NY Times Mag on LGF: It Now Reads Like a Blog Version of “Animal Farm”
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, January 23, 2010, 12:14 AM
Johnathan Dee wrote about far left blog Little Green Footballs in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. The piece titled “Right-Wing Flame Wars” was brutally honest. Personally, I thought this paragraph was spot on about LGF’s wacky practices:
No one ever said L.G.F., or any blog, had to be about the free exchange of ideas. “It’s his sandbox,” Pamela Geller says simply. “He can do whatever he wants.” 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.” Johnson seems obsessed with what others think of him, posting much more often than he used to about references to himself elsewhere on the Internet and breaking into comment threads (a recent one was about the relative merits of top- versus front-loaded washing machines) to call commenters’ attention to yet another attack on him that was posted at some other site.
On the home page, you can click to see the Top 10 comments of the day, as voted on by registered users; typically, half of those comments will be from Johnson himself. Even longtime commenters have been disappeared for one wrong remark, or one too many, and when it comes to wondering where they went or why, a kind of fearful self-censorship obtains. He has banned readers because he has seen them commenting on other sites of which he does not approve. He is, as he reminds them, always watching. L.G.F. still has more than 34,000 registered users, but the comment threads are dominated by the same two dozen or so names. And a handful of those have been empowered by Johnson sub rosa to watch as well — to delete critical comments and, if necessary, to recommend the offenders for banishment. It is a cult of personality — not that there’s any compelling reason, really, that it or any blog should be presumed to be anything else.
“This is one area where I did change,” Johnson admitted. “I realized you can’t just let it be free speech. It doesn’t work that way on the Internet. Total free speech is a recipe for anarchy when people can’t see each other.”
LGF- the Animal Farm of blogs.
Some things just fit.
The Other McCain and Jihad Watch have more on the reasonably accurate description of LGF’s gradual meltdown.
ADVERTISEMENT
-
Featured Story:
Busted!… Obama Headlined a DEMOCRAT SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA Event in 1996 **FLIER**
Published May 24, 2012 at 8:46 pm - 54 Comments
William commented:
All speech is free, but some speech is freer than others.
jorgen commented:
I wonder what happened to Charles Johnson. Did he suffer a nervous breakdown because he suppressed his leftwing political orientation in the years the Conservative effectively ran LGF?
I visit LGF once a month to get a good laugh.
Larry Sheldon commented:
“Johnson seems obsessed with what others think of him”
And you and too many people I thought well of obediently kiss he’s ass every time he wiggles it.
He and Sullivan continue to exist because and only because you do.
Auntie Em commented:
Perhaps Johnson needs to let go of the nonreal world of the internet and get a real life?
Anyone suggested this to him?
NeoKong commented:
Going over there now is like looking at a car wreck. I’m afraid to click on it. I can’t last five minutes over there it’s so bad..
Didn’t he say once that he was gay….?
bear commented:
Chucky & I had some exchanges re his psychotic rejection of Creationism (and God in general). I was struck by his (and his “fedayeen” commenters’) vehement denial that our Founding Fathers had any faith in God, or philosophical guidance from the Bible. How odd for someone who (at the time) claimed to be Conservative.
If someone broke his mirror he would have no friends at all.
Estragon commented:
I’m with Larry – CJ has effectively marginalized himself, except for the attention paid by his former friends on the right, which feeds his ego just as we fed Sullivan for lo these many years.
Better we should be compassionate and pray for Charles . . .
Redwine commented:
Charles lost his grip a long time ago. I got booted off (under another name) for writing him an email in support of a superb, upstanding blogger who he banned for being, I kid you not, a “Kahanist”.
Whatever.
It was very liberating to find myself among so many banned LGF members. It’s not worth wasting your eyesight on Crazy Uncle Chuck’s lousy lefty blog.
kokonut commented:
So, it’s true then. I’m not the only one who has witnessed this odd meltdown. I thought LGF was great during the year of Rathergate Memo. But noticed a continuing spate of odd responses and juvenilia emanating from Johnson. I simply stopped reading his site two years ago or so. Yet, I still wonder why this change? Maybe a tumor in the parietal lobe area? Or is he Phineas Gage re-incarnated?
scott commented:
I’ve tried several times to register there to let that idiot know how many blogs that I have contacted and successfully had LGF removed from their blogrolls. Maybe he will see this. My main goal was to get him off of Towmnhall.com. Messages to them did not work, so I finally called and spoke to the person who runs that particular section. On their next update of the site in a few weeks, LGF will be gone from Townhall.
jb commented:
–LOL
No matter the media pushing leftist is a losing deal.Help LGF race to the bottom.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/littlegreenfootballs.com
Lenny commented:
I stopped reading LGF in ’05 or’06. Is there a Darwin Award for blogs?
gary gulrud commented:
I think the Terry Shiavo case flipped CJ. Channeling Robertson and Glover–like Nebuchadnezzar CJ’s taking a walkabout from sanity, eating bugs and rolling around in his vomit.
Dim Bulb commented:
This guy sounds a lot like Senator Kucinich. Did you see his warning to Bill O’Reilly and Fox News on THE FACTOR?
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2010/01/23/kucinichs-fairness-doctrine-threat-oreilly
2hotel9 commented:
Chuck swirled down the toilet several years ago, and good riddance. I said in late ’05 that he was on drugs, his behavior fairly well indicates that. Sad part is I was a big linker for Chuck, early on. I linked LGF everywhere I went. Kinda wish I had not, perhaps his drug induced psychosis would have been delayed or never happened had he not been at the center of so much attention. Oh, well.
Linda commented:
So perhaps the guy just totally flipped out, went nuts and sits at his computer overseeing his blog “empire” while sitting in his underwear, drooling, staring at himself in the mirror while wearing a “I am Napolean” hat.
James Doulos commented:
The tone of the NY Times seems to identify Johnson as a far left blogger that could better identify with the political practices of Joseph Stalin than anything else. I don’t know, perhaps he’s looking for a job change – something he could be proud of, like one of Obama’s czar appointments.
If anyone ever wanted to see the reality of the liberal progressive worldview, Johnson gives a great demonstration (and warning).
J commented:
After reading that write up I have only one thing to add….who does he think he is, Obama?
RedBeard commented:
As many others have said, Johnson’s erratically combative behavior is most easily explained by either mental instability or substance abuse. The angry and irrational atheism seems to be just the nail where he hangs his hat.
It’s all very sad to watch, so I quit looking at his site some time ago.
bill-tb commented:
Hey whatever … Didn’t the Supreme Court just put the First Amendment in it’s proper place? So Charles, to you I say, whatever.
At one time I actually thought LGF was a decent site …
Swifty commented:
Although I never got a reason for suddenly not being able to login late in 2008, I think my opinion on evolution didn’t match his. Who knows?
Following that, I refer to his site as “Little Green Apes.”
antisocialist commented:
At one time I actually thought LGF was a decent site …
————————————————–
Well, at one time, it was pretty decent. Charles Johnson has succeeded in marginalizing himself to the point of maintaining something that can only be described as a vanity blog. He loves to see his name on screen, even if he’s the one who puts it there. The few times I have been able to tolerate a stop at LGF in the past few years, I have noticed that only a few people post there, they carry on their own little conversations and ridicule anyone who dares to disagree with the Most Awesome Chas.
Pitiful.
Gary commented:
I was booted from LGF after an evening of supporting the notion that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights that could not be taken away by man. For several hours I argued with the denizens of the Lizard Lounge who tried to convince me that rights came from people not God.
The next day I could not login.
Chisum commented:
So That’s It, The Lizard is Gay
Gay, no question about it. Probably shakes like a leaf every time he eats a hot dog.
http://dreadpundit.blogspot.com/2010/01/so-thats-it-lizard-is-gay.html
RedGrandma commented:
“L.G.F. still has more than 34,000 registered users, but the comment threads are dominated by the same two dozen or so names.”
Hmmm….I checked and I am still a “registered user” although I haven’t been to LGF in ages due to his alarming shift in ideologies. My son and I used to be fans and I had posted quite a few links over there in the past — frequently to posts on Gateway Pundit or to American Thinker. Perhaps if CJ sees this he will cancel my registration and realease the opening to someone more deserving, who follows his way of thinking. I suspect that a vast number of his 34,000 registered users are like me, former fans who just went away.
ProtestShooter commented:
Hell, I got booted for suggesting that Glenn Reynolds isn’t a racist, in my first comment there in over a year.
AliceL. commented:
I got booted a couple of years ago for suggesting that the Albanian chick whom he gets his news from concerning the Balkans may not be telling him the truth. Charles, “you can’t face the truth”. Charles also hates devout Christians and is obsessed with people who believe that G-d may have created the world. He also despises pro lifers and those who wish to protect innocent lives. He has shown his true intolerant lefty colors. His feud with Pam Geller and Robert Spencer is over the top. Johnson is a mental midget.
Tully commented:
***I suspect that a vast number of his 34,000 registered users are like me, former fans who just went away.***
Count me as one, RedGrandma. Last I checked a few months ago my login still worked, but after a quick look around and a few truly inoccuous comments of mine deleted for no apparent reason (accompanied by Omninous Warnings of Doom for Dissenters from Charles) I left, and removed LGF from my blogroll. It’s become one of the most unreadable sycophantic echo chambers to be found, one where delusions are harmonized and deindividuated into some sort of self-reinforcing hive-mind angst-bellow.).
When baldilocks posted that her blog had been delisted from the LGF roll and her own LGF-site access blocked, even though she had said nothing about Charles/LGF or posted anything there, well, the thick fug of mutant Lizardoid psychosis just got thicker. Her “thought-crime” was simply having been associated with PJM and being on their blogroll when Charles went psycho over the Other McCain.
dysolo commented:
I was booted from LFG after my first post where I mentioned that the attach at Ft. Hood is a terrorist attack. I feel better that I am in good company
jb commented:
Hmmm….I checked and I am still a “registered user”
—————————
I got curious and I checked and I am not registered anymore.A wasted site visit .
Brian commented:
I used to go there because he had lots of news about all things involving jihadists. It was a good place to find news about the muslim world. But then he started posting more and more openly antichristian material. So I just dropped it entirely. I also dropped hotair.com for the same reasons. I don’t really like going read sites just to get insulted. Like it or not the US became what it was because of its judeo christian roots, not in spite of them.
JDubya commented:
Judging from the fact that Charlatan Johnson has not put anything on his smoldering blog leads me to think that now his Orwellian antics have been outed by, get this, the NYT, it must be a curtain call.
I am sure that his Land Gone Fetid site will be nothing more than a DNC advertising shop for Apple iPhone pics/tips/tricks and Kindle troubleshooting.
Cheers
Sarge commented:
“Johnathan Dee wrote about far left blog Little Green Footballs…”
“Far LEFT blog?”
When did THAT happen?
Blue Collar Todd commented:
Johnson finally has a post responding to the New York Times. He grossly misrepresents how he controls his comments. Here is my exchange and subsequent banishment.
Kevin commented:
Charles Johnson has become the Keith Olbermann of the internet. Both somewhere out in la-la land.
MsHyde commented:
There is nothing wrong with Charles. He’s just
showing his true superficial colors. Reading his posts before 9/11 shows that. 9/11 was his
leverage to gain traffic, and then capitalize on
the money he could draw in. He is doing now what he’s always done, following the money.
That is his only goal. He’s not sick, he’s just
being himself.
Marsh commented:
What a joke. Using the anonymity of the internet as an excuse to ban people who you disagree with is pathetic. In one of his many rants about the evils of Intelligent Design I simply wrote one comment (my first ever) in the morning before I went to school and another in response to his henchmen later that same evening. Hardly spam and I was polite in both comments even though I was responding to his regular readers (who he calls “lizards”) who were insulting me at a level even lower than what I’ve heard from teenagers. I wasn’t even supporting the advocates of Intelligent Design. All I wrote was that most people in the world believe in God or Gods and that respecting their beliefs with a short and sweet annotation acknowledging that fact wouldn’t be the end of the world. I was then immediately banned.