When Republicans selected their new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, I was critical of the pick because of some of the stances Johnson has taken in the past. Primarily, I was concerned with his past support of the BLM narrative, and his expressions of outrage over the — to use his word — “murder” of George Floyd. But since then, despite these serious qualms, the media have been doing everything in their power to make me like Speaker Johnson. They’re not doing this on purpose, of course. They are trying to make him look bad. But, as we know, nothing makes a person look better than when the media tries to make them look bad. To that end, they have attacked Johnson repeatedly for being a Christian, socially conservative, and a theocratic fascist. That last description isn’t remotely accurate, sadly, but when a person is attacked along these lines, it only gives them more credibility. Johnson is racking up lots of credibility this way.
And now we have the most desperate line of attack of all.
The latest crime committed by the speaker, according to the media and the gaggle of braindead leftist zombies on Twitter, is that — get this — he tried to prevent his children from looking at pornography. In the minds of these porn-crazed hyenas, this is a big problem. It’s an outrage. Mike Johnson’s attempt to protect his children from graphic sexual content is one of the great political scandals of our time. “What kind of freak doesn’t want his kids to watch porn,” they ask incredulously. They are pretending that they don’t understand it. Or maybe they aren’t pretending at all.
Either way, this latest faux-controversy, like so many faux-controversies before it, starts with a Rolling Stone article.
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Rolling Stone is an amazing publication in a certain way. Even amid a media landscape populated almost entirely by lying, scheming, soulless parasites, Rolling Stone still manages to stand out. They are the gutter journalists that make other gutter journalists cringe. This article is no exception. And just to give you an idea of how weak the hit piece is, you should know that the entire article is just 373 words long. That’s because the article is irrelevant — they don’t spend much time on the story, because there is no story. They just wanted to publish this headline, which says: “Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resurfaced Video.”
This framing has of course been immediately adopted by other media outlets, and hundreds of leftists on social media. Many articles and posts have repeated it, or a version of it. The Left insists that this supposed revelation is creepy and weird and gross. They’ve called Johnson a predator, and so on.
Of course, if this headline were literally true — if Rolling Stone wasn’t a worthless propaganda rag — then we’d all have to agree. Note the carefully selected phrase “porn intake,” which suggests that Mike Johnson is actively consuming porn and sharing the material with his son. “Porn intake” means that Johnson is a porn viewer and his porn viewing is being monitored by one of his kids. In fact, the website Political Wire makes this claim explicitly. Here’s their headline: “Mike Johnson Admits His Son Monitors His Porn Viewing.”
This implies — doesn’t imply, really, but outright claims — that Mike Johnson is actively watching porn, and the porn is being shared with his son. If that was really the case, then yes it would be extremely disgusting, but it is not the case at all. It is a slanderous lie by people who are determined to make normal, responsible parenting into something bizarre and even abusive.
That all becomes obvious if you read the article, to the extent that there even is an article to read.
Better yet you can watch the “resurfaced clip” for yourself. Here it is:
COMPROMISE ALERT: Speaker Mike Johnson uses software Covenant Eyes (learned about at a Promise Keepers retreat) that scans all his electronic devices & gives a weekly report an "accountability partner" his 17 yr old son (so basically don't watch porn or your son/dad will know😬) pic.twitter.com/SSWpB9IIDB
— Receipt Maven (@receiptmaven) October 31, 2023
Okay, so what’s the actual story here? The story is that Mike Johnson monitor’s his child’s internet usage to make sure that his child is not accessing harmful and objectionable material. The app he’s using — Covenant Eyes — also gives his son access to the content Johnson is viewing on his own phone. Anyone who isn’t an insane idiot immediately understands the point of this latter step. You have to be a perverted freak yourself to see it as something perverse.
Johnson is obviously trying to model good behavior for his son. He’s not having his son monitor his “porn intake,” because there is no porn intake. The whole point is that Johnson doesn’t look at porn, and he wants his teenage son to know that he doesn’t look at it, because he is trying to be a role model. This is called responsible parenting. And it may be necessary because Johnson’s teenage son is living in a culture — same as the rest of us — where people often claim that everyone — especially every man — looks at porn. Porn consumption is treated as an inevitability, as if it is literally physically impossible to refrain. It is important for a teenage boy to know that this is a lie. It isn’t true. It is possible to live free from the clutches of porn, and some men are in fact living that way. This would seem to be the point that Johnson is trying to make to his son.
I grew up in a time before smartphones, but we had a version of this kind of system in my house as a kid. The system was simple. We had one computer, it was in the most public and visible area in the house, and anyone could see what anyone else was doing if they happened to walk by. My parents did not have their own computer in their room or wherever. They used that one computer because they had nothing to hide, and they wanted us to know that they had nothing to hide. This is called setting a good example, which is a concept utterly foreign to the leftist social media mob.
Of course, these days it’s not necessarily practical to have only one stationary device with internet access to be shared by everyone in the home. Smart parents, then, look for other ways to practice openness and accountability in cyberspace. Smart parents — or just smart people in general, parents or not — understand that a desire for secrecy on the internet — wanting to keep your internet activity hidden from your loved ones — is almost always a sign that you’re doing things you should not be doing. Things that are harmful to you, and to your family.
Of course, the Left has looked for other reasons to object to Johnson’s responsible parenting.
Rolling Stone throws another line of attack against the wall: “Outside of the creepy Big Brother-ness of it all, Receipt Maven also aired concerns about whether Covenant Eyes — which is still a working subscription-based service — might ‘compromise’ Johnson’s devices, if he’s still actively seeking accountability. “A US Congressman is allowing a 3rd Party tech company to scan ALL of his electronic devices daily and then uploading reports to his son about what he’s watching or not watching….,” Receipt Maven wrote. “I mean, who else is accessing that data?”
Now, again, if you think it’s “creepy” or “Big Brother” for a father to monitor his child’s Internet usage, you are simply too stupid to be participating in this discussion, or any discussion. The best thing you can do is shut up, you stupid child, and let the adults have this conversation. I assume you’re also the kind of person who would say that telling a child to do chores is “forced labor” and sending him to his room is “false imprisonment.” I can only take solace in the fact that most of these people are childless losers and will remain so for the rest of their miserable lives.
As for the other concern, I think we can use our brains and assume that Johnson does not have Covenant Eyes installed on his work devices. It’s pretty clear that he’s referring to his personal devices and the ones in his home.
In the end, there are two ways of interpreting this story. One interpretation is that Mike Johnson has installed surveillance software on all of his phones and computers, including his work phone and the computer in his office on Capitol Hill, where he then proceeds to download an unlimited supply of pornography, which he shares with his son. The other interpretation is that Johnson has this accountability program on his family’s personal devices, so that he can protect his kids from pornographic content while also modeling good behavior for them. In other words, you can interpret this like a deranged lunatic who can’t comprehend the English language, or like a normal, sane person. That choice is really up to you.
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But obviously this is not really a matter of misinterpretation. We know the real reason why the Left is going after Johnson for this: These are weak, frail, porn-obsessed automatons who lack willpower and self-control and they feel shamed and rebuked whenever they encounter someone who doesn’t look at porn, someone whose life isn’t dominated by it like theirs is. They view these people with a mixture of astonishment and hatred. They themselves — being so emasculated and feeble — can barely even conceive of the possibility of not watching porn. They can’t wrap their heads around it. They’re such slaves to their impulses that they think anyone who exercises self-control is some kind of mutant. And this isn’t just about porn. Anyone who engages in healthy practices in basically any aspect of life is a freak of nature in their eyes. They instinctively lash out against the person, because the other option would be introspection. They would have to look at themselves and think, “If this person can make healthy choices and live a good, moral life, then maybe it’s not as impossible as I’ve convinced myself. Maybe I’m a coward making excuses for myself.”
This is the rabbit hole that you threaten to send these people tumbling down if you attempt to live a virtuous life in their presence. But they are too scared to take the ride, too timid and craven to actually look honestly at themselves. Instead, they descend on you and try to rip you to shreds, for committing the crime of being a better person than them.