Mark the date, On November 30th 2009, Little Green Footballs officially Died. The site has officially changed from being a Conservative to a Liberal Site. There were always rumors that Charles was really a liberal who was faking his political philosophy just to make a buck, but they were so hard to believe, he was a passionate conservative, so believable.
But in the end Little Green Footballs died from a long drawn-out illness called supporter-cide. Charles Johnson the man behind LGF decided to ban every single one of his supporters. It was painful to watch.
Charles is one of the legends of the blog world, he has done so much to legitimize the "blogisphere" as a news source, he has outed false reporting from the mainstream media more times than I can name. Johnson is the person that first discovered that the Dan Rather's report about George Bush's national guard duty was based on a fraudulent document,or that Reuters was faking the damage pictures from the Israeli war with Lebanon two years ago. Charles was also one of the founders of Pajamas Media.
In the end Charles began to believe his own clippings. He became too self-important and stopped allowing anyone to disagree with him on his site. He began to call anyone who disagreed with him a racist and/or bigot. Little by little he drove people out, starting with Pamela of Atlas Shrugs one of the most good hearted and passionate people I have ever met. It was followed quickly by Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch. This blogging world which Charles helped to created is too small and faces too many challenges for us to fight amongst ourselves. Even the words we use with each other are a signal to how we should be dealing with one another words like link, pick-up and hat tip.
Soon LGF deteriorated became an endless series of debates about creationism and Obama's birth certificate. Not the issues surrounding those topics, but the debate was about whether it was OK to debate them at all.
I got my walking papers back in June, my Crime, I am friends with Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs and I link to both of their sites. Yes he threw me out because of two links to my site.
It wasn't until I was banned that I learned what a Joke in the net community Charles had become. I had begun to notices much larger sites than mine "de-link" LGF because Johnson had trumped up some silly excuse to ban them, top caliber sites such as Ace of Spades and the Other McCain.
On his site Charles gives his ten reasons for switching sides, but rather than give true political reasons he uses it as an opportunity to sound like a bitter old fool, smearing some really fine people such as RS McCain, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Pamela Geller, Glenn Beck, etc. He even trashes the tea party movement as hatefu,l and accuses Hot Air of being a site that Spews hate. Hot Air is arguably the most level headed political site on either side of the aisle.
The truth is, those rumors had to be true. You don't abandon a philosophy because of what you perceive are bad actions by others, Charles never was a real conservative, he was an opportunist. And now he is just another crazy, just a few fries short of a happy meal.
To paraphrase Charles' farewell to the right, Little Green Footballs has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff. I am very happy I won’t be going over the cliff with him.
Oh and one other thing, if you want to read the LGF farewell, I am sorry but I cannot link to it, the mental breakdown of one of my blogging Idols is just to sad to promote.
12 comments:
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
"Pajama's Media" unless there is somebody named Pajama the use of ' is in error.
It truly is a sad day. I was banned a few months ago for no apparent reason at all.
Charles really was a giant in the blogosphere, and did some magnificent work, both on his own as well as by publicizing the terrific work of others in breaking stories like Rathergate, the Green Helmet Guy, and more Fauxtography than you could shake a stick at.
He has left a great big gaping hole in the blogoverse, and I'm not sure there's anyone who can step up and fill that void.
Vale, Charles.
Stoutcat
In the interests of giving all points of view a hearing, my blog site, www.hopelesslypartisan.com, has always featured ten leftward and ten rightward links (yidwithlid.com being one of them).
Earlier this year, I removed littlegreenfootballs.com from the rightward list. I share your sadness at the morphing of this site from a valuable source of conservative-oriented facts and logic to whatever it is now.
Unfortunately, I now see Charles Johnson, whom I admired until then, as a sort of David Brock/Ariana Huffington clone.
I can almost hear him saying "If I switch over, the biggest left-wing sites won't attack me anymore. They'll be my friends. Besides, if you're on the left you can get invited to the really good parties".
It all started with his jihad against creationism. He found a few examples of school boards trying to push it, and extrapolated it into a vast conspiracy involving all Christians. He's been paranoid for two years.
After his "enlightenment" he will be the darling of the left, for awhile (the proverbial 15-minutes)...then IMHO, like "Jumpin" Jim Jeffords & David Brock he will soon be pushed to the back of the "liberal blog bus"... and fade into obscurity... for his "objections" to "hateful" conservatives are same-old, same-old boring cliche.
I have been following Little Green Footballs for a while and find the change sad. I only comment at intervals, so I never rose "above the radar" on his site. Of course, he normally gets so many comments that whatever I might have said was lost in the crowd. I thought that it was me and that I was somehow overlooking something that was obvious to others. It is a pity, he had been interesting. Had I come across him as he is now, I do not think that I would have picked him up.
Have you found The Blogmocracy?
You should go check them out. Many ex LGFers there, many of the banned.
LGF has gone off the rails and as far as I'm concerned the fact that you were banned is a badge of honor. I had been checking in on LGF occasionally because I liked the link stuff at the top. But every time I started reading his posts I became very uncomfortable - like you know how you feel embarrassed for someone who's acting like an ass? He started with everyone being a racist and the white supremacy thing, then the birthers and creationist thing. It was very strange to see. I won't even give him a tiny little hit now. Too crazy.
selrahC's post "explaining" his "defection," to anyone who has been following his disastrous antics this past year, is laughable - he claims, for example, that the right is anti-woman, when in fact he gleefully participates in Palin bashing... it would seem anti-woman in his mind means Pro-life. To pretend, after the events of the last election, the attempted destruction and demonization of both HIllary and Sarah, that the left is "pro-woman" is absurd.
His other reasons are just as bizarre - and even if you could take them seriously on their face, his credibility is completely shot. HIs fascistic bannings, the complete elimination of all discussion and debate, and the creation of his own echo chamber are well documented.
The threads now appear to be controlled by the vicious crazed ice-weasel. It'd be sad if it wasn't so funny.
Salon carries his water: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2009/12/01/lgf
Yid with Lid tells it like it is. It was once a great blog, and it was the PEOPLE, the commenters, the participants who made it so. They are the ones who brought the great discussions, the wonderful insights, the wealth of experience, institutional knowledge, the documentation and the richness of their personalities and world views. They are all gone now.
The good news is they are still out here, they are reading your blog, the are at Blogmocracy, Ace of Spades, Protein Wisdom, RSMcCain, HotAir and GCP. (and many others) Many have their own blogs, and they meet up again to continue the debates, the sharing of information, and the camaraderie.
If you are looking for long lost LGF friends, check the 'list of the banned' here http://kirls.blogspot.com/2009/05/banned-monium.html and stop in to Table 9 chat, we might be able to help you find them.
I went over to see which post you were writing about. About 100 comments in to it, smoke started pouring out of my monitor. I'm not joking. Time for me to get a 21st century monitor, anyway.
I've been banned over there, twice. The second registration, I tried to be very circumspect. No good - the guy's just too touchy, especially with his sycophants egging on his paranoia. They're using him for laughs, he doesn't realize it. He's easily manipulated.
It was two months ago that I was banned for disagreeing with him. I told him that he and his site had changed and I was going to miss it but he banned me also, I guess to make sure I couldn't come back in and post.
I can't look into someones mind and guess their intentions but he has gone all Dhimmi on us over the last several months and his site has become all about anti creationism, anti birthers and other moonbattery responding to moonbattery.
I wonder how much traffic has gone down over there.
Fact is even huffpo and kos allow more dissenting opinion than Mr. Jphnson can tolerate.
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