Seems I knew him better than most. Suit, white sneakers, bad faith debating tactics.
His clips were always linked to me as “Charlie Kirk gets DESTROYED” or whatever, but I was conscious that there were always people in the audience that thought his deflections and other rhetorical tricks actually worked. As we saw in the last moments before his death.
I wasn’t aware that he started turning point USA, nor the depth of his influence.
I had, but barely. My teen son had told me about him a couple months ago.
The name rang a bell in the deep recesses of my memory. but just barely. I have enough to worry about without taking up any of my gray matter with right-wing hate mongers. There are just too many of them. My wife knew who he was, though.
Yes. In the media I consume he was a frequent subject of outrage bait, as well his appearance was mocked (oddly small facial features on a large head, more gums than teeth).
In addition, my spouse works in higher education and at some point in the past he had done one of his rally/debates at her campus.
When I heard the on the radio that he had been shot, I understood he was a MAGA celeb - but for all I know the news story might have literally said, “MAGA celeb CK was shot.” I’m from Illinois. Pretty confident that if you had asked me the day before who CK was, I would have confused him w/ Illinois politician Mark Kirk - Wikipedia. I think when I heard the news I vaguely thought it was a R politician.
I was very aware of who he was. I had to explain it to my wife.
No, I had not heard of him. But I have withdrawn from most news, and when I did pay attention, I would not have likely been exposed to him anyway.
For those who hadn’t heard of him and think they should be more aware of the opposition, you should start being aware of Stephen Miller and Ben Shapiro.
Hmm. I’ve heard of both of them. Maybe they speak more to older people? Are more on mainstream media and less social media?
Do you believe CK was of similar prominence to Stephen Miller?
No idea who Ben Shapiro is. For whatever reason, I’m thinking the deadpan teacher from Ferris Bueller.
And Nick Fuentes. And to some degree Laura Loomer because she somehow seems to have some influence on Trump.
Not asked to me, but I’m of the opinion Kirk was better known overall than Miller. Yes, Miller sucks, but it’s because he keeps being in Trump’s administration. Kirk did manage to build his own organization (not solo, of course) and was active independently.
More so, actually. Miller works behind the scenes. Kirk was extremely active with Turning Point USA and several media sources have indicated that his support was of major importance to Trump in getting the youth vote in the past election.
Never heard of him.
They are two right-wing pundits, but appeal to different age segments.
Ben Stein was a speechwriter in Nixon’s White House; same vintage as the late David Gergen.
Ben Shapiro is a current media commentator with his own podcast.
The name was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t have told you what he was famous for. The organization he founded, Turning Point USA, was much more familiar to me.
If you hadn’t heard of Charlie Kirk then you are probably surprised at the results of current elections. If you really want to know what is shaping the country you have to be aware of people like Kirk, Shapiro, Crowder and their ilk. It’s a sphere of influence that democrats are really bad at.
I think it is finally time to strike “hippest” from the SDMB slogan.
So for me in terms of visibility Nick Fuentes>Stephen Miller>Ben Shapiro>Laura Loomer >>>Charlie Kirk. Fuentes’ name pops probably due to the visibility around being an actual Neo-Nazi and the whole Kanye West/White House visit debacle. Miller’s been in Trump’s inner circle since the beginning, Ben Shapiro I recognize as I also at first mixed him up with the much older Ben Stein and did a tiny bit of research, Loomer’s been in the news lately enough for me to pick up a bit by osmosis. Shapiro and Loomer for me are about as visible as Candace Owens.
My first thought about Kirk is that I vaguely thought (incorrectly) he was a MAGA-aligned evangelical preacher. Same rabbit hole, different track in the burrow.
There’s ignorant and there’s actively avoiding.
Hey! We were when that was written!
“That’s erasing our history!” /s
And I was more aware of him than the average person in my surroundings, but just insofar as knowing he was the frontman of this hardcore MAGAsphere organization and a regular on the “so-and-so OWNED” or “so-and-so DESTROYED”social feed clickbait recommendations.
Pretty frustrating the past couple of days having to deal with people who just went from not knowing/caring to just buying whole whatever their feed posted.