'Wingnut hysteria!'

Right. A Nigerian jihadist tries to blow up a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, but if you think al-Qaeda was involved, you're a creationist neo-fascist ultra-nationalist nirther. (Safe non-LGF link.)

And we're the kooks, you understand. Me, you, Pamela Geller, Dan Collins, Mike Hendrix, Robert Spencer -- just a bunch of extremist wingnuts.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Bite Me! Comics Presents: The Green Lizard

Don't know how I missed this one earlier, but it's brilliant beyond words. A few choice panels:

Meanwhile, Noemie Emery -- say, doesn't "Noemie" sound vaguely Belgian? -- reports on the rise of Johnsonoid mind-reading in the Obama era:

"Hate" is no longer what you do or say, but what a liberal says that you think and projects on to you. You are punished for what someone else claims you were thinking. It hardly makes sense, but it does serve a political purpose. You could call it Secondhand Hate. . . .
Why have a routine tug of war over taxes when you can replay a great moral drama, casting yourselves as the just and the righteous, and your foes as the ignorant and benighted rabble you know in your hearts that they are?

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, notorious neo-fascist ultra-nationalist Darleen Click sees Obama as a "mood ring" and cites the latest eruption from Andrea Mitchell, comparing Sarah Palin to . . . wait for it . . . George Wallace.

'Anti-science and anti-gay'

Science and gayness go naturally together, see?

Why I Left the Right, Exhibit P for Pawlenty
Newsweek has an interview with Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, the very model of a modern GOP candidate, considered by many as a possible front runner for the Presidency in 2012: Anti-science and anti-gay.

What follows from that Charles Johnson introduction are quotes from Pawlenty's Newsweek interview, including this:

Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have "created" human beings over time.

Tto which Johnson responds:

Pawlenty has no problem with teaching creationism as science, but he wants to protect children from cross-dressing elementary school teachers, whether they actually exist or not. And he wants to make sure that gay couples don't receive medical benefits -- a position he's reversed as the GOP has moved farther and farther to the right.

But the GOP has not "moved . . . right" on this issue. Was the Republican Party more in favor of same-sex marriage benefits (or cross-dressing school teachers) in 2004? Or 1994? Or 1984?

Certainly Charles Johnson is not the only one peddling this "hijacked by extremists" myth about the GOP -- Frank Schaeffer seems to be making a career of it -- but it simply doesn't square with the facts.

What's really more interesting about the Newsweek interview is why the reporter felt the need to interrogate Pawlenty about his religious beliefs. Maybe they want to be extra-careful for 2012, after getting burned on that Jeremiah Wright deal last time around . . .

Resolved: Barrett Brown is a putz

Having noticed an earlier mention, the spokesman for The Godless Coalition e-mails to deny being an Avatar fan and added an "offer" to debate, to which I replied:

"Offer"? As if you were the soul of generosity, and I in need of your philanthropy. Do your work, do it well, collect your pay and knock it off with the humanitarian posturing. You've never done an unselfish act in your life, and by pretending otherwise, you undermine your own credibility. Better to be honestly selfish than to be falsely charitable.

As to the title of this post: William F. Buckley was once invited to debate British feminist Germaine Greer at the Oxford Union, but after an exhausting series of trans-Atlantic communications, they were unable to agree on the proposition to be debated. Finally, his patience exhausted by the annoyance, Buckley cabled back this offer: "Resolved: Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile."

Barrett Brown and I have nothing to "debate." In October, while I was working on the Sparkman story in Kentucky, he jumped on the LGF bandwagon. He has since promised to include an entire chapter about me in his forthcoming book. This would be a bizarre non sequitur in a volume evidently otherwise devoted to assailing various prominent pro-Israel pundits -- Charles Krauthammer, Marty Peretz, etc. -- which is why I suggested his publisher rename the book, People That Barrett Brown Doesn't Like (Mainly Jews).

My friends are my friends and my job is my job. Which explains why, however harmful the effort of Charles Johnson and others to hang labels on me, there is no flinch reflex on my part. Because I don't flinch at their accusations, as they are accustomed to seeing people do in such circumstances, they become enraged and vengeful, misrepresenting my response (or non-response, whichever the case may be) as some sort of admission.

What this game comes down to, as any disinterested observer discerns, is a question of authority, their status as accuser. Whatever harm they do to me is mere collateral damage in their campaign of ambitious vanity, as they seek to enhance their own reputations at my expense. (Did I mention "vanity"? Yeah: Barrett's obviously got a Google-alert on his name, so he'll read this, too.)

As long as there is work I can do, I'll do it, even if I have to go back to driving a forklift (which was what I was doing before I landed my first newspaper job). Readers who wish to see me continue blogging should hit the tip jar.

'Ridiculous homophobic . . . nonsense'

A commenter sent me a screen-cap of a post Charles Johnson put up last week, citing Media Matters (click to enlarge):

If you’re tempted to buy into the ridiculous homophobic "fistgate" nonsense currently all over the right wing blogs, trying to take down Obama education czar Kevin Jennings in a smear campaign right out of the McCarthy era, please read this: Anti-gay 'hate group' MassResistance is source for right-wing media attacks on Jennings . . .
Hate groups like Mass Resistance are now being promoted by Jim Hoft and Michelle Malkin and the rest of the right wing blogosphere -- out and out homophobic bigots from the Dark Ages.

Note CJ's pretzel-logic: Because MassResistance has been labeled a "hate group," anything they report should be considered "nonsense," and anyone who cites their reports is a "homophobic bigot." Nevertheless, you should ignore the potential for bias in CJ's left-wing sources: Media Matters and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Oh, and of all people to write about "a smear campaign right out of the McCarthy era" . . Charles Johnson?

CJ to claim that I am attacking him in 3, 2, 1 . . .

UPDATE: Rusty at Jawa Report says:

Look, we're no prudes around here. We like hot lesbian teacher posts as much as any one.

Right, but it's a different thing if you make "hot lesbian teacher posts" part of the public-school curriculum, as GLSEN evidently wants to do. Meanwhile, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit says:

If you have a nasty sexual fetish and want to teach it to children, don’t worry -- Media Matters is there to defend you!

Media Matters had now done 27 reports in defense of GLSEN. It's like they were trolling for random Google traffic on "fisting" or something.

Web site owner goes too far

A commenter on an earlier post described CJ as "apoplectic," so I went over to look and saw that he was linking coverage of the Roanoke, Va., trial of neo-Nazi leader Bill White:

Leonard Pitts' blood ran cold when he realized he was being targeted by a neo-Nazi leader, the nationally syndicated columnist testified Friday.
"I feel like I have been violated," Pitts told a federal jury in Roanoke.
In June 2007, after the Miami Herald commentator wrote a piece about black-on-white crime, he received an electronic diatribe from William A. White, the self-described leader of a Roanoke-based white supremacy group.
Addressed to "N----r Pitts," the e-mail and subsequent online posts by White listed the columnist's home telephone number and address along with a passage about whites rising up to slaughter blacks.
Pitts said he took the words as a threat. "He is essentially inviting them and daring them to commit violence," Pitts said of the intended message to readers of White's racist Web site.
But in the end, the jury must weigh the testimony of Pitts, whose livelihood is based on the First Amendment, against the rights of a defendant who is seeking the very same constitutional protection.
Lawyers for White say he made no direct threats against Pitts or a half-dozen other targets. If so, then White's words -- however hateful -- fall under the safeguard of free speech.

As I explained three months ago, when I met Bill White in April 1999, he was a 22-year-old self-proclaimed anarchist. Over the course of two or three years, White's Web site, Overthrow.com, changed from being the online home of the "Utopian Anarchist Party" to the (oxymoronic) "Libertarian Socialist Party." He later became a neo-Nazi and moved to Roanoke.

When he lived in the D.C. area in 1999-2000, White was actually a useful source for behind-the-scenes information on, among other things, the anti-globalization protests and the effort of Pat Buchanan's supporters to take over the Reform Party. After the 2000 election, however, White got mixed up with the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization run by William Pierce. As I wrote in September:

This was nearly a decade ago, and the timeline is quite fuzzy now, but I remember in particular one night (was it in 2002?) when I met Bill White at the Dubliner bar near Union Station. During that meeting, he made repeated references to his conspiratorial anti-Semitic beliefs, and I tried to tell him, in effect, "Don't go there." But he was determined to do so, and clearly was not interested in being persuaded to the contrary.
Bill stayed in touch for a while by e-mail and occasional phone calls. He went off my radar until, one day, I saw him on TV at some kind of Nazi rally in a brownshirt uniform, doing all the Sieg-Heil stuff. He eventually became entangled in legal trouble and, among other things, appears to have harassed Charles Johnson back when LGF was a conservative blog.

By 2007, White had gone so far off the rails as to threaten a nationally syndicated columnist. Leonard Pitts is a professional journalist. Writing is what he does for a living. The more success you have as a writer, the larger audience you reach, the more likely you are to become the target of hate.

What happened to Pitts very much resembles what happened to Michelle Malkin and Jeff Goldstein when they were targeted by online harassers. It's wrong and I suspect that, despite what Bill White's lawyers say about the First Amendment, the Roanoke jury will find that he crossed the line that separates merely "wrong" and illegal.

The post here which made Charles Johnson "apoplectic" suggeted that he "went off his meds" and was suffering from borderline personality disorder. If CJ is not clinically insane, he is at least emotionally unstable.

Becoming Johnson's particular idée fixe has not been a pleasant experience, but it has been instructive. For some people, life is a zero-sum game in which one person's success can only come at someone else's expense. Frustrated ambition fuels envy, which turns to rage and . . . Well, hate destroys people's souls.

The object of hate may be harmed (being repeatedly labeled a "white supremacist" by Charles Johnson hasn't been exactly what you'd call a career-booster for me) but the hater suffers far worse harm and, if unchecked, will ultimately destroy himself.

Being prosecuted in federal court for making threats (the Roanoke Times has continuing coverage of the trial) may actually be the best thing that ever happened to Bill White, if it causes him to step back and examine his own actions and attitudes. On the other hand, if he can't step outside the selfish zero-sum mentality, if he insists on viewing his experience from a standpoint of self-pity -- the Martyr Complex -- the judge might as well sentence him to life in prison.

As for Charles Johnson, I repeat that I have tried to heed the advice of Andrew Jackson's mother:

"Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself."

Good advice.

'Emotionally driven . . . not really rational'

Guess who used that phrase?

Blogging was originally an alternative to mainstream media, but now it's kind of been dominated, especially on the right, by people who are emotionally driven, and not very rational about a lot of things.

It's Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, in the most unintentionally hilarious interview evah!

Actually, it had sort of been brewing in my subconscious for a long, long time. . . .

(Ever since he went off his meds.)

Something just triggered it off, I don't know what it was. . . .

(He ran out of commenters to ban.)

I actually fought against being classified as a right-wing blog for a long time. . . .

(He also fought being classified as a textbook case of borderline personality disorder, with less success.)

I began to read everything I could get my hands on about [global warming]. Scientific journals, books. And the evidence just piled up and piled up, until I could no longer be a denier. . . .

(CJ's next subject of intense study? Seppuku.)

What started the break for me was when I realized a lot of the right wing bloggers, the so-called anti-jihad bloggers, were making alliances with groups, in Europe, that I consider to have fascist roots.

("Pamela Geller's breasts taunted me!")

I wish that more bloggers would start to think critically about what they're writing.

BWAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHA! Excuse me while I wipe the coffee off my laptop keyboard, Charles, but you couldn't earn a living as a writer if your life depended on it. And is there any blogger less capable of critical thinking than you? By comparsion, Andrew Sullivan is the soul of self-aware rationality.

EATEN BY WOLVES?

Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs Calendar is now available -- just five easy payments of $39.95! Featuring brilliant anti-fascist photography and yummy scientific recipes, including Andrew Sullivan's "custard surprise."

ORDER TODAY!

UPDATE (Smitty): Yeah, we'll just be adding a screencap of that one...

Stacy was heard to scream "I was told this was a dancing lessonnnnn!"

UPDATE II: Rave reviews for the LGF calendar:

"Wonderfully vicious and delicious!"
-- Vanderleun

"It was bound to happen!"
-- Paleo Pat

ORDER NOW!

Is Baldilocks onto something?

"LGF is gone. Charles Johnson is gone. Face it. He was never ours. How about we let him take his delusions and slanders and paranoias and obsessions and falsehoods with him?"
-- Baldilocks (Juliette Ochieng)

Juliette certainly is not alone in seeing recent blogospheric rumblings as a belated denouement of the LGF meltdown.

The 2001-2005 period, when the Global War On Terror (GWOT) coincided with the rise of the political blogosphere, was also the apogee of what might be called the Karl Rove Center-Right Strategy.

Seeking to maintain maximum support for President Bush and the Republican Party, the Rove strategy involved "triangulation" to neuter Democratic Party arguments on domestic issues. No Child Left Behind, Medicare rescription drug benefits, the 2006-07 push to grant amnesty or guest-worker status to illegal aliens -- these were typical policy initiatives of the Rove strategy.

Especially after the 9/11 attacks, this "center-right" approach was mirrored in the rhetoric of much of the conservative blogosphere. Many GOP-aligned bloggers were understandably eager to elicit the support of liberals, or members of traditional Democratic constituencies, for the administration's foreign policy:

"Oh, look, this person is gay (or black, or feminist, or Joe Lieberman) and yet is strongly in favor of winning the Iraq war."

Which was all fine and good, in terms of the immediate goal of rallying support for the GOP and the Bush administration. Yet by focusing narrowly on a short-term foreign-policy consensus, the Rove center-right approach sowed the seeds of its own destruction.

The Great Unraveling
Once the war became unpopular, and once Democrats were able to shift the political focus to GOP vulnerabilities -- the Mark Foley and Jack Abramoff scandals in 2006, the economy in 2008 -- the Republican electoral coalition that had triumphed in the 2002 and 2004 elections unraveled with astonishing suddenness.

By attempting to unite disparate constituencies without any general agreement on political principles -- except that the U.S. response to terrorism should be forceful and comprehensive -- the Republican Party under Rove's direction had in some sense replicated LBJ's Vietnam-era debacle.

The Democratic hawks who were so key to the Cold War consensus in the U.S. had believed that popular support for fighting communism abroad could be purchased by enactment of liberal domestic policies. And in LBJ's 1964 landslide win over Barry Goldwater, these Democrats believed they had seen the vindication of that strategy.

Yet by 1968, the bloody prolongation of the Vietnam war and the upsurge of domestic chaos -- urban riots and campus protests -- splintered that victorious 1964 coalition so badly that, at one point, polls indicated that Hubert Humphrey might finish third behind Richard Nixon and George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election. (An anti-Wallace campaign led by the AFL-CIO helped prevent that scenario.)

From Values Voters to Obama Nation
For similar reasons, the Republican electoral coalition that seemed so formidable in the wake of the 2004 election -- remember the liberal panic over the "moral values" exit-poll question? -- has proven less durable than advocates of the Rove Center-Right Strategy hoped. Like the Democrats of 1964, the Rove-era Republicans assembled a coalition fraught with unreconciled conflicts.

We should not be surprised that what has transpired in electoral politics has been mirrored in the political blogosphere. Andrew Sullivan was one of the first to leap off the Bush bandwagon, screaming "homophobia" as he went. More recently we've seen Charles Johnson take his leave from the post-Bush Right, screaming "ultranational neofascist theocratic extremism" as he goes.

It is easy to shrug and to dismiss these developments with two words: "Batshit crazy."

However, the batshit craziness is not without cause, and that cause is the failure of Republican leaders -- and prominent conservative communicators -- to articulate consistently the Reaganesque message of freedom.

Last summer, when arguments over the Wall Street bailout were coming to full boil, I used "Libertarian Populism" as the title of an American Spectator column. Nobody's offered me a book contract to elaborate on that "Libertarian Populism" concept, but that idea is exactly what you've seen at work in the past year in the Tea Party movement.

Those Tea Party crowds are responding to a pro-freedom message expressed in populist language, viewing Big Government and Big Business (think: Tim Geithner, AIG, the GM takeover) as corrupt partners in an insider-elite agreement to defraud taxpayers and disempower citizens.

Another 'Time for Choosing'
It was hardly a coincidence that Charles Johnson reacted so harshly to the Tea Party phenomenon. Johnson and his LGF cult have never been libertarian and were "populist" only insofar as that term meant mocking John Kerry and Muslims.

When the political alignment of 2001-04 -- forged by what I've called the Rove Center-Right Strategy -- collapsed in 2006-08, it was inevitable that some supporters of the former Republican coalition would not be part of whatever new coalition emerged to take its place.

Just as the rise of the Reagan coalition resulted in the obsolescence of the liberal Republicans who had been an important part of the Eisenhower coalition, the emerging Tea Party coalition will render obsolete many of those who were part of the G.W. Bush coalition.

As Reagan famously said in 1964, we are at a crossroads, a "Time for Choosing" and I trust that it is with sadness Juliette bids farewell to former friends.

I'd Rather Be in Pasadena

There are lots of things I'd rather be doing today than responding to someone's insistence that we have a big discussion about race. Nevertheless, as Mary Katharine Ham might say, it's on like Donkey Kong. The Dread Pundit Bluto commented on a previous thread:

I read the quote as referring to the inborn ("natural") survival trait that provokes an aversion to mutation and hybridization.

OK, this is one way to parse the word, although not necessarily what I had in mind, as I explained:

There's no need to go into anything "scientific" here, Bluto, since I certainly wasn't trying to get into a conversation with Wheeler (or anyone else) about genetics or heredity. I have already begun to extend this discussion, and haven't yet gotten to this part of it. Here, however, I can briefly say that I understand man to be a tribal creature by nature, prone to appeals of group interest.
While we today may identify ourselves by such labels as Republican or Democrat, Catholic or Protestant, Redskins fans or Cowboy fans, the underlying impulse is tribalism, and it is rooted in a basic sense of affinity that Edmund Burke addressed in his famous discourse about "little platoons." We ought to be able to discuss such things without risking the accusation of endorsing or advocating some particular opinion. But the gap between the "is" and the "ought" is as real as the gap between the reality and the perception. I am certainly no more racist than Charles Johnson, and perhaps a good deal less. Yet CJ evidently decided to advertise his moral superiority by making himself the Caped Crusader Against Racism, beginning with Pamela Geller, and you see what a fool he's made of himself in the process.
Thank God for foolish enemies and wise friends.

Which is basically what it comes down to, you see. Some people have tried to play the role of tribal chieftain among conservatives, and to decide who is or is not eligible for membership in the tribe. Charles Johnson's attack on Pamela Geller was his opening gambit in an intended purge, and his attack told us less about Geller than it told us about Johnson:

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has apparently decided that the problem with the conservative movement is that it needs more purges, and Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs seems to be his designated scapegoat. . . .
Pam is a good person and I would suggest that this guilt-by-association "urge to purge" is antithetical to the best interests of conservatism. You can't build a movement by the process of subtraction.

Let my friends go read "Fear and Loathing at Patterico," and see if they understand how my experience with Dennis Wheeler helped me spot CJ's gambit for what it was. As Benjamin Franklin said, experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. Having learned a few lessons in that "dear school," I was ready to administer a lesson.

Well, I'd rather be in Pasadena, with a month of relaxation before the Jan. 7 meeting between Alabama and Texas in the BCS championship game, and I am thankful for friends who contribute to the Pasadena tip jar.

Mrs. Other McCain came into my basement this afternoon and told me that after our budget discussion yesterday, she felt better, knowing that I was in charge. Ah, but who is really in charge? I woke up this morning to discover a commenter asking me to respond to Patterico, an entirely unexpected development. "Angels unwares," anyone?

The Discussion Continues . . .

Politically correct genocide

Saving the planet by eliminating Africans?

Rushing to the front of the race for the prize of Most Vomit-Inducing Environmental Initiative Ever Devised, the UK's Optimum Population Trust -- which counts such grandees as David Attenborough and Jonathon Porritt among its supporters -- has just launched PopOffsets. This quirkily named campaign is actually deeply sinister: It invites well-off Westerners to offset their carbon emissions by paying for poor people in the Third World to stop procreating.
In short, if you feel bad about your CO2-emitting jaunt to Barbados, or the new Ferrari you just splurged on, then simply give some money to a charity which helps to "convince" Third World women not to have children, and -- presto! -- the carbon saved by having one less black child in the world will put your guilt-ridden mind at rest.
The Optimum Population Trust is a creepy Malthusian outfit made up of Lords, Ladies, and Sirs who all believe that the world's problems are caused by "too many people." It recently carried out a cost-benefit analysis of the best way to tackle global warming and "discovered" (I prefer the word "decided") that every £4 spent on contraception saves one ton of CO2 from being added to the environment, whereas you would need to spend £8 on tree-planting, £15 on wind power, £31 on solar energy, and £56 on hybrid vehicle technology to realize the same carbon savings.

When Jill at Pundit and Pundette brought Brendan O’Neill's item to my attention, I was moved to remark:

What makes such idiocy as "population offsets" fashionable among the bien pensant sophisticates is their conceited belief that they possess a monopoly on good intentions, and that good intentions are all that matter. That nonsensical belief was thoroughly debunked by Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.
Once you understand the nature of this fallacy -- "Good intentions toward Group X will result in policy beneficial to Group X" -- you gain a certain contempt for the way liberals habitually celebrate their own good intentions by accusing conservatives of mala fides. In terms of public policy, it matters not a whit whether you love Africans, hate Africans or don't have an opinion about Africans; the test is whether they are actually benefitted by your policy. . . .

You can read the whole thing. I conclude by observing how elitists try to get away with sloppy thinking by stigmatizing their critics with labels like "anti-intellectual."

That method of argument-by-accusation should always arouse suspicion: What are they trying to hide? And the suspicion is compounded when the global-warming fearmongers require 140 private planes and 1,200 limousines to carry them to the "Climate Summit."

Coincidentally -- speaking of green lies -- Andrew Breitbart today found himself accused of murderous malice by . . . Charles Johnson. Laura W. at AOSHQ has more mendaciousness by Mad King Charles.

'Fanatical' Charles Johnson?

"All you need to know about this is to read what Johnson posted when the story broke that the Seattle cop killer suspect, Maurice Clemmons, had been granted clemency by Mike Huckabee. . . . I did not read of anyone on the left or the right attacking Huckabee's decision from a religious angle. Except Johnson. . . . This says it all."

And the 2009 'Strange New Respect' Award goes to . .

. . . Charles Johnson, for whom Andrew Sullivan performs the obligatory baptism-by-tongue-bath that initiates the Green One into the Obama cult.

This business of Andrew praising someone's "courage" as a way of celebrating his own heroic courageousness -- standing up to those homophobic haters! -- is an interesting thing to watch, once you learn to suppress your gag reflex.

If you can't stand to click to Sully's, try Ace of Spades HQ, where I'm sure they'll be rolling in the aisles over this one.

Charles Johnson Parts Ways With Reality

UPDATE 9:15 a.m.: Cops have shot and killed Maurice Clemmons, so I must catch up with that breaking story. However, I would be remiss if I failed to note this by Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch:

It is interesting that Johnson's hate list appeared just hours after I spoke at length with a New York Times reporter -- excited by his move leftward, they're doing a big story on Johnson. Coincidence? Of course!

Heh. "Question the timing!" Spencer has been one of Johnson's numerous victims, and we may suppose that the NY Times will portray Mad King Charles as a courageous truth-teller.

PREVIOUSLY: So I woke up at 4 a.m. and the first thing I did was check Site Meter -- we ended November with more than 260,000 visitors for the month. The next thing I did was to check Twitter, where I saw this message from John Rambo:

@willwilkinson @rsmccain is a fascist? Coulter is a white supremacist? Sarah Palin is antiscience & homophobic? And he ignores lib. lunacy!

This was my first inkling that libertarian Will Wilkinson -- a notorious dope fiend! arrest him! -- was on Twitter. So I followed him, went over to his blog and saw his engagement with the neo-Keynesian madness of Brad DeLong. Hmmm. Worthy blog fodder.

OK, so now it was time to check the blog fodder motherlode, Memeorandum and . . . whoa!

Little Green Footballs
Why I Parted Ways With The Right
1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.) — 2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

Exactly what prompted this? Why this? Why now? Your guess is as good as mine.

No, that's wrong. My guess is probably much better than yours, because I followed the whole thing -- LGF and the Madness of King Charles -- back to its roots. So far as can be determined, CJ's descent into madness began when Johnson attacked Pamela Geller for her attendance at the October 2007 Brussels conference.

CJ kept up the attacks, which expanded to include Jihad Watch, Gates of Vienna, Diana West and others -- serially throwing them under his Little Green Bus -- but the rest of the conservative blogosphere tried to ignore it. Shortly before the 2008 election, CJ declared Robert Spencer of JihadWatch unlinkable:

Paul Belien of Brussels Journal is deeply connected with the Vlaams Belang, and Robert knows this. The fact that he’s put them back in his blogroll speaks volumes about the choice he's made.
And Gates of Vienna has turned into a reeking sewer of racism. I'm done with Robert Spencer. And very, very disappointed in him.

You see the control-freak method here: CJ declares that a list of people and groups (in this case, Brussels Journal, Paul Belien, Vlaams Belang, Gates of Vienna) are unacceptable. Anyone who doesn't accept CJ's categorization is a "sympathizer" and therefore also unacceptable. Gates of Vienna quipped:

As the arbiter of membership in the Counterjihad, Charles Johnson has finally made it official: he’s a Counterjihad of One.

All of that happened before Election Day 2008. It wasn't until after Election Day that I finally spoke out:

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has apparently decided that the problem with the conservative movement is that it needs more purges, and Pam Geller at Atlas Shrugs seems to be his designated scapegoat. . . .
Pam is a good person and I would suggest that this guilt-by-association "urge to purge" is antithetical to the best interests of conservatism. You can't build a movement by the process of subtraction.

That was Nov. 5, 2008. In February of this year, I spoke out again when CJ attacked Ann Coulter and spoke out again in April when Johnson smeared Pamela Geller as a "Poster Girl for Eurofascists." Two days later, after CJ threatened Michelle Malkin (!) because she continued linking JihadWatch, I wrote:

Is there someone -- anyone -- who can stop this madness?

Apparently not. If the conservative movement would not acknowledge Charles Johnson's authority to decide who was and was not acceptable as a member of the conservative movement, then Johnson would not be a member of the conservative movement.

It would have been nice if he would have made his rules of engagement clear at the outset, or at least issued some kind of warning before he started denouncing people willy-nilly. But he has played the part of a scoundrel, and the damage he inflicted on the counter-jihad alliance -- those who, like Geller and Spencer, have dedicated themselves to fighting Islamofascism -- was quite real.

Giving us a glimpse at the bats that occupy his belfry, CJ randomly lumps in anti-war critics of the Bush administration -- Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell -- with Ann Coulter, et al. The nonsensical nature of his categorizations is exposed as he continues down his list of "reasons" for denouncing the Right:

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.) . . .
6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)
7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

Wait a minute: Alex Jones? The 9/11 Truther guy? Is there any conservative blogger who hasn't taken a swipe at that particular punching bag? And how does Limbaugh merit inclusion in the same category? But never mind that -- "climate deniers"? After the CRU revelations, isn't that pretty much everybody?

The conclusive evidence that Mad King Charles has slipped into the zero-self-awareness zone occupied by Andrew Sullivan comes when he points the finger at his fellow bloggers and former allies in the counter-jihad:

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

(Vinnie the Jawa replies: "Translation: Anyone that criticizes Charles Johnson.")

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

(Vinnie the Jawa replies: "You left out 'Little Green Football Archives.'")

Bingo, Vinnie! Johnson spent years doing exactly what he now accuses others of doing. But that was back when "anti-Islamic bigotry" was what The Cool Kids did and, at some point, CJ decided The Cool Kids should do something else.

When The Cool Kids wouldn't let CJ make the rules? Well, they weren't The Cool Kids anymore.

End of story. Except that notorious hate-monger Ace of Spades has a few things to say. Heh.

UPDATE: Carl in Jerusalem is among the Legion of the Banned:

Once upon a time, I was a mere commenter on Charles Johnson's Little Green Footballs. Eventually, I posted so many well-received comments on LGF that I started this blog. I admired Charles Johnson as one of the righteous gentiles. Life was good.
But like more than 1,500 other people, when Charles turned Left in November 2008, I became expendable and was eventually banned from posting on LGF.

Admit it, Carl: You're a hate-monger. Just like Ace of Spades. And Pamela Geller. And Robert Spencer. And Ann Coulter. And . . .

UPDATE II: To theorize an answer to the "why now" question about CJ's denunciation, how about his mention of SIOE (Stop the Islamicization of Europe)? Just yesterday, Pamela Geller put up a post with this headline:

Atlas Urges Jews Worldwide to Support SIOE, Ignore Dhimmi "Jewish Councils"

This may have provoked Johnson's rage. So congratulations again to Pamela, whose knack for accidentally pushing CJ's buttons is commendable.

What obtrudes in CJ's hate-list modus operandi is that he cannot rationally prioritize dangers. Pamela Geller, creationists, Tea Party crowds, global-warming skeptics and Sarah Palin are, in the demented mind of Mad King Charles, as dangerous as al Qaeda. Or me.

Speaking of me, friends are jealous of my conspicuous inclusion in Johnson's demonology. It has been his evident intent to deprive me of my livelihood as a journalist: Why else did he bide his time before choosing to attack Pajamas Media for paying me to cover the 9/12 March on DC? (Roger Simon is a friend and I'd been contributing to PJM since May 2008, but after 9/12, PJM editor Rick Moran rejected all my offers for further contributions, which is why none of my coverage of the Bill Sparkman case or the NY23 campaign appeared at PJM.)

So I've enjoyed the laughter as Johnson (who pulled out of PJM in 2007, which some at the time suspected was due to Johnson's resentment of Michelle Malkin) has destroyed his own once-successful site and resorted to the blogospheric equivalent of "busking." Despite CJ's transparent malice, I have kept in mind the advice Andrew Jackson got from his mother:

"Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander, assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself."

Whatever harm CJ has inflicted on me or anyone else, his "success" in turning Little Green Footballs into an unprofitable imitation of Daily Kos is as much vindication as any of his victims can expect.

Vindication, however, doesn't pay the bills. So if you feel an urge to hit the Big Tip Jar Of Hate -- hey, don't fight the feeling.

UPDATE II: Jules Crittenden provides the crazy-hating exegesis and adds this comment:

I would have preferred a detailed description of the moment when all that inclusive thoughtful concern hit him like a silver bullet, when the switch flipped on the bright shining light on the road to Damascus, when . . . enveloped by its warm, mentally balanced, nurturing embrace . . . he started frothing about the hateful craziness.

Of course, CJ hasn't traveled the road to Damascus, but the road to Bedlam. Rhetorical engagement might require us to stipulate, hypothetically, that perhaps not all liberals are insane. But Johnson's addition to their ranks undermines that hypothesis.

Dan Riehl has seen enough blog-wars to be war-weary. He observes, "When even tempered blogger James Joyner fisks you into ridiculousness, you know you've, well, jumped the lizard, I suppose," and further comments:

Chuckles isn't having an awakening, he's simply living out whatever the hell it is that passes for a reality of sorts in his cyber-induced dream-dementia of a world.

Dead on the money, Dan. My 8-year-old son just brought me an egg-salad sandwich and chips. He made the egg salad himself, from the brown eggs provided by the chickens in our backyard.

That's reality. My wife, my kids, my friends -- reality.

The abstract symbolism of ideological debate on the Internet? Well, at some point, if you start taking that crap too seriously, you can become detached from reality, and begin ranting at people as if they were merely symbols, projected visions of your own externalized fears.

Those who take the historical view of such things will be tempted to wonder: Is the fact that CJ first signaled his madness by lashing out at Pamela Geller entirely coincidental?

Merely a point to ponder while I remind you of my own reality, where people at the heating-oil company and the cell-phone company expect bills to be paid or they'll shut me off. Hit the Big Tip Jar of Hate.

Reply to Barrett Brown

The communication director of the Godless Coaltion sent an e-mail last night, taunting me about the allegatiions made against me by himself, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and others. I replied:

A rare occasion, Mr. Brown, when any of those who've chosen to attack me even bother attempting to contact me. Of course, no one ever contacts me in advance: "Hey, did you actually write X, Y, Z? If so, why? What did you mean? What are your opinions about these things?" Instead, they leap to assumptions (if it's on the Internet, it must be true) and the fact that certain things have been endlessly repeated online leads to the assumption that these things are true.
How often, since Charles Johnson began attacking me, have I emphasized that, during the years I was at the Washington Times, I was not permitted to address these allegations? And how often have I remarked that "white supremacy" is quite contrary to my observed conduct among those who actually know me?
You are, I gather, a young man, and quite arrogant. Not an unusual combination, really, but neither should you mistake your own arrogance for knowledge. Try Googling my name in combination with the phrase "Hayekian insight." There are in the near-infinite number of things you don't know certain facts that may, I suspect, be far more important than those tacts you know. And it may be that you are mistaken about some things you accept as facts.
Well, I've had more time to study all this sort of thing than you could imagine. You desire to make me look like a villain, for whatever selfish motive, and therefore assemble a prosecutor's case -- the Ransom Note Method. This you present with a lot of noise and clamour: "A-ha! I have exposed the dangerous villain, whose stealthy evil had never been fully known until now!"
Now, what is *expected* of me in response is that I will address your "evidence" point-by-point or, failing that, that I will Deny, Denounce and Repudiate: "Oh, I'm not actually friends with Person A, and I abhor the thought of being associated with Person B."
Ah, but there is never an end to it, you see? Were I to answer charges A, B, C, you would then proceed to interrogate me about D, E, F, etc. To address your accusations in such a manner would ultimately avail me nothing, while tacitly acknowledging your authority to act the part of the interrogator. Further, such a response would ssuggest that there is some legitimate cause to suspect my good faith, to cause others to believe that perhaps I harbor a hidden hatred which must be rooted out and renounced. You invite me to a Maoist re-education camp, with yourself playing the role of commissar. The cloud of suspicion is thrown upoin me, and I must prove myself innocent!
Except that I don't. We live in a free society and I am not even a candidate for public office. I am not paid for having the correct opinion about anything. Opinions might be profitable to Bill Kristol or George Will, but I am not one of those big-shot pundits. It is my skill and hard work, and not my opinions, which are my stock in trade.
What you and Johnson and others apparently wish to do is to cast upon me a stigma, which you may then use as part of a campaign of guilt-by-association smear against various of my friends. You seem to assume that my friends are fools and cowards, and will automatically disassociate themselves from me, lest you then say, "A-ha! So-and-so associates with Robert Stacy McCain, who is a hateful racist!"
Except that I'm not a hateful racist. And this, sir, is the big point that you seem to have missed entirely. People know me, and the people who know me know that I have no hate in my heart, and if they felt it necessary to speak up on my behalf, you might be surprised at who would sing my praises. Their silence you mistake for fear, is rather an expression of their contempt for your malicious behavior.
Whatever you say about me, I am certain you will fail to convict me of hate, Barrett. I don't even hate you.

Best regards,
--Robert Stacy McCain
Co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of DONKEY CONS: Sex, Crime & Corruption in the Democratic Party

Strange to say, writing that e-mail cheered me up. I had been feeling kind of down in the dumps, but there is nothing like teaching a seminar to cheer me up. Pay attention, class. This might be on your final exam.

Government-funded expert warns of 'resurgence in right-wing extremism'

"We are in the middle of a resurgence in right-wing extremist criminal activity that really started following Ruby Ridge and Waco," said Mark Pitcavage, director of the Ohio-based SLATT (State/Local Anti-Terrorism Training) Program. The program, for law enforcement agencies, is conducted in conjunction with the U.S. Justice Department and the non-profit Institute for Intergovernmental Relations.
"It shows no sign of letting up at this point," said Pitcavage, who earned a doctorate from Ohio State University as one of the few expert scholars in right-wing extremism.
-- Seattle Post Intelligencer, Aug. 12, 1999

Oh, the dangerous right-wing menace, about which the federally-funded Dr. Pitcavage warned us 10 years ago -- which happened to be two years before Mohamed Atta and friends struck on Sept. 11, 2001.

Janet Reno's "anti-terrorism" effort was misdirected at the wrong threat. Thought about that lately?

Neither had I, until last night. It's a long story, as I've said many times before.

Oh, the joys of Internet anonymity!

Kind of weird how I finish dealing with one troll, turn around and encounter even more. It's very difficult to "consider the source" when you've got no idea who the source is.

Whatever. Some fanatically diligent character has decided to do the Ransom Note Method on me, using the familiar recycled chaff-cloud hodgepodge of This, That and the Other.

Suggestion: Stop the obsessive Googling, and try Nexis-Lexis. Every byline I ever contributed to The Washington Times -- and there were hundreds over the course of a decade -- is available via Nexis-Lexis. There may be stuff you like or don't like, but at least you'll be dealing with authentic materials.

At least the pseudonymous Ransom Noter was using his own bandwidth, rather than trying to smear me in the comments of my own site. That crap gets old, especially when its done at the behest of LGF's totalitarian dictator, who bans anybody who downdings Sharmuta.

LGF: Latest BWAAAHAHAHA Update

An anonymous reader comments:

LGF Traffic Report: 72% = ex-LGF'ers watching the train wreck , 18% = Leftists watching to see if it's all real, 5% = Amazon shoppers looking for a refund, 5% = photography nuts looking for still shots of the Pacific Ocean.

Folks, I hate to keep going back to this bottomless well of 100% pure guano crazy, but we are witnessing a truly world-historical online self-immolation. Not since the Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst implosion of Culture 11 has the blogsphere seen anything like this.

BTW, this was headlined Friday, but good work deserves more attention. William Teach at Pirate's Cove made a special request for a cartoon from TFMo at Christmas Ghost, and if you'll click the image below you can see the whole thing:

(IDs of the Baby Bloggers.) Also, stay 'tooned for the latest LOL from Bite Me Comics!

Everybody's spellbound by what Jethro Tull might have called the "shuffling madness" of Mad King Charles and the Little Green Meltdown, and the ex-LGFers at Blogmocracy 2.0 are your go-to source on the All-Time Loser.

Let me end this latest episode of the Johnson Chronicles by saying that I make no apologies for selling ads or rattling the tip-jar:

• From Day One, this has been a proudly capitalist blog, and there is no shame in a direct fee-for-service arrangement between writer and reader. Hit the tip jar.
• Editors? We don't need no stinkin' editors! Hit the tip jar.
• Following the philosophy of Sam Walton, this blog is a low-overhead, deep-discount operation. We eliminate the middleman and drop-ship the brilliance direct to you at low, low prices! Hit the tip jar.

Think of it this way: I'm Michelangelo, you're the Pope. If you dig the crazy scene on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, then hit me for $2, $5, $10 -- whatever you think it's worth. Be a patron of the blogging arts and hit my tip jar.

How is Charles Johnson like a gnat?

Now I understand why I've been getting phone calls and e-mails the past three days: "Hey, are you OK?" Or: "I just want you to know, I think Charles is crazy . . ."

Or, occasionally: "Sue the bastards!"

Godless twerp Barrett Brown (spokesman for the Lemming Herd of Faithless Fools) had posted something I noticed a couple of times in the SiteMeter, but I never clicked over to read it until the wee hours this morning. Why? Simple: I've been very busy, and the link wasn't throwing much traffic and, in case you haven't noticed, I'm all about the traffic.

I Write For Money and, in the blogging business, the formula is simple: Traffic = Money, or at least the potential for money. If you ain't got traffic, your potential for the blog-o-bucks is zilch. Converting traffic into cash ("monetizing" traffic, as they say) is the eternal arcane quest of online alchemists, but focus first on growing your traffic. Everything else follows from that.

With a wife, six kids and impatient creditors, having quit the newspaper business after more than two decades to go freelance and establish an independent career online, perhaps you can understand why I shrug at inconsequential fools like Barrett Brown, who cites Charles Johnson as his authoritative source for this:

A fellow editor at the Washington Times once characterized McCain as "an ill-tempered racist who sat on the other side of my desk for many years and carried on loud telephone conversations almost every day full of racist and ultra-right comments, and often got into loud verbal fights with both reporters and editors in the newsroom."

He can't even get his lies straight! First of all, the former colleague was not an editor, but a once-notable reporter, whose life went downhill after his wife left him. This person's character, and the motives for his attempted character assassination of me, are well-known to many reputable people who can testify as to the truth of the matter, which is contrary to the quoted description. (Recycling the three-year-old "investigative journalism" of Max Blumental? Pathetic.)

Given Brown's ineptitude as a journalist -- monomaniacal fanatics seldom make good reporters -- I would have been content to ignore him altogether. However, in the Great Godless Circle Jerk of Fools, Brown cited Mad King Charles who then praised Brown's "excellent piece" as a basis for calling me a "vile racist creep."

That was Thursday morning and I didn't even notice. The traffic impact was somewhere in a range between "negligible" and "insignificant," and since Wednesday -- with recreational time off to make fun of my idiot cousin Meghan -- I've been quite busy with the key NY23 congressional contest. (Friday night I filed 1,200 words.)

Somebody had posted a link to the LGF item at my Facebook page Thursday but I don't check my Facebook account very often, and it wasn't until after midnight Saturday -- after the undefeated Crimson Tide crushed South Carolina 20-6 -- that I saw the link.

The most ludicrous aspect of this particular reiteration of Charles Johnson's attack on me, with the assistance of Barrett Brown, is the ludicrous assertion that I am somehow emblematic of "The Fall of the Conservative Movement."

Riiiiiiight. Because we know how much CJ and BB care about the Conservative Movement.

A few days ago, amid the 500 or so comments on an Ace of Spades HQ post about the pathetic decline of Little Gestapo Fascists, someone linked to an Alexa analysis of LGF's traffic. To paraphrase the commenter's question: Is the Madness of King Charles -- his "Race Detective" attacks on Pamela Geller, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, etc. -- merely a bizarre sort of traffic-baiting?

Just out of curiosity, I entered my own URL into the Alexa calculus. Lo and behold, I was surprised to discover that in recent months, there have been days when traffic to my little blog has exceeded the once-mighty LGF.

If Johnson's site occasionally has been eclipsed by a Blogspot site operated by an obscure middle-aged ex-newspaperman who has only been blogging full-time since March 2008, and who has never exceeded 500,000 page-views in a month . . . Dude.

Babylon the Great is fallen! What an embarrassing failure he has become! And if you compare LGF to Michelle Malkin's Hot Air -- would you be surprised to learn that Charles spent his Saturday trying to prove that Hot Air readers are about "neo-Nazi white supremacist stuff, of the Christian Identity variety." (For posting items about Mexico?)

One might easily imagine how it curdled Charles Johnson's blood last month when he saw me providing my friend Stephen Green with exclusive reporting live from the 9/12 March on D.C. -- which was what I was doing when CJ first attacked me.

Envy is an ugly emotion, suited to small people.

All of this I write not to defend myself, but merely to assure my friends and family that everything is fine. Nothing to worry about. I got Instalanched last night and all is right with the world. Just the other day, I responded to a liberal blogger's recycling of secondhand smears:

Having long ago discovered that silence is often the best response to smears, it is nonetheless annoying to see people who have never met me claim to know my opinions on subjects about which they have never bothered to ask me themselves --although my e-mail address is public knowledge and my personal phone number is known to hundreds of journalists in Washington.
To quote the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts, and I am damned tired of people stating as a fact that my opinion is such-and-such, based on secondary sources of dubious veracity and questionable motives.

So, to my worried friends and kin: Don't sweat it. I'm OK. The people who know and trust me are more important than the insignificant fools who attack me. I'm trying to raise money for a reporting trip to upstate New York this week, if you want to contribute to the Shoe Leather Fund, but other than that, don't sweat this latest little annoyance.

It's like a gnat trying to rape an elephant. Whatever pleasure the gnat derives from the experience, if the elephant notices at all, it's only an itch.

UPDATE: How insanely self-obsessed is Mad King Charles? This was posted at 4:54 a.m. ET. Exactly four minutes later (9:58 a.m. GMT = 4:58 ET) Johnson grabbed a Google cache, before I even had time to correct the first-draft typos. (Note that, in the Google cache version, the last sentence of my original post concludes ". . . it only an itch"; I'd omitted the possessive.)

That was the version of the post linked at LGF for display to handful of remaining readers, as evidence of my alleged mean-spiritedness. Never mind Charles' malicious attempt to deprive me of freelance income as a reporter/columnist for Pajamas Media, you see: He is always the victim, and therefore any word I write in my own defense is proof that I am being cruel toward Obergruppenfuhrer Banningstick and his Beer Hall brownshirts.

Anyway, it's a sad testament to Johnson's pathological narcissism that clanging alarms go off at LGF HQ every time his name is mentioned anywhere on the Internet, and his minions scramble to grab the Google cache, like so many spaniels fetching downed quail for a birdhunter. Amazing that such a leader should have such loyal followers.

Little Green Footballs: Putting the M Back in S&M!

Wait 'til Sharmuta sees this . . .

Just noticed that I'm included on Steve Sailer's Notorious Blogroll O' Hate, along with crypto-fascist Mickey Kaus, ultra-paleo Daniel Larison, neo-Canadian Kathy Shaidle and pseudo-hypocrite Jeremy Lott.

Thanks, Steve. Owe you one, my Flemish comrade.

UPDATE: Warning! Major Coffee-Spew Hazard! Do Not Click The Image Below Unless You Are Prepared For Serious BWAAAHAHAHAHA!