Tossing Little Green Footballs Out Of The Game

I don't normally get involved in Blog wars, but I'm going to make an exception here, for various reasons that I'm sure will become clear.

As some of you may have noticed, I delinked Little Green Footballs from Joshuapundit about a week and a half ago. This has been coming for awhile, but it's the only time I've ever purposely delinked a live blog from my list.It's entirely due to the behavior of the self-styled Lizard King, Charles Johnson. And I should have done it a long time ago.

I simply don't like cowards who engage in character assassination, lies and innuendo for their own twisted purposes, especially when in every case, they've been the aggressors.

This started a couple of years ago, when Charles got his panties in a knot and started banning 'fascists' - you know, people like my friends Pam Geller at Atlas and Dymphna and the Baron over at Gates of Vienna who haven't got a fascist bone in their bodies but do take the menace of Islamist jihad seriously. Robert Spencer, the brilliant author and proprietor of JihadWatch was next and it continued from there.

I didn't get very involved back then. Like I said,I'm not a fan of blog wars and Spencer, the Baron and Dymphna and especially Pam ( they have her picture in the dictionary next to the word 'courage') could take care of themselves perfectly well, believe me. So I simply continued to link to and communicate with all the parties. I probably should have dumped Charles back then, but Charles had been helpful to me back when I was starting out, throwing me traffic and I had a lot of respect for his past work. I naively thought that this was simply a personal snit between a few essentially decent people and that it would eventually resolve itself. After all, we were all on the same side, weren't we?

In my naivete, I even went to the trouble of politely e-mailing Charles, expounding on this point of view and suggesting it was time for everybody to talk to one another, iron out the differences and get back to some serious work. I even offered to help as a go-between.

He didn't bother to reply, but knowing what I know now I'm surprised I wasn't his next target.

As time went on, what used to be an important place on the net deteriorated into a fetid swamp with pretty much three creatures inhabiting it - the Lizard King's increasingly vicious attacks on his ever increasing list of personal 'enemies', Christians and 'creationists', links posted by the chosen Lizardoids on the site and Charles' occasional music videos.

Meanwhile , the body count continued - Andrew Bostom, Ann Coulter, David Littman, FOX News, Debbie Schlussel, Diane West, Melanie Phillips, Michele Malkin, Richard Miniter,Rush Limbaugh, Vodkapundit, Israel Matsav, Glenn Beck, Sigmund, Alfred and Carl, Geert Wilders, the Brussells Journal,Snapped Shot, Dr. Rusty at The Jawa report, Tundra Tabloids, Yid With Lid..hell, probably two thirds of the people I link to, any of whom could write and think circles around CJ and eat his intellectual lunch in a New York minute.

They were all smeared as racists and fascists and attacked by The Lizard King with classic leftist tactics - guilt by association, quotes taken out of context, innuendo and when nothing else would serve, outright falsehood. Daily Kos has nothing on Charles in that department.

I'm not sure exactly when I wound up on the enemies list or why, but it doesn't really matter. I'd stopped hanging out there in any serious way a long time ago. My reasoning was that it's his site and if he chooses to turn it into a echo chamber and a place for his personal vendettas, he had that right. I simply moved on.

Last week though, Charles finally crossed the line and went certifiable .

He started out by attacking Pajamas media for headlining a story by Robert Stacy McCain at The Other McCain, calling him a racist and white supremacist and smearing Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit as - wait for it - ' a borderline illiterate bigot'.

I don't know either of these gentlemen personally except by repute and by what they've written, but I have a pretty good nose for bigots and if I had any doubts on that score, they wouldn't be on my blogroll. Also, I knew that it was Charles talking, I'd seen how he operated in the past and having looked at his 'evidence' on McCain ( and no, I won't link to it) it's the usual rancid melange of lame, nudge nudge wink wink garbage, guilt by association and 'have you stopped luring children into your gingerbread house' nonsense.Frankly, it's embarrassing that anyone would expect it to be taken seriously.

Aside from that, my old pal and Council mate Jimmie Bise Jr. vouches for McCain and that's more than good enough for me.

And Jim Hoft, 'a borderline illiterate bigot'? Was Lizard Boy even in his right mind when he wrote that? Hoft has more class and brilliance in one hand than Charles has in his whole body.

Hoft mostly chose to ignore Johnson. McCain mounted a superb defense in three separate parts that reminded me of nothing so much as Bruce Caton's account of Stonewall Jackson drawing in and humiliating the hapless General Pope at Second Manassas, and I suppose he had to, but frankly he gave this garbage far too much of his valuable attention when there are bigger and more important battles to be fought.

We do, after all, have a country to save.

The rest of the conservative blogosphere proceeded to either delink or be delinked by the Lizard Kingdom, and that's pretty much where things stand.

So why did a once important conservative blog burn all those bridges so gleefully? I have a theory.

Working on the Left side of the street is fairly easy money, especially if you have creds as a past 'conservative' who's Seen The Light. David Brooks,Kathleen Parker, Andrew Sullivan and a number of others come to mind. Blogs like Atrios, Daily Kos and Firedog Lake coordinate their sites with the White House on a daily basis and are essentially paid advertisers.

So I'm pretty much convinced that this was a calculated move by Johnson, although there was certainly a lot of rage and what he perceived as score settling in his mind. He's offended so many people with his anti-Christian rants and vicious behavior that his traffic is down,and his advertising isn't doing as well as it once did. So he's looking for some new sponsors on the Left.

Another sign of where Chuckie's mind is at is that the old Cox and Forkum designed logo featuring a jihadi and a moonbat Lefitst is gone now, replaced by a simple football. No sense offending his demographic.

He might just be successful at that, at least in the short run.

Or maybe not.

It's a funny thing...when you turn mad dog on your allies the way Charles has, you may get some short term props from your new friends, but they know you're not really to be trusted and you find yourself having to turn ever more outrageous tricks and become ever more obsequious in order to 'prove' your loyalty. That's not exactly a prescription for self-respect or happiness.

And there's another thing. Charles may have made the ultimate mistake of a wanna be turncoat...bad timing.

If I'm right, the Obama wave has crested and Americans have had a bellyful of what seems to be their flirtation with radicalism every thirty years or so. As they regurgitate it, a certain Mr.Lizard may find himself getting shut out by his new friends as they compete for a much smaller audience and unable to work his way back across the bridges he spitefully burned.

Stacy McCain wrote that Charles would regret what he'd pulled only once, but it would be for the rest of his life.I think that's an extremely astute judgment.

When the Master of the Hermit Kingdom reads this,I'm certain he'll turn purple and dub me a Nazi and racist as well. Yawn.

But I remember what Charles and LGF used to be like a few years ago and overall, it's too bad. He could have been a contender.

But as the Ancient Greeks used to like to say, character is destiny.