Who Cares About Jonathan Krohn?
I first met a 14-year-old Jonathan Krohn at CPAC in 2010. I was working on radio row there, and he (and his mother) were looking for interview opportunities so that he could hawk his second book (the follow-up to his first book which landed him a short speaking gig at CPAC in 2009).
His 2009 address to CPAC had garnered him the proverbial “15 minutes of fame” as Fox News and other conservative media outlets spent some time marveling at the novelty of such a young, outspoken conservative. But then the novelty wore off, and his fame dipped, though at CPAC 2010 it was pretty clear that Krohn was still trying to cash in. Still trying to play up the novelty of being an adolescent conservative.
Nobody was really buying.
Now it seems Mr. Krohn has found a new schtick to sell himself. He’s no longer the adolescent conservative. Now he’s the liberal who grew out of his adolescent conservatism, a maneuver that opens up a whole new market on the left. Indeed, since announcing his shift in ideology, Krohn has already landed a Politico interview and a column for Salon in which Krohn complains about how the right has treated him “with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies.”
I’m really not sure why we’re supposed to care about any of this. Krohn and/or his family are very, very good at self-promotion. Kudos to him for talking his way onto the state at CPAC. Kudos to him for turning that speaking gig into a book deal, and kudos to him for finding a way to take his short-lived fame into overtime by claiming a shift in ideologies just in time to market himself during an election year.
But this has never been anything more than a novelty act. A sideshow. Whether Krohn’s ideological vagaries are heart-felt or not, they’re meaningless in the larger world of American politics. He’s just another would-be political celebrity trying to sell books and book interviews.
Tags: Asshats, jonathan krohn
