and I never missed one I was legally entitled to vote in since then—I am pretty proud of still. That wouldn’t be the case if I had been entitled to vote while still living under my parents’ roof.

I don’t think they cynically “brainwashed” me any more than I think Krohn is a victim. They honestly shared their worldview with me, the one they had developed themselves; I just picked up the ball and ran with it. People do have a way of adapting their thinking to their interests given the environment they are living in. Kids with no life experience can latch on to and make a whole deep, wide (if flimsy) world-view out of whatever is lying around, and in a reactionary household, there will be a lot of framing lying around that naturally becomes the lens one views all other evidence through. If anything the article seems to give clues that when the kid holds a mirror up to what his parents have been giving him in the way of guidance, at least one of them doesn’t much like his own reflection.

But still—damn, this is embarrassing stuff…

Hey, let’s look at it from the happy point of view.  The kid is having the time of his life, adults are stopping dead to listen to him, and so on.  Let him enjoy it and we stay away from personal attacks, or mockery aimed at him.

The fact that he’s wrong on policy?  Fine.  We can argue policy, to a certain extent.  We mock the adults around him who look for inspiration from a pubescent teen.  (They’re mocking Democrats from drawing inspiration from Obama and they’re listening to a nostrum-spouting junior high student?)

What’s disturbing about this is that the kid serves the same function for the GOP as villagers pushed out ahead of an army: the objective is to have somebody innocent either draw or prevent fire.  That’s pretty low on their part.

So…the Republican Party in 2008 is looking at the following for direction and leadership:
    *  A privileged, mostly sheltered from life adolescent
    *  A former beauty pageant contestant and future failed governor
    *  A thrice-divorced, misogynistic, convicted felon and drug abuser
    *  A lying, clueless former exorcist and future failed governor

What was it that Peggy “Reagan was my secret prom date” Noonan said? “Savor…savor…”

Hey, let’s look at it from the happy point of view.  The kid is having the time of his life, adults are stopping dead to listen to him, and so on.  Let him enjoy it and we stay away from personal attacks, or mockery aimed at him.

True - I’m just feeling really really aggro with smug stupid conservatives at the moment.  My comment above was mean-minded.

Move over Forrest Gump ... now we have something that is really pathetic.  Not the kid himself, but the people so desperate that they turn to a child for leadership.  Seems the GOP is so scandal-ridden that they are doing what distressed stone-age peoples do when faced with modern world and the sexuality that comes with it: marry off their kids earlier and earlier.  Seems that this is a form of such thinking - get them before they can sin.

I don’t think I’d want my wacky 13 year old having this sort of credibility - he’d die of embarrassment when he was 20 and still had to answer for things he had said before he got a world. That isn’t fair to him, really.

p.s. to Auguste - I prefer the term “impotentate” for such uses.

I see.

Attacking an ambitious kid for finding an audience who respects and validates his beliefs.  That’s awesome.

I guess that liberals have no room for complaint, then, when anyone on the right said anything negative or hostile about Graeme Frost.

Fair is fair, after all.

-A

Anyone THAT tightly buttoned…

Nuttin’ more than a southern baptist.

The (presumibly-not-Virgin) Ben Shapiro has married and was working for a law firm until SOMETHING HAPPENED and now he has his own firm that works on ‘media matters’.

Attacking an ambitious kid for finding an audience who respects and validates his beliefs.  That’s awesome.

Who is attacking a kid here, analjackwit? I don’t see anything direct here at all - the kid is who he is ... A KID.  We are merely pointing fun at the foolish desperation of those who see him as their own Annakin.

Attacking adolescents on their perceived lack of fuckability or other “flaws” is Rush Limburger’s act.

Seeker - my main issue isn’t the kid himself, it’s the fact that the conservative machine is already worshiping at his feet and trying to build him up into the same sort of asshole they’re already fantastic at producing. 

I want a second party in this country advancing an alternative ideology on coherent grounds; I’m sick of the Dickface Brigade producing a vast field of dickfaces who want to run the country through massive dickfacery.

Hold on! Let’s not get all excited about some teenage mutant ninja Limbaugh. Remember how young Jonathan became a raving Conservative:  Jonathan said he became a political enthusiast at 8, after hearing about a Democratic filibuster on judicial nominations. “I thought, ‘Who goes to work saying, ‘I’m going to filibuster today?’ ” he said.

Mr. Krohn, looking bleary-eyed by recent events, muttered, “And now he can filibuster with the best of them.”

Jonathan would wake up at 6 a.m. to listen to Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” show and became riveted by politics and American history. Soon, Mr. Bennett, whom Jonathan now describes as, “my mentor and very good friend,” was taking Jonathan’s calls. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/fashion/08conserve.html?8dpc

That was yesterday’s news, today we read: The Republicans’ rush to threaten filibusters in the absence of actual nominees is not only at odds with their previous views on the subject, but shows a lack of respect for the confirmation process.

The Republicans are trying to use intimidation to hold onto the one branch of government where they still hold sway. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/opinion/09mon1.html

So I’m expecting that it won’t be long, or at least until his mom buys him today’s NYTimes, that he’ll be breaking away from his Mentor, Dollar Bill, and joining the ranks of the midget DFH blogger socialists. Lucky us.

Attacking an ambitious kid for finding an audience who respects and validates his beliefs.  That’s awesome.

I guess that liberals have no room for complaint, then, when anyone on the right said anything negative or hostile about Graeme Frost.

Who attacked the kid? 

Did I look into his parents’ voting records?  Their income?  Their countertops? 

This is the major problem with your arguments, Atanarjuat.  They’re dumb.  And inaccurate.

You can see why they like him so much, right?  Extrapolating down from the level of Obama support in the age brackets between 18 and 50, he may be all they’ve got.

If they want to make themselves the party of Urkel, fine. Bring him on.

At least he is interested in political issues and engaged. If he thinks seriously enough about why he holds the policy views he does, he may change his mind.

“Or the same sex.  Anyone THAT tightly buttoned…”

Fair enough that rigid gender norms in the USA can mess a lot of people up. If I had to choose something I miss the least about living there, though, the gay-baiting and general prurience as a consequence of said norms is high on the list.

Obama is the most left-wing President in his life!  That was great!

This home-schooled, self-proclaimed “Jewish Christian” taught me something.  I now understand what conservatives mean by “Judeo-Christian”—Baptists!  “Judeo-Christians” are Baptists who are happy to get presents when they turn 13.

He was on Fox & Friends.  He was the smartest person in the room, no doubt.

Oh, man.  Is this kid in trouble.

Sure, it’s easy to adopt and exaggerate your parents’ beliefs when you’re that age.  And yes, many people change their minds once they set out and get a life of their own (hell, how many “I was anti-choice/a fundy/a Nice Guy” stories do we read on this blog alone?).

But this kid is going to spend his teenage years not just immersed in wingnut culture, but as one of its public faces.  One of three things is going to happen to him: 1) He’s going to end up a Limbaugh-level extremist because that’s all he knows, and he truly believes it; 2) He’s going to end up a Limbaugh-level extremist because he has doubts and must compensate for them (sure he said things at 13 that embarrass him at 20, but he dare not admit it.  In the wingnut Cult of Manly Manhood, admitting error is Weakness, which is the worst thing in the world); 3) He’s going to flame out because he can’t take the pressure and that’s the only way out for him.

I’d love someone to do a retrospective on Kiddie Konservatives like Ben Shapiro and where they ended up.

Do Republicans have anything left other than their pathological me-too-ism?  Democrats have a powerful woman running for the nomination, so they have to put a woman as their VP candidate.  Democrats have a popular black man as President, so they have to have a black man run their party.  Democrats have a 14-year-old kid do a commercial for the S-CHIP funding that meant his parents didn’t have to sell everything they own after he and his sister were in a terrible accident, so now Republicans have done a nationwide search to find their own little kid to parade in front of the cameras.

Obnoxious as he is, count me among those who feel more sorry for him than anything else.  Not many people will have the stupid things they say when they’re 14 available on YouTube for the next 50 years.

Ahem.  This is from the post at the top, in the very first sentence:

“this kid is a rising viceroy of stupid.”

Nobody attacked the kid in question at all.  “Stupid” is just a compliment (if you squint hard enough, that is).

Oh, please.

There’s no one-to-one comparison here with countertops and the like.  A kid on the left was attacked by the right, and that’s just downright mean.  A kid on the right is attacked by the left, and that’s absolutely defensible.

Don’t get excited, folks.  I expected a double standard, and liberals specialize in this.  Perhaps I just wanted to be disappointed, for once.  Oh, well, I’ll keep hoping.

-A

On the one hand, I’d pay blood to know what happened at Ben Shapiro’s law firm that resulted in his departure.  On the other hand, I think that learning it might result in a fatal schadenfreude overdose.

As for young Mr. Krohn; 14 year olds are pretty smart in some ways, but I was a very sophisticated 14 year old, and I was still an idiot.  I’d like to give the kid a chance to grow up.  But Republicans have already started trying to take that away.  And here we get to the truth; I feel sorry for Ben Shapiro.  ‘a firm working on ‘media matters’’ is code for wingnut welfare, and I pity him that this is the path he was set on before he was wise enough to know better.

Also, seriously, is the Republican party just nothing but gimmicks now?  Count me with Mnemosyne in this; Palin, Steele, Jindal, Krohn… the list goes on.

Finally, there is no parallel between this post and the teapot tempest that was Graeme Frost’s experience.  Is Johnathan Krohn dominating the left’s blogosphere?  No.  Are lefty bloggers peeking in his windows to find out that his family secretly watches PBS?  No.

Oh, lord: I’m feeding the troll. And can the moderators please consider removing this troll? He is egregiously stupid and unentertaining even for his ilk.

“Rising viceroy of stupid”: what’s being mocked here is not so much the kid but the stupid he espouses and which is so desperate for new blood that it thinks a 14yo is a great spokesmodel. The kid on the “left” was attacked because he needed and received health care: the kid on the right is being mocked because he, in his youthful exuberance and naïveté advocates a bankrupt and discredited political philosophy mainly based on masculine anxiety and shortsighted selfishness.

“this kid is a rising viceroy of stupid.”

Nobody attacked the kid in question at all.  “Stupid” is just a compliment (if you squint hard enough, that is).

Well, isn’t one of the core philosophies of modern American conservatism contempt for “intellectualism” and science-based reasoning over faith, not to mention never questioning authority? Again, a 14 year old is seen as a rising leader in a party that’s made ignorance and stupidity and petty churlishness the reason for being, so yeah, a liberal calling someone a “rising viecroy of stupid” is a compliment. Jessee just forgot to capitalize everything.

Finally, there is no parallel between this post and the teapot tempest that was Graeme Frost’s experience.  Is Johnathan Krohn dominating the left’s blogosphere?  No.  Are lefty bloggers peeking in his windows to find out that his family secretly watches PBS?  No.

Are Lefties posting his home address online?  No.

And I gave Jesse an extra “e”, sorry. Besides, there’s no way of actually complimenting this kid, since modern American conservatives are stuck on “whiny victim” these days. Seriously, had Jesse said something about how wonderful it was to get 14 year olds away from Spring baseball and fishing and building forts and playing, and instead putting Young Timmy in a room with a bunch of miserable, greedy, hatemongering old cowards, you’d still be screaming how unfair and mean it was, ya big whiner.

Let’s not forget a significant other difference here:
* Young Jonathan Krohn got involved in politics because it’s his youthful passion and because he seeks to advance his own political views.  Nothing wrong with that, and good for him.
* Young Graeme Frost got involved in politics so that the health care program which helped him and his sister survive brain injuries wouldn’t be cancelled. 

Krohn wishes to the government to follow ideologies and policies he believes in.  Frost wanted the government not cancel a program that saved children’s lives, including his own.  Neither child deserves to be savaged but to treat their situations as exactly the same is facile at best.

And, as NBarnes notes, there is a world of difference between a few liberal blogs saying, in effect, “this kid is saying stupid things and the GOP ought to be embarrassed” on the one hand and a full-blown rightsphere firestorm including personal attacks on the child and his family (including snooping around their house!) on the other that was the Frost case.

What’s disturbing about this is that the kid serves the same function for the GOP as villagers pushed out ahead of an army: the objective is to have somebody innocent either draw or prevent fire.  That’s pretty low on their part.

+1.

I have a hard time blasting off on a kid whose entire worldview is probably dictated by the house he’s living in, as is the case with most 14 year olds.

I blame the adults responsible responsible for filling this kid’s brain with the garbage.  And it’s sad, because the kid does appear to be bright and articulate and capable… but when everyone is telling you that the earth is flat and you’re a 14 year old kid and you’ve never had a chance to hear a rational and thoughtful explanation about why the earth is round, it’s understandable why you would gravitate towards a flat-earth mindset, wrong as it is.

College is gonna totally mindfuck this kid.

I know the kid is courting the attention, but doing a tour of radio talk shows, news programs and speaking at CPAC seems like a lot of pressure for a fourteen year old.  I guess because he’s home schooled his parents don’t have to work his speaking engagements around class time.  It sounds like he’s found a way to channel the teen angst we all went through at that age, but as he grows up and loses some of the angst he may develop entirely different beliefs.  This makes me think of why I wouldn’t let a kid that young get a tattoo - it’s going to be a permanent marker that you might not want to be branded with later in life.  Most of us get to forget all the regrettable things we said and did as junior high students.  It’s sad that this kid won’t get the same luxury.

“And can the moderators please consider removing this troll? He is egregiously stupid and unentertaining even for his ilk.”

...ah, come on!  I’ll feed him and clean up after him, I swear!  Can we keep the troll, can we please?

***

Seriously, -A is just an asshole, at least so far.  We haven’t seen him defend Prop H8 yet, or claim that being an atheist is a crime, or demonstrate a huge undeniable streak of misogyny, or defend rape.  If he does, he deserves to be shitcanned.

As long as he’s not talking trash about the personal lives of our hosts, or promoting fascism(directly), the most harm he does (so far) is waste some bytes.  Meh…

I also wonder who is validating whom here.  Having a kid that age at home, they don’t usually seek validation in this fashion.  If anything, they don’t give what they have to say a second thought, being the center of their own world already.

Put simply, this kid is the GOP mini-me.  The kid gets an adoration and attention fix, sure, but it is the adults who simply go ga-ga over hearing their talking points spewing from his pubescent mouth. 

I hate to think what is going to happen when that string in his back wears out, or he starts playing the tape loop backwards and finds satanic messages.

All the more reason that I have been fairly spartan with letting the cameras and microphones at my eldest, who has his own strong opinions about things and seems to attract cameras like bees to honey.  If he someday becomes famous for whatever, I don’t want this sort of taped history of youthful bombast to dog him into adulthood.

“I know the kid is courting the attention, but doing a tour of radio talk shows, news programs and speaking at CPAC seems like a lot of pressure for a fourteen year old. “

Slackejawea, I can’t speak for other kids but I would have loooooooovvvved this sort of thing had I had the chance for it at 13 or 14.  It doesn’t count as “pressure” if you’re having a wonderful time doing what comes naturally to you.  It’s the intellectual’s version of feeling at home during a key game with thousands of homeside fans watching, and high school and junior high kids do that all the time in the USA.

“Rising viceroy of stupid”: what’s being mocked here is not so much the kid but the stupid he espouses and which is so desperate for new blood that it thinks a 14yo is a great spokesmodel.

That’s an interest bit of apologia, felagund, but saying “this kid is a rising viceroy of stupid” reads precisely as an attack on the kid himself, not just the “stupid he espouses.”

The other pretzel logic-filled contortions above pretty much attempt to divert from the obviousness of such an assertion.

Again, it’s not the 1:1 comparison you liberals are clinging to, but the analogy (you do know what an analogy is, don’t you?):

- Jonathan Krohn is “a rising viceroy of stupid.”—applause-worthy, accurate and not at all dumb.

- Graeme Frost is “the poster child of Democrat child abuse.”—a baseless smear and a partisan attack of an innocent kid.

Uh-huh.

-A

Everytime atanarjuat posts I see the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz going up in flames.

Bill Ayers was quite young, very sheltered and naive, and had strong opinions in his vacant youth rebellion phase.  He put some of these on paper for all to see, and was validated by certain elements of the culture at the time for doing so.

Yet, nearly 40 years later, he becames a villain of not only his own story but of somebody he had coffee with ... all because there was a strong public record of the time when he was “being young and foolish”, as my grandfather was wont to say.

This is an object lesson in why you don’t want to use kids like this.  They freely offer their opinions, sure, and enjoy the proceedings, but there are consent issues here just the same.

Actually, -A, if there’s a viceroy of stupid around here, it’s gotta be you. 

In case anyone has forgotten, 14-year olds are stupid.  Not that they can’t be smart sometimes, and really brilliant others, but their maturity level is not high enough yet.  (I have a 17-year old daughter, and I remember all too well what I was like back then for myself too…although it’s been 34-years or so…)

Who knows how the kid will turn out.  We’ll just have to wait and see…

Oh, ick. This is borderline child abuse.

At least the wingnuts are consistent here - they see no reason not to use a 14 year old boy to validate them so long as “he’s enjoying it”, and they see no reason why a 14 year old girl should get married or have sex with a much older man so long as “she’s enjoying it”.

The future of the young person in question, or their subsequent formation of their own identity, are not a concern in either case.

Sorry, that should have read: “see no reason why a 14-year old girl shouldn’t get married or have sex with a much older man ...”

That’s an interest bit of apologia, felagund, but saying “this kid is a rising viceroy of stupid” reads precisely as an attack on the kid himself, not just the “stupid he espouses.”

You can read it both ways.  I read it as what the kid is being brought up to represent, as did many others including the person who posted it.  People here are more commenting on the “wisdom” of using a 14 year old as a conservative mouthpiece.

Jesse isn’t insulting the kid, he’s insulting conservatives. He’s the viceroy of stupid, because he’s the smartest one in a room of pure idiots. The point is any party that’d turn to someone who hasn’t even left their parent’s house as a voice of anything doesn’t have two sticks to rub together and anyone who’d defend such a party failed out of elementary school because those multiplication tables were too tricksy.

I could almost understand it, if he was talking about youth issues or defending rights in school, but even then, you’d expect to hear from their sponsor. Even the most courageous youth activist would never be talking at a national summit for the party or their cause because they’re a fucking kid.

/give troll enough rope to hang himself

In case anyone has forgotten, 14-year olds are stupid.

And having adults calling 14-year-old kids stupid is a positive sign of that “maturity level” you pointed out, right?

It’s very simple, MikeEss: it’s objectionable for grown people who should know better to go around calling teenagers “stupid.”  Unless, of course, you mean to tell me that all that liberal talk about trying to build a child’s self-esteem and trying to reinforce positive behavior was just that—a lot of talk.

That would be disappointing, but not surprising these days.  Liberals like to say one thing and do another, all for the sake of political expediency and what advantage might be gained in doing so.

And now Jonathan Krohn will find out the hard way that his liberal ideological opponents are anything but consistent.  Liberals will likely ramp up their campaign of derision and hatred because an enthusiastic kid had the gall to speak truth to power at such a young age.

And so it goes.

-A

Also revelatory is the near unanimous idea of unconditional consent by the kid. That a kid can have enough self and world awareness to fully a)develop his own ideas absent familial or social pressures, b) form lasting ideas that will survive high school, c) meaningfully give consent to interact as an adult in the world of adults, d) have the self-awareness to be embarrassed about their actions a mere handful of years later.

I was a very smart and mature kid who did some praise-worthy things and I still have in .doc form evidence that I was a fucking moron with absolutely no awareness of the real world at 14. There are beliefs about major world movements rooted in such ignorance that I’m embarrassed to reread those parts of old stories for fear the stupid would cause my hair to fall out. Heck, I’d even put a minor muzzle on my early college self and through all of that I rejected a lot of the common wisdom and parental lessons I was given and the lessons of other parents. If I hadn’t, I’d have been even more embarrassed in retrospect and it’d probably take even longer to be anyone worth listening to for longer than three minutes.

There is this weird obsession among conservatives of devaluing informed consent both on the informed end and the consent end. I saw it in conservative parents of friends of mine. What matters most isn’t whether their kids have a life of their own, but whether they successfully parrot the talking points of themselves. A kid who makes it as a success without those talking points is as good as dead to them.

I suspect a lot of it comes down to the belief that women and children are the father’s property, not full human beings unto themselves.

And A gives us the case study on what we’re talking about:

Ha ha, you feel into the trap lie-berals, now you’re hypocrites about self-esteem and finding out who you are because you believe the kid should be free to find that out before he’s made to be a grown-up talking head for a party out of ideas. I got you good there. Our property made you look silly. Go Team Republican!

“It’s very simple, MikeEss: it’s objectionable for grown people who should know better to go around calling teenagers “stupid.” Unless, of course, you mean to tell me that all that liberal talk about trying to build a child’s self-esteem and trying to reinforce positive behavior was just that—a lot of talk.”

Well, I agree with the “go around” part, as I would never go to my daughter’s school, back when she and her classmates were ~14, and tell them all they were stupid.  But mainly because it’s just poor manners, and serves no purpose.

But that’s not what I did or anyone else here has done.

However, as an observation about young human beings my statement is generally very accurate, as far as general statements go.  And if you are not able to see the accuracy of my statement, I suspect you are either not very mature yourself, not very observant, or sheltered in the extreme and have had no direct contact with 14-year olds…

Or he’s 14-years old himself. Just saying.

MikeEss, I suspect that in your desperation not to agree with my view that Jonathan Krohn should not be labeled a “rising viceroy of stupid,” you resort to the usual name-calling obfuscation which fools no one.

I know quite a few teenagers, and the last thing that would occur to me is to say “kid, you’re stupid”—even if they are doing something stupid.  In the world adults, it’s rather petty to lord over those who are not yet emotionally or intellectually mature.  This is why adults try to guide and inspire children—not verbally slap them around because it’s somehow good for them.

But please, do continue to defend the “rising viceroy of stupid” put-down vis-a-vis Jonathan Krohn.  I’m sure he’ll eventually come around to see his foolish ways if people call him stupid enough times.

-A

College is gonna totally mindfuck this kid.

Not necessarily - he’ll probably wind up at some place like Regent U. or Patrick Henry College, where he can safely hide from evil, scary things like science and opposing viewpoints for at least another four years.

Gee, if there is anybody who could best passionately represent a tried-and-failed worldview, it is a young teenager.

Cocksure Certainty?  Yep. 
Lack of perspective?  Yep.
Thin veneer of heterosexuality hiding anxious masculinity?  Yep.
Impulsive declarations, backed up by little more than “IS SO!”? Yep.
Scandal-free (if only by default)?  Yep.

I wonder if, in their desperation for validation of their worldview and desire that their worldview have a future, the supposed adults in charge really realize what they are setting this young man up for - or if they care?

Just looks pretty desperate all the way around.  Them GOPers ain’t got no bench.

“In the world adults, it’s rather petty to lord over those who are not yet emotionally or intellectually mature.  This is why adults try to guide and inspire children—not verbally slap them around because it’s somehow good for them.”

...and if you can somehow show that’s what Jesse or anybody else here did, that might be a valid concern.  But you can’t, and it’s a pretty stupid thing to try and claim young Master Krohn has been harmed by somebody making an observation on a blog…

...now if Jesse was spying on him to find out what kind of counter-tops his family has, well that would be different…

Oh, and some of us Liberals don’t buy the whole steaming pantload that is the “self esteem movement” anyway.

I’ve been raising mine to have “self-control”, which means giving them as much knowledge as I can on how to make appropriate life decisions, run their own lives competently, and be in charge of themselves.

There’s also a weird disconnect between to one’s face and behind one’s back. Sure, you wouldn’t want to call a kid stupid to his face, you’d use some tact to pop the ego bubble, but behind kids’ backs, I guarantee every parent talks about how stupid their kid was. It’s the grown-up version of bitching about one’s parents except with the benefit of perspective. And none of those parents, even the ones with honor class bumper stickers and beliefs in the wondrousness of Johnny would ever put him in a position of power over a national party, because that action is a level of stupid far beyond “kids are stupid”.

That’s borderline criminal neglect.

Cerberus, I wouldn’t call his parents stupid over this - there isn’t an easy playbook for these things.  If you have an attention seeker like this - or even just an attention getter like my son - our celebrity society validates letting the cameras snap away.  It is very hard to see a downside in all of this, unless you get burned early or figure out that this is something that has to be managed like all the other boundaries a parent sets up in a child’s life.

True, there is a bad cultural narrative that supports parents “allowing their children opportunities” that only in hind-sight turn out to be bad ideas.

I suppose I have less sympathy because I have real world experience with this sort of suburban fundamentalist parent style where the kids are properties much like homes where you demonstrate your skill as a parent or homemaker by how well you can bend the children to your worldview and values and make them reflect you.

I’m more than a little disturbed by “Thin veneer of heterosexuality hiding anxious masculinity?  Yep. “, Ms. Kate.  Why on earth are we even permitting even the mention of this kid’s sexuality, even by implication, reference or generalization?  Creeeeeeeeeepy.

In case anybody thinks this kid won’t be recognized in the future, guess again.  My son did some PBS promo spots when he was 5 years old. 

When he started middle school, he got asked: “weren’t you that PBS kid?”.

When we were making our way toward boarding a plane in Chicago last year: “weren’t you a PBS kid?”

When my parents’ neighbors on the other side of the country were playing with my kids: “hey - you were a PBS kid”.

Seeker - that’s because “thin veneer of heterosexuality hiding anxious masculinity” is in the JOB DESCRIPTION of a typical 14 year old boy in the United States.

If you had one at home, you’d know that.  If you were a GOP wingnut, it would be an identity feature.

Ms Kate - I saw a commercial a couple of years back for some kind of bed wetting product / therapy / something.

And it had a 10-11 year old kid endorsing it.  “It worked for me!”

There is not enough money in the world

Oh, and that description is every bit as true of kids who are truly heterosexual as it is of kids who are less defined - a cultural thing if there ever was one.  There seems to be a need to be a “guy’s guy” and talk a good line about the females around you, yet anxiety about body changes and social perceptions lurks beneath the bravado.

Yikes:

“Oh, and that description is every bit as true of kids who are truly heterosexual as it is of kids who are less defined” - or resolutely gay.

Seeker - that’s because “thin veneer of heterosexuality hiding anxious masculinity” is in the JOB DESCRIPTION of a typical 14 year old boy in the United States. [...] Oh, and that description is every bit as true of kids who are truly heterosexual as it is of kids who are less defined” - or resolutely gay.

Well, all I can think is that maybe it’s America.  I was a 14 year old teenage boy, once.  For a whole year, if memory serves.  And there wasn’t a “thin veneer of hetrosexuality”, there was het down to the bone.  Some folks are gay, some straight, some bi.  Many are certain from the get-go as to which they are.  To assume that there’s a universal rule are some anxious “masculinity” issues arising out of having a “thin veneer” of het is more than a little bit silly.  There wasn’t any anxious posturing and there was, in my circles of friends and acquaintances both a notable absence of it and freely expressed contempt for guys who expressed “guy’s talk”; it was seen as posturing silliness and mockery inevitably ensured.

Doesn’t answer the concern, though, about why on earth this sort of nonsense was brought up about a thirteen year old boy whose only offence seems to have been success as saying incorrect things to the applause of stupid people.

It’s kind of sad. You have this cute little boy who appears to have dedicated his life to politics—right-wing politics—at such a young age. His parents claim innocence, but given the boy’s youth and the fact that he’s home-schooled, I’m skeptical.

I’ll put it here to, so you don’t miss it Seeker.

That thin veneer?  It seems required, regardless of the orientation of the male involved.  It isn’t really about sexuality at all: it is about adhering to a very simplistic set of appearance guidelines that signify heterosexuality.

Kind of like wingnuts do to hide their own anxious masculinity.

Sorry you don’t get that, nor do you seem to get that I NEVER said this about the specific kid in question.  Knowing the teen boys that tromp through my house and leave food remnants like locusts, I was simply stating that there were several generic features to males of this age group that were in sync with the promotion of a failed world view built on certain issues.

Oh, and Seeker?  If you don’t get that difference, we gonna have to go all Socratic on yer ass.

I wouldn’t say it was “required” or universal, your assertions to the contrary.  The fact that I went through my teens—in fairly large and diverse circle: geeks, deranged eccentrics, band and school hockey team—without seeing it other than the use of the word “fag” as a mocking pejorative seems to indicate that the experience isn’t as universal and inevitable as you think.  (And lest you think I have an idealized version of my youth, please bear in mind that I hated high school.)

“I NEVER said this about the specific kid in question”.  Oh, please.  We are talking about a thirteen year old boy and you specifically post about “Thin veneer of heterosexuality hiding anxious masculinity.  Yep.” and I’m supposed to pretend that you didn’t and you weren’t talking about him?  Either you did want to comment, or you posted so badly that it was a natural assumption to take.  Either way you dropped the ball on this one, not me, and Socrates can’t save you.

And might I point out the obvious?  If we are going to talk about “adhering to a very simplistic set of appearance guidelines that signify heterosexuality” posing in a pink-and-white shirt with a sweater vest doesn’t make that cut.

Just one further thought, Ms Kate.  You can’t make an inclusive general statement then assert that you weren’t talking about a specific individual within that generalization.

Seeker, find another target.  There is a huge difference between noting what a teenage boy and the Wingnutteria have in common, and making statements about a specific person.

IF you cannot see that, I really can’t help you much with your projection problems.  You are making the same logical mistakes here as -A.

Oi, pedantic alert.

Ok, seeker, yes, it is possible for young kids to “opt out” even at a young age from anxious masculinity. I was able to do so, mainly because I know now I had no identity whatsoever with masculine and I was an asexual so I couldn’t be bribed with sex to perform the roles. I decided to live for myself and guess what I was actually punished for that even if I managed an immense amount of ignorance about why or even that it was happening (I had no idea for the longest time that there was an epic rumour campaign about me being a homosexual that was responsible for mass abandonment of anyone remotely connected to any form of mainstream).

So yes, people can opt out even at that age, but they do so in opposition to intense cultural pressure to maintain a demonstration of heterosexual masculinity of a particular toxic and anxious variety. This is also not just by peers, but by parents who worry that an “overly feminine” son will turn the gay or be beaten up for being seen AS the gay. And worries of the gay are often rooted in fears that your son will be a woman or treated as a woman is treated.

One can opt out, but it’d be lying to say there was not intense pressure at that age to not only meet a standard of stressful heterosexual masculinity, but to overpresent it and overshoot it lest anyone view you as anything other than the manliest of men. Hence why you would get “I banged 50 girls in a weekend” and “I lost my virginity at 9 to an older woman” boasts and anxious fear and deriding of queers that you’d see a lot less from the same groups of people 10 years later. There is a performance idea and a “being hunted” issue that is part of current male-body adolescence.

Cerberus said:

Sure, you wouldn’t want to call a kid stupid to his face, you’d use some tact to pop the ego bubble, but behind kids’ backs, I guarantee every parent talks about how stupid their kid was.

You can guarantee no such thing.  None of the caring parents I know talk about how STUPID their kids are behind their backs.  They might express concern that Johnny or Mary is doing something they wish they’d do differently, but the word STUPID doesn’t enter into the conversation (as well as alternatives used here on pendejo.net with regularity, such as “idiot” or “moron”).

I think you might be describing parents who haven’t grown up themselves yet, which is a shame, because their kids are not well-served with such spiteful, negative guidance.

-A

As I said elseblog, the profile suggests that he’s a smart, precocious kid, demonstrating most of the intellectual capabilities that don’t require much emotional maturity (politicking is one of them) and having them directed by his homeschooler parents and surrounding adults in a particular direction.

John Stuart Mill’s early life is an extreme example of what can happen in that kind of cauldron. I’d expect something slightly less remarkable from the Boy GOPper when he grows up a bit. Of course, there are institutions designed to prevent that from happening: Regent U, the College Republicans, Faux News etc.

-A,

I have no problem saying you’re an idiot.

But then, I’m afraid that insult probably comes too easily off my tongue, because guess what? My own Dad is basically a very good, loving parent, and yet he called us, his kids (there were a lot of us) “idiots” and worse quite a lot. To our faces.

Perhaps my parents aren’t “ideal.” We sure didn’t think so. Of course later we grew up and learned what horror shows go on in other households and realized that on the whole we were lucky.

Which brings me back to my own comment on young Jonathan. I for one did not call him “stupid,” not exactly. I did say he was annoying, obtuse, and trollish. Words that would apply to my own similar stances at his young age. I also foresee a dark future for him because he is much more committed to his myopic world-view (quite understandable for a typical kid of the suburbs like myself, let alone someone homeschooled by a fundamentalist convert…) than I ever was, because all this “fame” is going to make it hard for him to change his mind, even if he belatedly wants to.

One way of dealing with one’s parents’ overbearing exposition of their own views is after all to go them one better.

I still think at least his father is thinking they’ve created a bit of a Frankenstein’s Creature….

...wow, I should have done the cite this morning; now apparently the NYT has locked the article behind the “pay to read” gate. I’m not paying!

Anyway, can anyone with access now find the bit where his father is making snarky remarks out of the side of his mouth? Perhaps I still was muzzy from waking up to go to work, but I thought he sounded less than comfortable. Like, all that right-wing whacko stuff he agreed with the wife on to get along and because it seemed sort of reasonable to him at the time, now he’s got a good look at it and he’s stuck with it, because he can’t argue with the kid without blowing his glorious future and/or alienating his wife.

There’s a lot of misery to go around here.

Still kind of funny though.

On Fridays, Jonathan joins 10 middle-school students at the Classical School in Woodstock, where classes are taught from a Christian perspective, for five hours of study, including Latin. They have two 10-minute recesses for tag, said Jonathan’s teacher, Stephen P. Gilchrist. Lunch is eaten at their desks while they work.

Tag?  At age 14?