The Blog War

Here’s an interesting and reasonably balanced article about the history of Little Green Footballs and the evolution of Charles Johnson.

[Sunday morning update]

More from Patterico. And Tim Blair points out some additional (and certainly unintentional) irony.

I have to say that Charles has never banned me. Of course, it would be hard to do so, since I’ve never commented there since he began requiring registration…

27 thoughts on “The Blog War”

  1. Charles Johnson was one of the “Four Horsemen of the Ablogcalypse” advocating military action against Saddam — the others were Glenn Reynolds the Instapundit, Andrew Sullivan, and Steven Den Beste.

    Of the group, Charles Johnson was a self-admitted liberal, who parted company with fellow liberals and made common cause with conservatives over the GWOT and the Iraq War and standing up for Israel in the Terrorists Blowing Up Buses War.

    I guess Andrew considered himself a conservative of sorts (I suppose the true Red Staters are “anti-gay” in some manner), but he famously parted company with George W Bush over the gay marriage question and has moved away from the conservative support-the-war camp.

    Steven Den Beste withdrew from political blogging, in part because he didn’t like dealing with the inevitable hate e-mail (I don’t think he ever had a comments thread and had to deal with resident blog-trolls. And with respect to the moral dudgeon of blog-trolls who are keeping the world safe from “echo chambers”, I agree with Kos on this one thing, the Internet is a big place, and while I disagree with Kos with most everything else, and I don’t go over there trying to “correct” anyone’s thinking.) Mr. Den Beste is also reported to have long-term health concerns.

    I suppose Mr. Johnson’s “change of heading” on his blog and parting of company with “the Right Wing” is no surprise — he made common cause with the Right Wing over the GWOT but was never of the Right Wing and he was the first to tell people that. As to his “turning” on erstwhile right-wing allies, I suppose someone who didn’t observe social niceties going after Jihadism isn’t a person to mince words on his differences with “wing nuts.”

    Yes, there are some people who have an epiphany and change from liberal to conservative or the other way. Often it is conservatives who are exposed to college education and become more liberal as their conservatism was more a matter of instinct or upbringing rather than a firm intellectual doctrine. Often it is a liberal wgo turns rightward after “being mugged by reality” as it were. Do people turn from one and then turn back to where they came from?

    I guess the thing with Charles is are the nasty fights he has picked, with Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Robert Stacy McCain, and am I correct on this, even with Glenn Reynolds? I mean even Glenn Reynolds reminds us that he is “among the Right Wing but not of the Right Wing” (he considers himself a Libertarian supporting the GWOT and making common cause with conservatives or Republicans on this and other issues, but no beholden to the Republican Party or the Republican stand on any issue, much like our esteemed host Rand).

    I guess in my book loyalty has to count for something, and to flail away at former allies to me speaks to a defect of character. The article Rand linked to suggests that with Charles it may be more a case of a “geek speaking his mind without regard to being social about it” rather than what the conspiracy-minded of us thinking that Charles has “gone off the deep end.”

  2. I know people like charles. I think that in life he is likely a very nice person. But in those area’s where he has what he believes is an “authoritative” force, he is a rotten prick.

    One of my best friends is ALSO a very talented bass player and rather talented with code, and he is sweetness and light and humor and laughs, but if he disagree’s with you about music or code, he will turn into ephalba.

    A VILE Hatefilled creature willing to say anything, to demean you to crush you so that you NEVER challenge his positions in those things that HE knows about.

    Don’t you know that the reason you disagree is because you are an ignorant stupid stupid head, and have no right to even voice an opinion so EFF YOU! SHUT UP DUMMY! I read a book and I KNOW! Well it was a book of quotes, but still, I KNOW better than you on all these things I say I know about and you know nothing! NOTHING! FASCIST RACIST SEXIST HOMOPHOBE!!!!

    That is how my friend sometimes reacts, but not NEARLY with the regularity of chuck. It’s the nature of those who see themselves as “artists.” They believe that what they think is absolute and true without any concern whatsoever of debate.

    It’s a shame really, if CJ had just been an honest opposition I wouldn’t care, but he chose to go on brutal attack against everyone.

    Frankly he’s the guy who uses vile hyperbole to the point that words no longer have meaning. Right now CJ can say david duke is a racist and I would think to myself “don’t believe it, I have to research that.” That’s how pathetic he’s become.

  3. Douglas, that friend of yours sounds like a version of this.

    It does seem to be nearly universal, if more broadly or narrowly defined depending on the individual.

  4. “I don’t know why things can’t just stay on the level of the factual,” he said. “I don’t know why everything has to have a slant. I mean, The New York Times has a slant, and in the past I’ve called them out for that.” He sighed. “I miss the days of Walter Cronkite.”

    Excuse me while I pay a visit to the intellectual chiropractor to have my whiplash taken care of.

  5. McGhee he doesn’t do it to me, cuz well, we are friends for a LONG time, and I got so much stuff that can burn him he will be crapping fire.

    But that isn’t uncommon sometimes people require other people to keep them stable.

    I’m the puncher, he’s the yeller, the two of us together are regular people.

  6. Douglas: I can’t debate someone who brings Pascal’s Wager into it. I wouldn’t convince the Pascalian even if I was super nice and bought the person chocolate and flowers.

    Also people who use dishonest tactics, like “just raising questions” about 9/11, intelligent-design, Obama’s birth certificate: do please explain how I am supposed to have a civil discussion with them.

    I could ignore them, but they’d end up owning the discussion board. I could argue with them, but they’d brand me a troll anyway. The moderators could step in with the bannings but that assumes the moderator knows more than the morons, and CJ has since shown he does not. There’s not much left to do but start with the scorn and insults.

  7. Obama’s birth certificate has NOTHING to do with whether or not he’s a US citizen, at least in my mind, but rather as an expression of a deliberately dark history, blacked out by the candidate themselves.

    There is A lot to ask about Obama, and I think most of the conspiracy theory’s are wacky, but you know what, there are 2! that I read with the intention of mocking only to find myself going “Wait? WTF!?!!”

    The birth certificate is one of them. Not cuz he wouldn’t be a US citizen, but about who might be his father, and also, the BC links to foreign data.

    I think that one is virtually insignificant, but in an ELECTION it would have changed the story.

    The second, and at first I thought it was absolutely wackjob, (see that is what a “skeptic is” someone who tolerates others opinions and evidence though you disagree with it) Was Cashills analysis of “Dreams from my Father.”

    I thought it was crazy, but then the side by sides? There is REAL evidence there.

    The first “conspiracy” is more about his own unwillingness to do what he demands of others, and is actually more about hipocracy, the second has real evidence.

    But for even questioning me I find you to be a fascist maybe rand should ban you. 🙂

  8. Douglas “Obama’s birth certificate has NOTHING to do with whether or not he’s a US citizen, at least in my mind, but rather as an expression of a deliberately dark history, blacked out by the candidate themselves.”

    The birthers were mostly talking about citizenship until late last year. You are right that most of them have stopped f@cking that particular chicken. But your response hints that you know that this was the set of birthers to which I referred.

    “But for even questioning me I find you to be a fascist maybe rand should ban you.”

    I am not a fascist; I’m a Jacobite monarchist. I worry more about beheadings :^)

  9. Yeah, I don’t care about the geller johnson fight.

    Geller is a wackjob.

    But I think the RS CJ fight is completely intemperate.

  10. Still, if you read L.G.F. today, you will find it hard to miss the paradox that a site whose origins, and whose greatest crisis, were rooted in opposition to totalitarianism now reads at times like a blog version of “Animal Farm.”

    One of a number of differences. I am a registered LGF user. I had the audacity to compare LGF to Kos – the subject was some of the documented Rush Limbaugh quotes that Media Matters reports here.

    http://mediamatters.org/research/200910130049

    (I plan to fisk that list one of these days when I’m not swamped with offline-life matters.)

    Kos, by contrast, declined to register me as a user in the first place. Does the Kosa Nostra do Google-powered intel gathering on everyone who registers for an account or something?

  11. Mostly a good profile, but I found myself gritting my teeth over this (boldface by me):

    … he had the wherewithal to create, almost instantly, an animated .gif image that toggled between the original letter and that same letter typed in Microsoft Word 32 years later, illustrating the issue in a way that no 500-word blog post could have done.

    Argh. Beg the question much?

    … the decidedly un-Mata-Hari-like woman he introduced to me as his fiancée, who brought us water and fruit as we talked in his small home office …

    Does anyone know which of his minions this person is? I’ve wondered whether Mr. Johnson’s change in attitude might have been caused by the influence of a bed buddy. (Ditto for Christopher Buckley.)

  12. I thought it was clear that Charles Johnson thinks we must support the President in the middle of the War on Terror. For a year or two prior to the 2008 election he was clearly moving in the direction of supporting an anticipated President McCain.

  13. The “RS CJ fight”?

    Robert Spencer, perhaps?

    From the NYT article:

    Spencer says: “I have actually had people contact me and say, ‘I understand you’re the American representative for Vlaams Belang.’ And that is because of Johnson.”

  14. I was banned from LGF, if not for ‘disagreeing’ with St. Charles then for suggesting that he take a deep breath and think for a moment.

    Instant banning, for ‘insulting’ him…

    OK, whatever. Lots of blogs in the interweb… Clearly though he’s got some issues.

  15. Chucklehead also went after Robert Stacy McCain. That was the “RS” I thought Douglas meant.

    Maybe CJ just has a thing about those initials.

  16. suggesting that he take a deep breath

    You were advocating he embiggen his carbon footprint! Trying to entrap him in a crime against Gaia!

  17. Rand “I haven’t had any fights with Charles, at least not publicly”:

    You have now! You started a comment thread about LGF and that, officially, makes you a LGF Stalker Blog. Just ask Ace.

  18. I couldn’t make it all the way through the article. This stuff bores me to tears. It reads like stuff people ought to grow out of by age 17 (if female) or 25 (if male). But this Charles Johnson character certainly sounds like a silly person.

  19. The funny thing about the Horsemen was that they were all libertarian (or, for Johnson and Sullivan, flat-out liberal/statist) on most domestic issues, while being hawks on defense. Only Glenn (and CJ? I’m not certain if he actually believes) was religious, and he certainly isn’t evangelical about it. Heck, if they had ever gotten together for lunch, the most conservative person at the table would have been… Helen.

    It’s kind of like the constant accusations of Rand as some kind of brainwashed Republican. Heck, Glenn’s been accused of exactly the same thing more times than I can count, and he worked for more than one Democratic Party campaign before 9/11!

  20. The article makes it pretty obvious that Johnson’s a card-carrying atheist like Den Beste, but a lot more evangelical about it. Also, isn’t Sullivan still technically some sort of dechurched Catholic pissed at the Church for considering what he does with his sex life to be a sin?

  21. Yeah sorry, the “RS” was intended for Robert Spencer, they actually had an alliance years ago, and NOW he’s a nazi?

    CJ has the ability to realize that he won’t be overly brutalized by friends, he abuses mutual faith, and when HE goes over the line, he blames the people who treated him as friend.

    “How dare you hit me after all the jabs I gave you?”

    Pam Geller is borderline Insane, And RSM (Stacey McCain/The Other McCain) is interesting but I don’t find him especially engaging.

    But pam and RSM never had the connection that CJ and Spencer had years ago, or how about. . . . Zombie?

    He will crap on ANYONE to build his veritas, that is disgusting.

    My “artist” friend will fight with me, even in public, we will throw our punches, but we will admit it’s an honest disagreement.

    Example, If CJ, the uber ultra brilliant scientist had known courtney as you did? Instead of expressing misery and shame and kindness, he would have called him a corporatist who let black baby’s starve for his own greed.

    CJ is an EXTREME version of my friend, and I hope my buddy never goes as bad as CJ. CJ might be a nice person in life, but in general? He’s an arrogant self serving piece of shit.

  22. Busy week – wish I could have gotten back to this thread sooner.

    One frustration with LGF is trying to figure out why the purported bad guys are the bad guys. Per that “Robert Spencer and the Extremists” article…most folks have no idea what Christian Action Network and the English Defense League (not “Defence?”) are, or anything about Spencer’s intended dinner guests Douglas Murray and Adrian Morgan. Once upon a time I looked through LGF’s own archives to learn about why Vlaams Belang was controversial. Couldn’t find anything except an association with Jean Marie LePen (who is also not a household name); maybe I didn’t go far back enough.

    Average folks want to read the news, not spend hours researching it. A blog that nominally reaches out to a general audience should include a brief FAQ on the less famous individuals it blogs about.

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