Alex Knepper, FrumForum Blogger, Fired by Daily Caller Over Pedophile Controversy

I had an exchange at this blog with Alex Knepper some time back, after California's Proposition 8 became a national controversy. I don't dislike Alex. Lately though, on Facebook and Twitter, Alex has come across as extremely combative, for example in response to my essay on Tyler Clementi. I had slammed his arguments as juvenile (and it looks like I'm not the only one).

Well I've been learning a bit about Alex of late. Alex is 20 years-old and homosexual. That I knew. What I didn't know is that Alex has the hots for young boys, and he posts to gay adolescent hookup boards with an animated JPEG image of Justin Bieber. The folks at NewsReal Blog have been reporting on this. See, "David Frum and His Pro-Pedophile Protege Alex Knepper."

It's a fairly detailed post. Alex apparently posted under the alias "Lostpainting." Patterico, who is an ADA in Los Angeles, confirmed that the NewsReal post checked out: "Does a David Frum Protege Have Tendencies Towards Pedophilia?"

I tweeted the link to Alex last night. I found this tweet from Alex this morning:

This is interesting, since I considered Alex a friend previously, and I've never ridiculed him or alleged any kind of moral depravity. I'm just now learning about all this stuff. And what I'm reading is not reassuring, for example, Alex was fired from NewsReal Blog in July: "The Liar Alex Knepper Wasn’t Fired for Criticizing Ann Coulter, He Was Fired for Being An Intemperate, Unmanageable, Perverted, Impulsive, Narcissistic Child."

As for pedophilia, I think my understanding of it is like most people's, and that pedophilia is sexual interest and molestation of children. One of the criticisms of Alex is that he turns deeply moral dilemmas into academic ones, which we can see above at the tweet parsing the definition of "pedophilia." I'd think most folks would think it wrong for a 20 year-old man have a sexual interest in a 16 year-old boy. And while Wikipedia's entry indicates that in clinical medicine pedophilia is defined as sexual advances toward pre-pubescent children. But the page continues:

In common usage, pedophilia means any sexual interest in children or the act of child sexual abuse, often termed "pedophilic behavior". For example, The American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary states, "Pedophilia is the act or fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children." This common use application also extends to the sexual interest and abuse of pubescent or post-pubescent minors.

No one likes to be criticized, but as noted Alex seems to be particularly sensitive, and he's become aggressively combative in response. He's been doubling-down his defense of his behavior by offering explanations or excuses that are simply not appropriate. Just last week, Alex published an analysis of the Tyler Clementi suicide at The Daily Caller (cited at my link above). The page has now been pulled:

And characteristically, Alex blames it on a NewsReal Blog smear campaign against him:

Unfortunately, smear tactics sometimes work, and my relationship with the Daily Caller has ended. It has ended amicably, but it has ended.

Well, in this case, those "smear tactics" provided damning evidence of morally questionable behavior --- and it's that activity that got Alex Knepper fired from Daily Caller. It will be extremely interesting now to see how long it will be until David Frum follows suit. Can't be long, especially as the case of Alex's pedophilia goes viral. Hard to explain all of this, although I know these kinds of extremist rationalizations are common in the fever swamps of the neo-communist left. And it's stange that Alex claims to be a conservative, but I don't think so, unless this is the kind of faux-conservatism David Weigel recently discussed. In other words, it's not. Just more of the same morally relative post-modern radicalism that increasingly informs the mainstream of the Democrat Party left.