Today marks the 1 year anniversary of husky, pony-tailed blogger Charles Johnson making his contrived, self-serving ideological pivot official on his blog. On November 30, 2009 Charles Johnson officially 'broke' with the vast right wing conspiracy in a lengthy, petulant screed titled 'Why I parted ways with the right'. The thing is, when he had been earlier linking to conservative sites like Pajamas Media or Hot Air, he claimed that he never was a conservative or part of the right to begin with- which made his blatant attention whoring all the more disingenuous.
There's also the notion that Johnson bailed because he wanted to remain on the side of whoever was in charge. During LGF's heyday, that was the Bush Administration- and now, during it's precipitous, inevitable decline, Johnson and his hangers-on are making every effort to rally around the Obama Administration and portray the GOP as greedy, racist, clueless obstructionists (which also proves that Johnson's pretty bad at math too, since the GOP won't be able to 'obstruct' much of anything until January when 63 new members will be sworn in to the House of Representatives).
Speaking of, I wonder how it feels to so publicly and vocally attach yourself to the Democrats and progressives before their worst Congressional losses since the end of WWII. Also keep in mind Johnson was pretty much finished with the right when Chris Cristie, Robert McDonnell and Scott Brown won their respective elections in late 2009 early 2010.
Still, in the spirit of the 1-year mark, I thought I'd make my own list of why I broke with Johnson's blog
10) Moderate and popular New England Republicans like Scott Brown supposedly are the spearhead for some massive Tea Party/Ron Paul/John Birch Society/Big Oil/Gold Merchant/Climate Denier conspiracy according to speculation by Johnson.
9) Johsnon's supposedly well thought out and introspective reasons for parting with the right read like a half-assed laundry list of boilerplate talking points from Media Matters or Act Blue. Seriously, it might as well have been titled 'Me! Me! Me! It's all about me! Now praise me for how principled I am!'. This is conduct I'd expect from an attention starved 6-year old, not a middle aged man with a once-credible blog that had tens of thousands of hits a day.
8) Besides longtime conservative posters, the 'purges' from LGF in late 2009 included a large number of both Jewish and Military veteran posters. I'm convinced that was by design on his part.
7) Open hostility or antipathy towards religion- with two notable exceptions; Islam and the Church of Climate Change
6) Encouraging disdain and outright dismissal of any news story that ran on FOX News (even if the same story was running concurrently on other news outlets) while posting as gospel truth opinion pieces from blogs such as crooks and liars, media matters or the Huffington Post.
5) Encouraging disdain and outright dismissal of any news story and public or media figure that appeared on the FOX network UNTIL Johnson's appearance on Alan Colmes' radio show....which aired on FOX News/Talk radio.
10) Moderate and popular New England Republicans like Scott Brown supposedly are the spearhead for some massive Tea Party/Ron Paul/John Birch Society/Big Oil/Gold Merchant/Climate Denier conspiracy according to speculation by Johnson.
9) Johsnon's supposedly well thought out and introspective reasons for parting with the right read like a half-assed laundry list of boilerplate talking points from Media Matters or Act Blue. Seriously, it might as well have been titled 'Me! Me! Me! It's all about me! Now praise me for how principled I am!'. This is conduct I'd expect from an attention starved 6-year old, not a middle aged man with a once-credible blog that had tens of thousands of hits a day.
8) Besides longtime conservative posters, the 'purges' from LGF in late 2009 included a large number of both Jewish and Military veteran posters. I'm convinced that was by design on his part.
7) Open hostility or antipathy towards religion- with two notable exceptions; Islam and the Church of Climate Change
6) Encouraging disdain and outright dismissal of any news story that ran on FOX News (even if the same story was running concurrently on other news outlets) while posting as gospel truth opinion pieces from blogs such as crooks and liars, media matters or the Huffington Post.
5) Encouraging disdain and outright dismissal of any news story and public or media figure that appeared on the FOX network UNTIL Johnson's appearance on Alan Colmes' radio show....which aired on FOX News/Talk radio.
4) Flags.....Good Lord. For a man of Charles Johnson's supposed intellect, he sure gets worked up (and frequently tripped up) by easily researched matters such as flags. Seriously.
3) Contrived guilt-by-association from Johnson, but only directed at those on the right. Apparently the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and talk radio were responsible for the death of a Kentucky Census worker or the Texas man who flew an airplane into an IRS Field office. But as far as the Discovery Channel gunman or homicidal University of Alabama-Huntsville professor Amy Bishop and their political leanings are concerned, then the 'No true Scotsman' argument applies there.
2) The other remaining posters at LGF. Ever have to visit some particularly activist, obnoxious, strident and in your face relatives for the Holidays? They're on the opposite end of the political spectrum, but will take advantage of having a quasi captive audience to lecture and browbeat you, even though it will do little to change you mind? That's what the majority of the 'new' LGF posters were like, emboldened after the 2009 bloodletting.
1) The administrators or 'monitor lizards'. Just as bad as the posters, only they had the ability to make your posts disappear for high crimes like mentioning President Barack Hussein Obama's middle name. Attempting to debate them was even worse, since they'd simply deny, dodge and obfuscate- then after moving around the goal posts on their terms, claim they had prevailed. 'Monitor lizards' were also known to type out lengthy, vitriolic screeds hoping that global warming skeptics would be rounded up and put into prison camps, opponents of a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be deported to North Korea and members of the Tea Party would be publicly shot and killed...and I won't even start with the disturbing fixation regarding Sarah Palin some of them maintain. Keep in mind these are the sort of individuals Johnson not only wanted to keep around on his blog, but granted them admin status while others were banned for pointing out how much the blog had changed.
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