Teenage Conservative Apostate Laughs Off Tribal Attacks
As a recovering wingnut I’ve lived through this too, and Jonathan Krohn is handling it the best way possible — with a sense of humor focused on the future: Jonathan Krohn Laughs Off Bitter Conservative Reprisals.
Republicans had largely forgotten about Krohn since turning him into a star speaker and author in 2009 at the tender age of 13. But that didn’t mean they were happy to let him go, reacting to a Politico interview in which he said he now supported President Obama with a torrent of unrestrained rage.
The Daily Caller led the charge. Gregg Re started things offwith a profanity-filled screed from a spurned conservative who attended Krohn’s big CPAC speech in 2009 and apparently demanded anonymity to tell Re the 17-year-old was a “douche.”
Re then took to Twitter to snipe at Krohn for expressing his views while denying his article — “Tired Of Being Typecast As Conservative, ‘Douche’ Actor and CPAC speaker Jonathan Krohn Turns to Liberalism — was meant as an attack.
“If I’d given a speech as devoid of thought as [Krohn] (and made money from it), I’d call myself a douche,” Daily Caller intern Justin Green chimed in.
Another Daily Caller editor, Peter Tucci, wrote an op-ed praising Krohn’s “intellectual integrity” but adding that much of his criticism was nontheless “deserved.” Soon after, however, he joined in a sparring match of his own with Krohn on Twitter, dropping repeated references to his “hipster glasses” and throwing out such witty barbs as “Oops, I overestimated you. You’re not mature after all. I take back my praise.”
Krohn told TPM he takes the attacks in stride. He spent much of Tuesday engaging with critics and supporters alike on Twitter, in between a stop at his grandmother’s 80th birthday and a haircut ahead of his appearance on Hardball that evening.
“Nothing’s really stung me, all of its just so absurd,” he said. “My favorite was someone who tweeted at me ‘You betrayed God and William Bennett, you little bastard!’ Because apparently they’re on the same plateau in this person’s mind.”
Here he is on MSNBC’s Hardball:
