It was the blog post heard ‘round the world. When Charles Johnson wrote Why I Parted Ways With The Right in the space of a few minutes and posted it on his popular Little Green Footballs blog, he had no idea the firestorm it would set off. Nasty denunciations, death threats and a New York Times magazine feature article later, Charles Johnson joined me for a lively discussion about what happened to him, the Darwin-hating, know-nothing Creationists and the frenzied insanity (and racism) of the anti-Obama right. Part one of two.
 

Yeah, I’m not the one who posted the deleted comment. It’s so not my style. I never even saw it before it was deleted. 

It’s hard to take the critics seriously when they get stuff like that wrong, so easily.  Y’all are just walking through life with your fingers out, pointing and blaming continuously.

“looking forward to your interviews with david duke, don black and ernst zundel next.”

Yes, we should hear from both sides. And it will take at least three people to take on Charles.

How do I unsubscribe from this? Most sites make that easy to do.

Obdicut:

“It’s hard to take the critics seriously when they get stuff like that wrong, so easily.  Y’all are just walking through life with your fingers out, pointing and blaming continuously.”

So “the critics” are a single entity now, all responsible for each other? Then should I call you a liar since your fellow apologist RFM outright lies in this thread:

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/charles_johnson_why_i_parted_ways_with_the_right_part_ii/

?

First I was a hippie, then I was a stockbroker, now I am a hippie again -The Bobs

I was a moderately frequent poster on LGF in the years that immediately followed 9-11, but four or five years ago the incendiary and generalized anger I first felt beginning on that terrible day began to cool and my visits there declined fairly precipitously.  While I continue to believe that there are elements of the Islamic faith and beliefs of far too many of its adherents that are beyond the pale and have no place in a decent and civilized world, I returned over time to a more, dare I say it… nuanced view of that allowed for me to draw distinctions based on my observations as to individual acts and conduct.  I would guess that many folks went through the same sort of thing as a result of the September 11 attacks.  All that said, I could not possibly justify to myself condemning all Muslims or Arabs today for the acts of a few and I regret that, on Little Green Footballs, there is evidence in the form of posts I made that at one time I thought different.

It seems, though, that Charles Johnson is stuck today in the place where I was when I frequented his site.  About a year ago, I happened by there and something he had posted about all conservatives in effect being mouth breathing knuckle dragging racists caught my eye.  I consider myself basically to be conservative in my views and took exception- none of those qualities defined me or other people on the right who I respect and who I believe represent the mainstream.  I made a couple of posts in the discussion thread that followed pointing this out and suddenly found myself, as it were, on the street with my account at LGF terminated.  Charles even graced my leaving with a post that said, in effect, good riddance.

I don’t obsess about stuff and figured, “well, it’s his website.”  Over the past year, though, I have read enough in the blogosphere to figure out that, if you were around LGF in say, 2003 or 2004, it is very likely that, like me, your account has been banned and, as appears to be happening lately to many, Charles is busily “disappearing” all of your posts, as if, I guess, to allow himself to pretend that he never really countenanced LGF going there in the first place.  Gone are the days of “tinfoil hats,” “St. Pancake,” and features like the “Work Accident of the Day” or “Got Another One.”  Apparently he can no longer trust his Lizardoid minions to follow his lead, so he declares the 2009 “Fiskie” winner (surprise, surprise… Glenn Beck) instead of allowing, as in the past, open voting.  The problem, though, is that in seeking to re-invent LGF as Daily-Kos Lite, Charles has become really more boring than anything.  There’s nothing he does there that can’t be found presented in a far more interesting and intellectually challenging manner on ten other left-liberal sites.  His take on the political issues of the day is mind-numbingly pedestrian- it seems that once Charles left his niche as the arguably pre-eminent warblogger, whatever muse inspired him to create LGF as a place where issues were presented and discussed with genuine (if, see above, sometimes wrongheaded) passion and conviction didn’t just leave him- it fled.

I am guessing that Charles Johnson today has wholeheartedly bought into the notion that there is no bad publicity.  His increasingly public presence in the blogosphere strikes me as little more than a calculated effort to try to drive traffic, which has certainly dried up a bit as of late, to LGF.  Most of his current posting has nothing to do with any exchange of ideas- it is just simply attacks on folks who used to be his like-minded compatriots or LGF “lizards.”  Sadly, his tone is frequently thuggish- his threats to “out” the identity of people who simply followed his ample lead in posting once upon a time at LGF are particularly sad.  I suspect, though, as inconsequential as LGF has become, that the second hand is on its downward sweep in the last of Charles’ 15 minutes of fame and we can all, as a phrase goes that he used to make a great deal of fun of, move on.

Just my last 2 cents, Charles.  But I know you’re not listening anyway- just like now, it was always a self-aggrandizing pose.

D. Edgren

I don’t use the rhythm method and its 4 kids and holding for almost 3 years now. 

I am still fat.  But I’m on a new diet.

Andy van Hitler, is that you?

Charles’ weight problems seem to be more recent.  Less crack, more weed, if I had to guess.

And I guess fear of supposed psycho stalkers that drove him to a gated community probably has cut back on the bike riding.

The supposedly dangerous “wing nuts” Chuckles battles against now aren’t the Theo van Gogh/Swedihs cartoon painter type killers/attempted killers.

The IRS plane bomber sounded like a communist. 

Nah, the dangerous ones are lefties.

Well, there is Neal Horsley, the dumbass exception that proves the rule.  Elton John hasn’t recorded a decent song in three decades, but it is no reason to kill him.  But he sounds all talk and no action, anyway.