Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Charles Johnson's Quantum Physics

"The right wing blogosphere is receding away from me at the speed of light, and all I can say is good riddance."
-- Charles Johnson, LGF
Who is "receding" from whom, Charles? It's a matter of perspective, isn't it? The rest of us -- including those who consider a rally in Washington against runaway deficit spending and out-of-control government to be a good thing -- are watching you approach the event horizon of a black hole, where the massive density of your own insuperable arrogance creates an overwhelming gravitational force that sucks you into an infinite vortex of nothingness.

Let me see if I can explain to you, Charles, what the basic problem is: I am professional journalist, and have been since 1986. As much as I sneer at the snooty pretensions of my own profession -- "Ethics, shmethics" is my motto -- events in recent years have repeatedly brought to my attention what a valuable and honorable trade it has been my privilege to pursue.

Saturday afternoon, I showed up at the 9/12 March on D.C. without a press credential or even a business card (my printer is out of ink, so somebody hit the tip jar). My skill and reputation, however, gained me admission to the backstage area at the Capitol, where I was soon chatting with Rep. Mike Pence and other dignitaries. Indeed, I was also able to gain access for Cynthia Yockey and another journalist.

An ability to gain access to one's sources is indispensible to the job a reporter must do, whereas any a-hole with a laptop can play pundit. My methods of gaining access are sometimes unorthodox, but I'm not going to get beat by the Big Boys of the MSM simply because I'm not one of the Big Boys.

Nobody pays me to have the "right" opinions, Charles -- although there is every reason to believe my opinions are based on a far greater familiarity with facts than are yours. It's difficult to ascertain facts while sitting around contemplating your own navel, issuing Olympian pronouncements, and wondering who you should ban or de-link next.

And so we come to your assertion that my "connections to white supremacist and racist groups are undeniable." Right. My "connections" to Reason magazine, former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, HotAir.com and the Libertarian Party are similarly "undeniable," a function of my chosen career. I only wish I could get an "undeniable" connection to Sen. Joe Lieberman, so maybe somebody on the Senator's committee would get me some on-the-record Democratic lowdown on the IG-Gate investigation, but no matter how outrageously I flirt with the committee's deputy press secretary, she won't leak a word.

Hey, Charles, is it "ethical" for a happily married Christian father of six to flirt with a deputy press secretary? Like I said, ethics shmethics. I'm not getting paid to conduct an ethics seminar. My job is to get the story, and how I get it is proprietary information.

Getting close to your sources, penetrating through the wall of b.s. "official statements" and winning the sources' trust so that they'll tell you facts you need to know even if you can't report them -- well, if you can't do that, don't expect to succeed as a reporter.

As you apparently haven't figured it out yet, Charles, the Southern Poverty Law Center first attacked me after I published a May 2000 Washington Times article based on an interview with author Laird Wilcox:

Researcher Says 'Watchdogs'
Exaggerate Hate Group Threat
By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 9, 2000
They collect millions of dollars for their crusades against hate groups, but do so-called "watchdog" organizations exaggerate the dangers posed by neo-Nazis and other racist movements?
Laird Wilcox thinks so. A Kansas author and editor who has spent decades researching what he calls "fringe" groups, Mr. Wilcox says the total numbers of active, organized extremists on the right is not much more than 10,000.
"Because of their nature, it's very difficult to come up with firm numbers" for such groups, Mr. Wilcox says, but estimates "the militias are probably 5,000 or 6,000 people. The Ku Klux Klan are down to about 3,000 people. And the combined membership of all neo-Nazi groups are probably just 1,500 to 2,000."
In a nation of more than 270 million people, the small size of such fringe groups represents a tiny danger, yet they are the target of what Mr. Wilcox calls an "industry" of watchdog groups.
"There is an anti-racist industry entrenched in the United States that has attracted bullying, moralizing fanatics, whose identity and livelihood depend upon growth and expansion of their particular kind of victimization," Mr. Wilcox wrote in his 1999 book "The Watchdogs."
Naming such organizations as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), based in Montgomery, Ala., Mr. Wilcox claims "the anti-racist movement has become a massive extortion racket." . . .

Read the whole thing, as they say. Nine years ago, then, I was reporting on a phenomenon that is now widely recognized by conservatives -- the shameless use of accusations of racism for political and personal gain. Having subsequently been targeted for such accusations (as I was never targeted before I wrote that article), I dare say I am now one of the nation's foremost experts on this phenomenon.

My acquaintance with the League of the South and its president, Dr. Michael Hill, began as the result of an assignment I received from my editor at the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, Pierre Rene-Noth. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Pierre is an unrepentant liberal, the half-Jewish son of a French socialist who was forced to flee to America after the Nazi invasion.

Southern heritage and culture, and the remembrance of Civil War history, is not remotely controversial in Rome, Ga., unless some damned Yankee is fool enough to speak ill of the glorious dead, at which point the citizenry quickly assemble and the mendacious carpetbagger is tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, as it is said, and so Pierre's devotion to community news meant that, given my lifelong interest in history ancient and modern, I had a lot of important work to do. My own opinions on such matters were professionally relevant only insofar as they enhanced my ability to pursue the story.

By God, those folks loved me down home. When I reflect on everything I've endured since coming to Washington in November 1997, how I sometimes long to be back in Rome, where my op-ed columns made me such a local celebrity that I could cash a personal check at the grocery store without even showing ID!

Nostalgia aside, the point is that I was pursuing my professional duty when I first came into contact with the League of the South, and of my subsequent involvement, there are many things that people think they know -- on the basis of SPLC reports -- which are not necessarily true. And there are many, many thinks that people do not know.

Again, I have occasion to refer to the Hayekian conception that knowledge is widely diffused throughout society, so that not even the most informed "expert" knows everything. However, there are people with direct knowledge of my involvement with the Southern heritage movement who can attest -- and demonstrate by documentary evidence -- that I was never a "racist" or a "white supremacist" or any such thing.Stogie at Saberpoint makes this clear:

Stacy and I were involved in online discussions (aka "the great listserv debates") with a large group of interested people and, of course, the issue of race and race relations came up and was hotly debated. . . . There were some bigots in the group who wanted to add a racial component to our movement but Stacy (and I and others) strenuously opposed it. Stacy was an outspoken leader of the non-racist faction; he denounced racism as dishonorable and wrong. We fought the bigots together and took a lot of heat for our stand.
And this involves a significant error in the 2002 article by gay columnist Michelangelo Signorile, universally cited by those who have attacked me, which Stogie cites sources to correct:
Signorile claimed McCain had posted [a certain statement] to a site called Reclaiming the South. In fact, that site is maintained by [White Supremacist] Dennis Wheeler, who posted emails by McCain, George Kalas, Gary Waltrip and others, from a debate on a private email list. McCain, Kalas, Waltrip, et al., strongly criticized Wheeler's efforts to get the League of the South (then known as the Southern League) to adopt Wheeler's own white separatist views. McCain wrote of such racial views: "[W]e should not stomach the promulgation of odious and hateful doctrines. We must reject all such doctrines. The truth is not in them."
Remember this was what I wrote on a private e-mail discussion group in the mid-1990s, before I ever thought about working for The Washington Times. All of those involved in the discussion were Southern history buffs, and none of them were liberals, so that I had no cause to write anything other than my own honest beliefs.

By the time Signorile smeared me, in fact, I had forgotten all about Dennis Wheeler and that e-mail list-serv debate, and it was only because of Signorile's error that I learned that Wheeler had reposted excerpts of that discussion.

Exactly how or why Signorile made such a significant error, I'm not quite sure, but it was as a gift from God to me, because when I went to Wheeler's site, I saw that he had preserved that old argument of mine. Vindicated, you see, by the unwitting acts of two men who considered me their enemy.

Well, some will continue to be mystified by other things I have (allegedly) written or said or done, and I am content to let some mysteries linger. If it suits some people to think of me as a "neo-Confederate lesbian," let Joan Jett speak for me: I don't give a damn about my bad reputation.

Given my own experience, however, I have become extremely reluctant to point the accusing finger of "racism" at others. Is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright a "racist"? I strongly disagree with the idiocies and falsehoods Wright has proclaimed from his pulpit, but as Thomas Jefferson said, "truth is the sufficient antagonist to error," and there is no need to anathematize Wright with the "racist" label.

We ought to be careful, I suggest, about attaching the hateful term "racist" to the ordinary and generally benign attitudes more properly known as ethnocentrism -- the basically rational belief of, say, the Indonesian immigrant that his own interests are linked to the fate and fortunes of other Indonesian immigrants.

If such a man perceives some political or social development as being anti-Indonesian or anti-immigrant, we should not condemn him as "racist" for doing so. Yet the same consideration ought to extend to those who are neither Indonesian nor immigrants. If, for example, the CIA discovered that Al-Qaeda operatives were using Indonesian passports to gain entry to the United States, the suspicion toward and scrutiny of such immigrants cannot be called "racist."

(Hypothetical example to be cited by Andrew Sullivan as evidence of my bigotry toward Indonesians in 3, 2, 1 . . .)

Because racism has replaced blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as the Unforgiveable Sin in contemporary American culture, there are some people who seek a reputation for virtue (at least in their own eyes) by setting their Racism Detectors to "stun."

Anyone who examines this phenomenon will quickly discover nearly all of these people are elite-educated affluent Vanilla-Americans -- rich stuck-up honkies -- who seem to think that becoming a zealous "anti-racist" is their ticket to liberal heaven. In other words, they are self-righteous latter-day Pharisees, and unless they repent, they are doomed to destruction.

When I contemplate what Charles Johnson had done, I hurt. Not for me, but for him.

God has made me strong enough to endure whatever I must endure, and I do not think God will forsake me after having worked so many miracles on my behalf to bring me through so many perils to where I am today.

Charles Johnson has no such comfort. He is a wounded soul who is desperately alone, beyond hope of any assistance he can summon. I do not pray for his destruction, but for his redemption, because my religion forbids me to hate.

And some things a man writes with tears in his eyes.

23 comments:

  1. God Bless you and those like you who are fighting the good fight - to uncover and report the truth.

    Those of us who, in our Post-Watergate mentality depended on the Media to act as watchdogs and expose corruption, have been betrayed beyond belief by the likes of NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC.

    You are the HOPE for the future. No small thing, that.

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  2. He is a wounded soul who is desperately alone
    ***

    So says the guy with 6 kids! At least my CJ has his jazz music!

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  3. Wow! Stacy McCain you are da man! A thousand shall fall at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand but it will not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt though behold and see the reward of the wicked. Rock On!

    Greg Marquez
    goyomarquez@earthlink.net

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  4. Awesomeness in Blogging, McCain.

    God Bless.

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  5. I do not pray for CJ's destruction either, but a good virtual asswhoopin might do him some good. You just gave him one "Ralphie".

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  6. Charles Johnson has responsibility for his own fate. May his tongue RIP long enough for his brain to regain some sense of logic. He doesn't have any of the charm of a MadMax, only a mad dog.

    Speaking of proper name calling etiquette, what a Congressional hoot being reported from the House by Glenn Thrush @ Politico:

    House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has released a helpful, updated primer for members regarding their conduct on the floor and in committees.

    Especially useful: The section on how to properly insult the executive branch in the chamber.

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0909/House_guidelines_for_Presidential_putdowns.html

    How about washing out a member's mouth with soap?

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  7. Charles Johnson is now claiming the photos from the September 12, 2009 march are actually from an old Promise Keeper march.

    But when you click on the link the photograph is much brighter and sunnier and is also an aerial photograph of the entire mall. That aerial photograph may very well be an old shot (the first time I saw it was when CJ posted it today). But the video shot most conservatives are relying upon for estimating crowd size is the time lapse roof camera. The question is whether or not that is from September 12, 2009.

    Hey if CJ is correct, Beck owes us all an apology. Heck, I will apologize to CJ. But if this roof video is from September 12, 2009, then I think CJ may be up to shennangins here, of the Dan Rather type.

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  8. Stacy, a good friend of mine worked for Lieberman, so I guess that means you're connected in a roundabout sorta way, right?

    Having lost whatever followers he'd somehow accumulated on either side, Charles Johnson has now lost them all.

    It's just what happens when you're a douchebag extraordinaire.

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  9. CJ: pequeño tirano nada

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  10. *"The right wing blogosphere is receding away from me at the speed of light, and all I can say is good riddance."

    Translation: "'I'm melting! Melting away! Meeelting! Meelllting awaaaay...."

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  11. There is an interesting question to be asked about the desire to purge and set the limits of legitimate debate. I can think of many examples where the impulse is proper: Truthers and Holocaust Revisionists jump immediately to mind. White Supremacists are another shoe in. There is something viscous about their wrongness.

    Calhounians? I think it's easy to show why they're wrong, but I don't know that they're outside legitimate debate or polite company.

    The same goes for Democrats, Libertarians, atheists, and a whole host of intellectual and/or political positions that are wrong (according to me, FWIW) but not illegitimate.

    My question is, what separates the two groups, the wrong and the viciously wrong?

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  12. Stacy:

    Well posted, sir. You defend yourself with dignity and honor, and without equivocating, wish God's blessings for your opponent.

    Sportsmanship and erudition in one.

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  13. The Wondering JewTue Sep 15, 07:04:00 PM

    As a Jewish reader and fan of this blog, I wanted to weigh in with my 2 cents. I don’t know Stacy McCain and I’ve never met him. So I have about as much idea about what his views of “White Supremacy” or “Neo-Confederate” movements actually are as Charles Johnson does—which is to say, none.

    Anyone who reads this blog knows that Mr. McCain writes a lot of over the top stuff if you take anything you are reading as the literal and final representation of Stacy’s point of view, you are an idiot. Furthermore, He says that these online quotes are smears and given the progenitor of much of this information is the racial neo-McCarthyite smear outfit known as the SPLC, I am very inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

    Finally, I have read this blog with some regularity and the notion that Stacy McCain is somehow promoting anything other than a strong, and principled conservative viewpoint (with a bit of Hunter Thompson- style craziness thrown in there for fun) is smoking something. If Charles Johnson thinks that somehow Stacy McCain is using this blog to promote Neo-Confederate ideology, he is nuts.

    But in many ways all of this is beside the point. Conservatives don’t go in and spend a bunch of time calling conservatives who disagree with them “racists”. Instead of focusing on what a (highly entertaining) but solo blogger not elected to public office may feel about these matters, conservatives concerned with racial issues might find the time to actually oppose the racially discriminatory policies of our federal government such as affirmative action, quotas, and “disparate impact” policies, which are blatantly discriminatory against whites (and increasingly, Asians) and which favored by virtually all Democrats and all-too-many Republicans.

    Conducting racial witch hunts on allies for something they may or may not have put in a blog post years ago is not the behavior any conservative should countenance. It is taking your eye off the ball and accepting liberal’s terms for what is acceptable debate about these issues. It is liberals who need to be on the defensive about their support of blatantly racially discriminatory policies. Leave the PC policing to our enemies, unless you want to be treated as one.

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  14. Well done. You're a better man I am, Stacy Din.

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  15. While it is heartening to see Charles Johnson finally get outed for what he is, let's all not soon forget the damage he has done to good people and their reputations simply because he felt like it and he could.

    For me, his attack on Fjordman was the beginning. Charles was clearly way over his head in any kind of critique of anything Fjordman wrote, but that didn't stop CJ from concluding that Fjordman was a white supremist fascist enabler. Charles' minions were not up to the task of following that particular episode because actually reading Fjordmans essays would require the kind of time and reading skills they obvious don't possess.

    So CJ's attack on Fjordman went by without much of a blip.

    Pamela Gellar was a different story. She was an easy target for CJ. A devout, proud Jew, and a helluva a pretty woman. A character. Great blog that, unfortunately for her, was/is not that pretty to read. Full of typos. Full of passion. She was ripe for CJ's scorn. Like all bullies, CJ knew she was no match for him.

    The fact that she proved him wrong must still drive him absolutely nuts. Pamela's videos of CJ and his sycophants are priceless.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFgKXAphIlc

    Diana West. Andrew Bostom. Anyone who even breathed the same air as Ron Paul. Robert Spencer. Robert Spencer? Sweet, reasonable-to-the-point-I-wanted-to-throttle-him Robert Spencer?

    Unbelievable. Charles Johnson has set out to destroy people. There is no other way to describe what he's done. I am very glad that he is finally being seen for what he is and all those people he has attacked can now move out from under his cloud.

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  16. Mr. McCain, you have six kids. Charles Johnson, as far as I know, has none.

    So, evolutionarily (?) speaking, you are the superior organism.

    He should just shut up.

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  17. You know Stacy, if you'll forever be graced with the epithet "neoconfederate raciss Stacy McCain," I think it would be sauce for the goose to refer to "proud subversive cocksucker Michaelangelo Signorile who wants your manchildren" any time you write about him.

    Having said this, I'd like it noted of record that none of our Neo-commie friends care very much about Senator Jim Webb's high regard for the gallantry of the Confederate soldier. I look forward to the day that Senator Webb becomes a Republican once more and he can be a "neoconfederate raciss" too.

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  18. How much longer before we see pictures of Charles Johnson and Sully smoking pot and bare-back riding?

    Tally-Ho boys, CJ's movin' left.

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  19. "How much longer before we see pictures of Charles Johnson and Sully smoking pot and bare-back riding?"

    I don't know, how likely is it that David Brooks would put down the tub of Country Crock and take a picture?

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  20. My answer to the Squire of Gothos can be found here:

    http://infinitemonkeyatthekeyboard.blogspot.com/2009/09/asdf.html

    The Romans had a word for him: "Anathema sit." (I know, that's two words.)

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  21. My first reaction to this debacle was, "Wow, Charles Johnson has managed to make David Frum seem calm and honorable by comparison."

    And then, as if on cue, Frum picked yet another fight with Glenn Beck to defend poor, demonized Cass Sunstein.

    Silly me.

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  22. '72 Dodge Dart

    My first car. Best part: A back seat the size of an aircraft carrier's flight deck.

    Good times...

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