Patterico's Pontifications

1/2/2010

Tell Your Story About Being Banned at LGF

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:27 pm



Since I learned that I was banned at Little Green Footballs for disagreeing with Charles Johnson, I have received all sorts of messages from people saying, in essence: “I’m surprised it took you this long.”

Evidently a lot of people out there have similar stories.

I’d like you to tell them here.

If you were banned from Little Green Footballs simply for disagreeing with Charles Johnson, tell us about it in a comment. The more detail the better; if you have a link to the comment that got you banned, or you saved the language, please include that information.

I will say this: I enjoyed Charles’s site (though not as a regular reader) for years, and I do think it’s a shame to see him come to this. I was really reluctant to believe that he was simply dropping the ban hammer on people for simple disagreement. But there’s nothing that brings it home like having it happen to you.

So if it happened to you, tell us your story.

266 Responses to “Tell Your Story About Being Banned at LGF”

  1. […] UPDATE: This has obviously happened to a lot of other people. I’m asking people to tell their own stories about being banned at LGF here. […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » Patterico Banned at LGF (e4ab32)

  2. I was banned from LGF last April after I posted a negative comment about Charles Johnson on Stacy McCain’s blog.

    McClatchy Watch (878005)

  3. Ann Althouse is pretty and hardly ever bans anyone.

    happyfeet (e9e587)

  4. Getting banned from commenting for disagreeing with him on a different site then LGF is nothing.

    He’s IP blocked people from even viewing LGF because they’ve disagreed with him.

    When people that disagree with him have linked to him, he’s redirected their links to insulting animated GIFFs. (Well, until he needed the hits, that is)

    Nothing more petty and childish then CJ.

    TTC (ed79da)

  5. I was banned for not defending Ben Stein when he was pressured to back out as convocation speaker at Vermont — the neo-Darwinist lobby had attacked him for his film Expelled:

    http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2009/02/03/ben-stein-out-as-vermont-commencement-speaker.html

    The problem with this is that the talk had nothing at all to do with science, but economics. It didn’t matter to Charles, who applauded Stein’s ouster.

    When I pointed out that Stein’s free-speech should be defended, Charles banned me.

    Richard Romano (5cff42)

  6. […] is the original post: Tell Your Story About Being Banned at LGF […]

    Tell Your Story About Being Banned at LGF | Liberal Whoppers (d16888)

  7. I was banned for not defending Ben Stein when he was pressured

    Sorry, “for defending…”

    Richard Romano (5cff42)

  8. I was banned for commenting that in a thread where Charles Johnson was complaining about the GOP demanding ideological purity. Basically, I agreed, and said that it is rediculous for an individual to try and build support by tossing potential allies under the bus over small disagreements.

    I guess it hit too close to home for Charles.

    By the way Patterico, you should now mind your comment boards, there is a pretty good chance that LGF moderater Kilgore Trout will start planting racist comments in them to prove that you are racist.

    bskb (8c6f39)

  9. […] UPDATE x4: This has obviously happened to a lot of other people. I’m asking people to tell their own stories about being banned at LGF here. […]

    Patterico's Pontifications » Charles Johnson Denounces the “Right-Wing Racism” of a Picture Forwarded by . . . a Democrat (e4ab32)

  10. I defended the Tea Party movement: I said they were motivated by opposition to increased government spending and government expansion, not racism. My comments were deleted. When I lamented that LGF did not welcome debate, I was banned. I was not shrill, did not use profanity, and tried to keep the comments highbrow and thoughtful. Oh well.

    I still visit LGF. Charles should really get rid of the comment section altogether – it adds little to the posted stories and indeed serves as an enabler for the sites worst habits.

    Matt (23e2d2)

  11. http://kirls.blogspot.com/2009/05/banned-monium.html

    The book of the banned

    Day Trader (ea6549)

  12. A list of the banned and blocked at LGF is located here.

    wadikitty (a14371)

  13. I wrote a polite comment disagreeing with Johnson on a thread. I did not save the exact wording. My comment was deleted, replaced with an epithet from Johnson and the account, which I’d had for many years, blocked.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  14. I think my story is just like many peoples’.

    I joined LGF after “Rathergate” (or whatever it’s called). It was my main political website for for a couple of years, but I lost interest when every other posting became either anti-ID or denouncing people for being racist because they refused to denounce someone Charles didn’t like in Europe.

    He had lost all relevance at that point and the comments became more and more just butt-kissing and agreeing with Charles, and where’s the fun in that.

    After reading recently that Charles was really going off the rails, I began checking once in a while and was amazed at the cult-like atmosphere that permeated the place.

    After reading one particularly nutty post I commented to Charles that might look into adjusting his meds (either up or down). My comment was immediately deleted and I was banned withing a couple of minutes.

    29Victor (c5be81)

  15. I was banned a while back, at least 18 months probably more like two years, for telling Charles to do what he finally did – publicly break with the “Right.” I said something like why don’t you just drop the charade, declare yourself a liberal, and get on with it. Bant!

    chaos (9c54c6)

  16. Patterico, I used to visit dozens of sites a day. I’m down to 3 or 4, and yours is one of them. I wish that you’d spend less time bickering with other bloggers. It makes you look small, and the melodrama is tedious. Best wishes for the new year.

    Bart (1aaf0a)

  17. LGF comment section was always a cesspool. I stopped going there years ago. It was never a site which promoted thoughtful debate. Does anybody of any worth follow LGF anymore?

    PatHMV (003aa1)

  18. I was banned for taking Charles to task when he posted a glowing recommendation of Max Blumenthal’s book “Republican Gomorrah,” citing it as a work of serious insight into the Right today. This is the same book in which Blumenthal says the Republicans are a bunch of sadomasochistic religious fanatics who had been abused as children and who want revenge on the world. I’m not kidding. After I posted my “you’ve got to be kidding” comment, I didn’t go back for a few days. When I did, I found my account had been blocked.

    CJ is as intolerant as he accuses other people of being.

    Anthony (7151b0)

  19. I had an account for years, but had only made a comment twice. My third comment, which disagreed with an assertion by Charles, led to my post being deleted and my account banned, even though I attacked no one, didn’t call anyone names, and did not use any “colorful” language. Banned simply for having a different opinion.

    That tells you exactly what kind of person Charles is, and just how thin his skin is…

    Steve (abab82)

  20. Tell my story? Nah. Never been banned.

    Never spent muchn time reading losers that can only write about people like Sullivan and Johnson.

    See ya’.

    Larry Sheldon (86b2e1)

  21. his neurotic bannings devalue the comments what remain… I would bail a site what banned like that just out of what minimal self-respect I have.

    happyfeet (e9e587)

  22. Has Larry Sheldon ever said anything on this website that didn’t consist of calling Patterico a “loser” (literally)?

    A Google search says no.

    So you just randomly go blogs that you claim you barely have ever read, insult the blog, and then announce you’re not coming back? Interesting psychology you got going on there Larry.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  23. During a thread concerning Alan Keyes, one of the commenters mentioned that Keyes’ daughter (I think) is gay. Charles responded by posting, “Serves him right” or words to that affect.

    I quoted him and responded simply “That was really, really low” as I couldn’t believe anyone would consider a child’s sexuality apt “punishment” for a parent’s supposed sins. Let alone the idea that being gay should be considered a mark of shame or something. The whole issue had nothing to do with the original topic and was just a childish snipe.

    I was immediately banned and my IP blocked from access.

    Blue Ox (ff919a)

  24. Larry Sheldon:

    You’ll be back. Next time I post about Sullivan or Charles Johnson. To tell me not to post about Sullivan or Charles Johnson.

    Patterico (231873)

  25. I stopped visiting his site when it became apparent that he was not the same individual
    of a couple of years ago.

    tino manus (9d1bb3)

  26. Charles should really get rid of the comment section altogether – it adds little to the posted stories and indeed serves as an enabler for the sites worst habits

    Don’t you understand? He can’t survive without the worship.

    Tully (4dce1a)

  27. When he added the “up-ding” and “down-ding” features I said he would use them to get people to self-select for banning. It seems I was correct as many claim that all they did was down-ding one of his posts and then they were banned. It is hard work making sure no one strays from the orthodoxy.

    There are entire sites devoted just to chronicling the guy’s separation with reality. I think that just feeds his delusions of adequacy.

    Voluble (1e2a18)

  28. Bart,

    I appreciate your readership. I encourage you simply to skip the posts you don’t want to read. A lot of people seem to be interested in this — and (more important to me) I’m interested on it.

    I’m prouder of my Year in Review than this sort of post, and I’d rather get linked by Instapundit for that than for posts about Charles Johnson. My request to you: if you liked the Year in Review, help spread the word about that.

    Patterico (231873)

  29. Happyfeet – that’s why I don’t comment there anymore. Or visit much really, except to entertain myself with the weirdness of it all.

    SarahW (692fc6)

  30. Banned for mocking his repeated focus on Creationism. It didn’t help that I disagreed with his premise, but the real offense was mocking the idea that he is centered on very narrow range of topics.

    Just a Q: Was he this nuts when he agreed with some center/right principles? I can’t remember. So long ago.

    ukuleledave (4e6cbb)

  31. I was banned after down-dinging several post on the Van Jones controversy. I had only commented occasionally.

    It was really amazing to be banned for using an up/down like/dislike feature provided on the blog. If down-dings get you banned, what’s the point of maintaining the rating feature? It can only be to maintain the fiction that a positive score on a post really means something.

    I haven’t (and won’t) go back.

    Clavius (7075c5)

  32. I was banned, and I didn’t even write a comment to deserve it. I downdinged a couple posts during and concerning his war with Robert Spencer and/or ID. I was just tired of hearing about it and thought all that feedback stuff was actually intended as such. How naive I was – they were there only to identify the proto-apostates for excision.

    It was either that, or my following a link from Jihadwatch to get both sides of the story.

    Either way, it was unforgivable. I was thinking for myself.

    Jeff Weimer (952d52)

  33. Looks to me like it’s becoming a rite of of passage to be banned from LGF. Soon bloggers everywhere will go out of their way to get themselves banned from LGF, just as authors of racy novels used to vye with each other to be “banned in Boston.” It will be a badge of courage to proclaim on your blog sub-head “banned by LGF.” C’mon, Charles do me next — pleeeeeze? Mine’s just a little-bitty new blog, but I could use the publicity.

    atticus.typepad.com
    badgerwillie(*)gmail.com

    Atticus M. (6865e2)

  34. Looks to me like it’s becoming a rite of of passage to be banned from LGF. Soon bloggers everywhere will go out of their way to get themselves banned from LGF, just as authors of racy novels used to vye with each other to be “banned in Boston.” It will be a badge of courage to proclaim on your blog sub-head “banned by LGF.” C’mon, Charles do me next — pleeeeeze? Mine’s just a little-bitty new blog, but I could use the publicity.

    atticus.typepad.com
    badgerwillie(*)gmail.com

    Atticus M. (6865e2)

  35. At Little Green Footballs, there is a scoring system where registered commenters may express approval or disapproval of each comment. Approval adds one point to the commenter’s total, and disapproval subtracts one point. These options are called “updings” and “downdings.” There are people who claim to have been banned for updinging a comment Charles didn’t like, or for downdinging one of Charles’ comments.

    Official Internet Data Office (0247d7)

  36. I’m proud to say I’ve never been a commenter on LGF. The thing that I find absolutely puzzling is why does this Charles Johnson person feel like he’s such an authority on race matters? Here we have a White man hysterically calling everything he sees as “racist.” As a Hispanic, I find this insulting.

    Do you really think he cares one iota about whether or not something is indeed racist? Of course not. He doesn’t have the ability to be thoughtful and/or persuasive. The ‘racist’ accusation is one used by those who simply want to end any debate. He uses it as a purely political tool. And I find this to be repulsive.

    The thing that really ticks me off about casually throwing around the ‘racist’ charge is how it actually erodes REAL racism, which is very much out there. If everyone’s a racist, nobody’s a racist. Think the boy who cried wolf.

    And again I ask: What exactly makes Charles Johnson an expert in race relations?

    Randy Haddock (732ddd)

  37. I was banned for pointing out Charletan’s hypocrisy when he attacked ACE, Gateway, etc. I just got tired of the whole group think garbage.

    Seriously, this guy got popular for spotting a font on his computer that matched the Rather document. Obviously Nobel work.

    Before I was banned, I stopped going to his site as it really got boring with the repetitive iPhone pic, Kindle reading must, what to buy on Amazon, some stupid music video, whatever.

    Also, his posts were becoming pretty dry: one to two sentances on how everyone in the world must subscribe to his views. Yawn.

    I still am tempted to signup again then wait in hiding to spike him with another op-ed about his charletry. Hilarious.

    I imagine that this guy screams and shrills alot in his mom’s basement as he deletes another person, sprinkling the air with his explitives and the every-so-often hit against his temple.

    Loser. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha….

    JDubya (4a5a89)

  38. Is there a way I can get banned by LGF without having to … spit … register an account there in the first place?

    Xrlq (adef39)

  39. I still have an account at LGF, only because I was ‘careful’ about the few posts I made. I wouldn’t mind the dismissive insults I got from Johnson if I didn’t know that I would be banned for lobbing them back at him. Now that Johnson has seen the light about global warming he has the zealotry of the newly converted. Many of his other views follow the same pattern. It’s a shame because LGF used to be a major goto site for certain subjects.

    I don’t expect some of my favorite blogs to agree with me or even be rational all the time, but LGF is a great example of a site run by a control freak. The idea of sniffing out the wherabouts and doings of readership who might disagree is anathemic to the general spirit of things.

    The result is that Johnson is left with a peanut gallery of yes-folks who must tiptoe through any disagreement lest they offend the Exalted One.

    jFry (7b5095)

  40. I got banned for defending Ben Stein as well, I can not remember my exact words, but it was something along the lines of “If you can not tolerate someone having a different opinion than yours, then you do not want debate, intelligent or otherwise, you want an echo chamber.”

    MunDane68 (54a83b)

  41. My story is similar to many here. I quietly, with no foul language or insults, would disagree or ask questions on “key” issues. When someone with whom I agreed got banned for some innocuous reason, he contacted me and asked me if I would please relay an “I’m sorry I cannot respond since I was banned” message to someone else at LGF. That’s what I did – just said “So & so would like you to know he’s sorry he cannot reply.”

    Bang. That was it; banned.

    The whole scenario is rather frightening. Only those who toe the party line can remain. Disagree with Charles and you’re history. Reality and carefulness with accuracy is non-existent. And – it is unfortunate. Once LGF had lots of useful links and some decent discussions. No more.

    A Loof (ffbcf3)

  42. My story is similar to many here. I quietly, with no foul language or insults, would disagree or ask questions on “key” issues. When someone with whom I agreed got banned for some innocuous reason, he contacted me and asked me if I would please relay an “I’m sorry I cannot respond since I was banned” message to someone else at LGF. That’s what I did – just said “So & so would like you to know he’s sorry he cannot reply.”

    Bang. That was it; banned.

    The whole scenario is rather frightening. Only those who toe the party line can remain. Disagree with Charles and you’re history. Reality and carefulness with accuracy is non-existent. And – it is unfortunate. Once LGF had lots of useful links and some decent discussions. No more.

    A Loof (ffbcf3)

  43. Well, I was banned long before most of you were, during the time when people still called him Conservative. I’m not exactly sure of the time, at least over a year ago, and then some.

    It was when he just started the anti-Creationism bent that he’s been on for about 1.5 years now (maybe more?). I was being very polite debating and asking why Charles was being so angry, and he fired off an angry response to me, I responded back to him, and actually said I was honored that he replied but I disagreed. He basically called me a moron, so I said that I donate to the Discovery Center and linked to their donation page (pro-Christian, pro-Creationist musuem) he banned me…

    I was ticked so I re-registered, and got banned quickly again, never really read his site since, and I turn my ad blocker on everytime I do. He isn’t getting any ad revenue from me.

    Yes, Charles complained about the left censoring comments on their sites when he was a Conservative, but I guess he figured now that he’s one with his former nemisises at Kos, he can employ the same tactic and ban everyone who doesn’t tow the same line.

    Charles, it’s tough to tow your line when it changes so often…

    Canerican (bf8fe3)

  44. I sent him private email stating that as a long time reader I was concerned about his mental health since the kind of things he was doing are sometimes precursors to serious problems. He banned me.

    Recently, I noticed that the ban seemed to have expired and I asked that it be renewed.

    Woodman (3a07ae)

  45. I was banned early in the year for simply taking issue, in an adult manner, with Excitable Chucky’s comparing Creationism with Intelligent Design. I explained that the two are not necessarily the same, and that the teaching of ID is not necessarily “stealth creationism.” That was it. Simple.

    Banned. Of course, it probably didn’t help that I commented at Little Green Footballs 2.0, mostly in the non-Chucky threads.

    I had mostly lost interest in LGF when he started having post after post about Creationism and stuff, and realized he was showing his true colors when he removed his header with the Moonbat shielding the Jihadi right around the time Obama won.

    Personally, I keep an eye on the nutjob through RSS, refusing to give him hits, and, if I link, I use a special script that gives the link to Basil’s Blog 🙂

    He’s not even an honest Barking Moonbat/Unhinged Tool. Folks like Sullivan and Kos are at least honest nuts.

    William Teach (2d1bed)

  46. I joined the list of more than a thousand “Banned of Brothers” in September 2009.
    Names are listed at the link.

    Heh.

    USCitizen (1ce41c)

  47. It’s a shame because LGF used to be a major goto site for certain subjects.

    Really? I did a few times and couldn’t get past the Atrios like lazy Open Blogness of virtually every post.

    Topsecretk9 (ab69ad)

  48. Before I got banned in the middle of the night I plugged into a thread where someone was asking a Sharmuta about a book written by David Horowitz. The answer was to not read Horowitz because he linked to Robert Spencer. I piped up and posted, “So what is this, crap on Horowitz Day?” Himself posted and said, “Why do you still post here if you don’t respect me any more than that?.”
    I wasn’t following that closely and said, what does that have to do with you and let it go. I guess to post there you have to read 24 / 7 and follow all links and do extensive research plus agree. Some guy named padre got banned just yesterday because he disagreed that the shoeshine post was racist. He was really polite and low key.

    kansas (689105)

  49. I have not been banned at LGF. I banned LGF. My time is too precious for phonies, fakers, hypocrites and drama queens.

    w3bgrrl (12f86d)

  50. I was banned when I wrote of Van Jones: “kicked a commie out of the White House.”

    gp (f596a1)

  51. Boy what happened to Charles Johnson? I started reading him about four or five years ago and found his site to be a great source of info especially during the Rathergate fiasco (along with Powerline). While I never really considered him a conservative (which is my take on Instapundit as well) I did find him to be thoughtful and reasonable and maybe what you could call a realist liberal. There were a lot of guys who fell into that category after 9/11.
    All of that has changed. He now takes great joy in pointing out the hypocrisy and foilables of the right (and not always correctly as Patterico has shown) while completely ignoring the same faults in his new found lefty buddies. He is a strange guy.

    BT (74cbec)

  52. I used his contact form to tell him, forcefully but respectfully, that he caricatures conservatives and his critics by cherry-picking the most unhinged ones to post on his front page, and that he would never post any reasoned or rational criticisms of himself or his site, especially my own, because that would ruin the image of his critics he has cultivated. I was summarily and permanently IP-banned.

    I’ve criticized you in the past Patterico and, despite my disagreement with some of the things you’ve said and done, you diplomatically accepted said criticisms and haven’t once banned me. So, though we may disagree, I can at least respect you (and cherish our agreements that much more). Charles Johnson, however, is an individual for whom I haven’t an ounce of respect.

    John (62fb6f)

  53. I wasn’t banned. I resigned my membership via a post on the LGF website after it had turned into an anti-creationism blog. Then Chucky posted something to the effect of “Oh yeah, you can’t quit! You’re fired!” So I guess I was banned…after I had already quit.

    packsoldier (6ab1d1)

  54. Mid september I was banned. Was down dinging and up dinging a bunch of posts/comments. The next day my account was blocked.

    h0mi (daac53)

  55. Banning people simply for disagreeing about ID/creationism is childish and immature — and I’m a staunch opponent of that belief system.

    Speaking of ID/creationism, I was startled to find something from the ID/creationist Discovery Institute I almost totally agreed with (aside from calling global warming a hoax, which I think goes too far):

    “Sheril Kirshenbaum, who blogs at Chris Mooney’s blog Intersection, seems to have an better understanding of the ramifications of the ClimateGate fraud than Mooney does. This fraud will unravel the global warming hoax in short order (public opinion was moving against it even before ClimateGate), and it will likely lead to a civil war within science, pitting scientists who adhere to high standards of integrity against opportunists and ideologues who use science for their own purposes.

    “But Kirshenbaum gets the problem and the solution completely wrong.

    … I am saddened to observe the state of broad perception of climate science, but not surprised. Further, this is not “the public’s” fault. It’s up to us in the scientific community to figure out how to stay on message. If we aren’t prepared to speak up for ourselves in a united voice about the state of the planet, others with less noble intentions will. And we won’t like the result.

    “Kirshenbaum has it exactly wrong. Real scientists don’t “stay on message.” Real scientists don’t have a “message.” Politicians and ideologues and science journalists have “messages,” and they have seduced many scientists to betray their science and “speak up in a united voice.” Science is the study of nature–science follows the evidence, wherever is leads. Real scientists are inveterate skeptics. Unanimity and “messages” are the antithesis of science.

    “A large part of the blame for this debacle rests with ideologues like Kirshenbaum and Mooney who have perverted science with their hard-left ideology. They have damaged science in ways that scientists haven’t even begun to comprehend.

    “Science-journalists-with-an-agenda are toxic to science, because agenda-driven polemics are the antithesis of science. Within the scientific community only fools and opportunists collaborate with polemicists. Unfortunately, that may be a very large segment of the scientific community. . .”

    ————————————-
    Now if only the Discovery Institute would follow its own advice in writing about evolution . . .

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9eb641)

  56. “…and I’m a staunch opponent of that belief system…”
    Comment by Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. — 1/2/2010 @ 4:31 pm

    You’re a staunch opponent of childish and immature?

    AD - RtR/OS! (685f75)

  57. Anybody banned by Chuckles is a friend of mine. Next time you make it to Denver, let me buy you a Dr. Pepper.

    zaug (2d20d1)

  58. First post here.

    I was banned in September 2009, IIRC, after posting 4 or so posts, over the preceding couple of months, that disagreed with Charles’ official opinion.

    In each case, I provided arguments and supporting reasoning in my original post and my followup / response post. In each case, and also as a general rule, I followed the rules of civil and educated discourse.

    In each case, Charles was usually the first to record a –1, and occasionally would try, but never could make a sufficient counter argument. “But Charles is a busy man …”

    Sharmuta, who registered at LGF about 3 days after I did, never could quite post a related comment (not even a sneer). Poking the –1 button summed up her articulateness. Truly a fearsome retort. Perhaps only the mention of the reputation is needed. Mercy. Or Something.

    It was left to . . .

    . . . Iceweasel (female: somewhere between a precocious 15y.o., and a 21y.o.-non-HS-graduate; she tried to pass off a variation of the well-known M.A.S.H. “morally bankrupt” line as one of hers, then wrote a hasty disavowal of any knowledge of MASH, followed by the pro-forma series of pro-forma insulting accusations, and a demand to know which other blogs know of were waiting for her ) . . .

    . . . and the dullard Jimmah (who again made his usual claims about my posts being wrong, out-of-line, etc., yet when called on to back up his claims, displayed the literary skill and accomplishment of a manhole cover on Madison Ave.)

    . . . to create enough negative posts to manufacture an excuse to block my account.

    My “flounce” is over at Ace.

    I watched the bannings, starting in 2008. I had some doubts, but I didn’t know all the details, LGF wasn’t/isn’t my blog, and my rules don’t apply. I wasn’t the first to be banned due to making a satisfactory counter argument (that was never answered), and I wasn’t the last. There was (and apparently still is) a serious lack of intellectual honesty over there. Very totalitarian. Fortunately, very public.

    And the manufacturing of excuses? Why? No need; just do it, “because”. Slightly more mature, and also very public.

    Arbalest (2148dd)

  59. I never registered, but sent him a few emails giving him compliments about his own music career and for some music videos he posted, and asking for a recording recommendation for one of the artists. Never received a reply to either of them, that told me something about his priorities. I never liked his comments sections anyhow, so never bothered to register. Now I don’t even read the site anymore. The guy is just too strange, and life is too short, and the web is too full of other good stuff.

    Wally (dae368)

  60. Reading all these stories of being banned is taking on the air of that Seinfeld series character, the Soup Nazi, where if you didn’t tow the line and place your order just so, you heard “NO SOUP FOR YOU! BANNED! ONE MONTH!” What’s really strange is how sudden and severe CJ’s change was. Although I have no problem with other people’s religious views, I count myself among the ranks of the atheists. I found his sudden and obsessive militant anti-religion hymnals to be really creepy. And now, when anyone who disagrees with him or professes an opinion other than his is some kind of right-wing hater, it just adds to the bizarro factor of it all.

    ToddzillaColorado (e4ff46)

  61. Banned in October of 2005. Yes, that many years ago.
    Why? Because his BFF at the time (apparently he himsef is now banned) “Reaganite” decided I was a troll and attacked me and so did all his little sycophants and somehow this earned me a banning.

    The word “troll” would actually be called a “concern troll”, but I don’t think that word was in existence yet.

    What horrific thing did I say? I said that yes indeed pediatricians asked too many prying questions at dr.’s appt’s.(I’m a mom of 4 and was pregnant with #4 when all this occurred)

    Examples of questions were whether you have guns in your home, or whether you ever drink, does anyone do drugs? Do you smoke? Does anyone in your home smoke?

    I also mentioned on a different post about recruiters and whether they harass people how I’d had a military recruiter call me SEVERAL times a day. Nope, that’s not possible. I have to be a liar because they just don’t do that…..which is funny because I can’t imagine CJ or his buddies defending anyone in the military now. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m sooo proud of our military it’s not even funny…..I just had a bad apple recruiter. I won’t throw out the bushel because of a bad apple.

    Now I find it amusing to see how many people have been banned since that time.

    Thankfully I found Ace of Spades after that and the rest is history.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  62. I had been a member of LGF since 2004, found that site through Jihad Watch.
    Around June 2008 when the anti-Christian crusade started.

    Charles was making many childish comments and accusations, he would complain about people using his rating system to his dislike and showing up on old threads (dead threads) just to get the last word in. Then his biggest asshat comment equating Islamic terrorists to Creationists here in America.

    I simply told him that I would never promote his site again, I could not when he was spewing garbage like that. From that moment I was banned.

    I wouldn’t go back to that cesspool if you paid me. And its sad because as Patterico points out, that site did have some great articles. I learned many things there.

    ML (f060a0)

  63. What horrific thing did I say? I said that yes indeed pediatricians asked too many prying questions at dr.’s appt’s.(I’m a mom of 4 and was pregnant with #4 when all this occurred)

    Examples of questions were whether you have guns in your home, or whether you ever drink, does anyone do drugs? Do you smoke? Does anyone in your home smoke?

    OMG PJMomma

    I experienced the same exact thing a few years ago. In fact, the doctor was so wrapped up in that and I was so boggled that I realized after we left that she, the doctor, never even addressed the ONE medical issue I brought to her attention!

    I called and complained to a patient liaison who was snotty about until I asked to speak to their boss.

    Topsecretk9 (ab69ad)

  64. It’s not just for pediatrics, doctors ask all kinds of questions they have no business asking these days no matter what you’re seeing them for.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  65. Don’t lie Topsecretk9, none of that happens. NONE OF IT!!!

    You are obviously a concern troll. 😉

    btw, I miss you at the hostages

    by Bart — 1/2/2010 @ 2:12 pm

    and if this is the bart I think it is, I miss you too!

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  66. Then his biggest asshat comment equating Islamic terrorists to Creationists here in America.

    Wow. That is true moonbat territory.

    Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (9eb641)

  67. exited before getting the stick but felt left out so I committed blogicide last spring. My spouse was banned with me just because and we are quite proud of our double banning ceremony. 😀

    vagabond trader (7154e0)

  68. Our doctors ask us the same questions, and it’s just fine. Doctors and patients should be able to talk about everything. The doctor-patient relationship is consensual. You no likee, no go to doctor.

    nk (df76d4)

  69. I was at LGF since 2002 and got banned in teh middle of the night when it was apaprent to Charles Johnson (who used to show me a lot of respect) that I would not join him in flipping over to the Left.

    Gramercy Infidel (bdade0)

  70. I had hardly posted at little Napolen’s site, when one day I decided to challenge the guy on an attack he made on someone’s comments. I don’t remember the person’s handle, but my comment was to disagree and point out an alternative interpretation. For that I was warned of banning if I persisted in disagreeing with monsieur general. I pressed ahead. I think it was my 4th posting in total, all that afternoon, that did the trick. I was banned with the Little Man’s single response: “Adieu”. It wasn’t long afterwards that Charles Johnson became generally known as a clown on a ego trip.

    richardb (c47755)

  71. Our doctors ask us the same questions, and it’s just fine. Doctors and patients should be able to talk about everything. The doctor-patient relationship is consensual. You no likee, no go to doctor.

    That’s fine for you. It’s not fine for me. Whether I have a gun in my house or how much beer I have on the weekends has nothing to do with the fact that my son has a fever. Totally irrelevant.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  72. Like I said, find another doctor. He’s a professional, not a servant.

    nk (df76d4)

  73. I was banned for disagreeing with Charles and suggesting that he was reading too much into pictures at tea parties. I downdinged his and others silly excursions from reality deep into tin foil hat conspiracy theory.

    I expressed my opinion on his site, which he asked people to do. Since I didn’t get the memo that all opinion must be the same as his, and downdinging is grounds for banning, well, the rest is history.

    I was incensed to learn later that he banned Carl In Jerusalem for posting links back to Carl’s site, in the link submission form. I was annoyed at Charles’ silly attacks on Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, GoV, and many others. Sadly I didn’t voice my thoughts then.

    Pam does good work, as does Robert, and many others.

    Banning Zombie. Now what gives with that?

    And Iowahawk?

    No, Mr. Johnson clearly has run off the rails. I don’t disagree with his stance on creationism, he is right on this, but he could go about it in a more civil manner. His attacks on the religious right … I am not in agreement with.

    I have to admit I find that he attempts to smear others with his guilt by association tactic … in some cases, just because they ate at the same restaurant in the UK … to be incredibly ironic in that he previously, correctly decried this mode of attack against himself and his site.

    I regret LGF has become what it has. The only good thing left at it had been the user submitted links. Those have gone mostly south since he started his purge. Eliminate your loyal readership and you crater your submissions, your page views, your revenue.

    I feel bad for Charles. I hope this turn about is not the sign of an onset of a medical condition, though, it could be. I’d suggest a visit to a local doctor, explain the rapid turn about in world view. This could be a symptom of something (doesn’t matter if it was left to right or right to left) serious.

    kafir (0b6f6e)

  74. Look out pajama momma. He’s trying to wind you up. Don’t take the bait.

    packsoldier (6ab1d1)

  75. I walked away with my dignity intact several months ago after his fanatical defense of the odious Van Jones. The final straw was when he called long time contributor “zombie” a liar in this comment from 9/03/2009 9:22:32 pm PDT: “OK. And if I said I saw Van Jones at George W. Bush rallies, cheering wildly, but I couldn’t prove it because my life would be in danger, you’d believe that too?” It’s all very sad, watching the decline of someone I had a great deal of respect for at one time. I used to go to other blogs and defend him when he was being attacked until one day it dawned on me I was defending a man without honor, without character, and without a shred of decency. Apparently Glenn Beck drove him over the edge, he now fanatically defends anyone Beck attacks. To say its all very strange is an understatement.

    MrPaulRevere (271ccf)

  76. Welcome to the club

    my story is very long, so here is the post I wrote when I was banned
    http://tinyurl.com/q6e32p

    Sammy Benoit (ff9f44)

  77. That’s fine for you. It’s not fine for me. Whether I have a gun in my house or how much beer I have on the weekends has nothing to do with the fact that my son has a fever. Totally irrelevant.

    Totally agree. My son’s doctor was more concerned with his breakfast diet, bedtime and whether or not he wore a seatbelt than taking the time to look at his only ailment.

    Miss you too PJ – hope you had a great holiday, was in your neck of the woods a week ago and thought of you.

    Topsecretk9 (ab69ad)

  78. I no longer posted at LGF when banned. I was banned in the first big purge back in ’07.
    Being offline and without power didn’t protect you
    from banning either.

    anonymouse (38601e)

  79. Like I said, find another doctor. He’s a professional, not a servant.

    My point on LGF was that they were saying doctors never asked such questions. I said they did and you agreed with my main point.

    Not sure why you give a shit whether I dislike the fact that doctors ask that kind of question. Odd.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  80. Look out pajama momma. He’s trying to wind you up. Don’t take the bait.

    Oh, ok. He’s an ass. I should have known better thanks.

    TSK9, I hope your holidays were fabulous too! We miss ya!!

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  81. I was banned after my 5th comment or so over a few years. There was a thread he posted about the tone of the comment section at Hotair. I simply said something like “I remember defending LGF for a long time over cherry-picket comments in the comment section. Going after someone for comments is not fair.” I was banned within hours.

    I never knew why or got an answer back as to why, but I assume because I annoyed him by bringing up how progressives used to troll his comment section and post horrible things just to make him look bad. I remember how many nuke mecca comments would show up whenever he posted something for a few years after 9/11.

    I am not much of a blog commenter and I didn’t normally even look at comments in most places because I am there for the blogger’s statements, not comments. He regularly posts articles linked to youtube videos and the comment section there is one of the worst cesspools of the internet.

    I think it is sad how he once had so many original posts and was a unique voice. I still go there, but now for different reasons. I am watching him become unquestionably partisan and loyal. It is strange to see him trying to keep it all straight in his head.

    briano (fa4e3a)

  82. #46 USCitizen:

    I joined the list of more than a thousand “Banned of Brothers” in September 2009.

    Nah, the original Banned of Brothers hangs out here, and after our rather sour experience with Nancy boy AtS, we are rather particular about who we grouch about with.

    Banned a few years ago now for being married to the lovely Sarah D., in the middle of the night, without a sound. Some of the really good talent, like Enough, Crawford, and Wishard had already headed for the door, and even Gagdad Bob was spending much more fruitful time at his own One C☉smos.

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  83. Never registered, never commented, so never banned. LGF was simply not one of my reads. But you’ll love this one:

    A New Low… Charles Johnson Now Supporting Child Porn in Classrooms & Fisting Kits at School Functions
    Saturday, January 2, 2010, 10:41 AM
    Jim Hoft

    Sick. Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs reached a new low yesterday.

    Johnson attacked this blog for reporting again on Barack Obama’s safe schools czar. According to Charles, if you point out anything about Barack Obama’s “Safe” Schools Czar Kevin Jennings’ sordid record of promoting explicit, outrageously age-inappropriate sexual filth in the classroom you are a “homophobe.” He must have started reading the Soros-linked Media Matters since he flipped. . . .

    UPDATE: Charles Johnson is now threatening me for posting this about his defense of Kevin Jennings and Jennings’ agenda. Until Charles denounces this agenda this post stands. And, I advise Johnson to quit slandering and threatening this blog and this website.

    Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I think that some of the attacks on Mr Jennings were unfair: the fact that he used to head GLSEN does not mean that he is now pushing the kind of filth sponsored by GLSEN, nor does it mean that Mr Johnson supports distributing that stuff in schools. But it does seem to me that Mr Jennings has some sort of responsibility to distance himself from his previous associations, or his previous associations remain part of his current résumé.

    There are three questions:
    Did GLSEN, while Kevin Jennings was its head, offer such materials;
    If so, did Mr Jennings, upon resigning from GLSEN, repudiate such materials; and
    Did Mr Jennings, upon being nominated for his current position, state that such materials had no place in our schools?

    If the answer to the first is yes, then the answer to the second and third had better be yes as well.

    The Dana who never registered on LGF (474dfc)

  84. The first time was a few years ago when he started equating Christianity with a denial of evolution. It only took one comment for me to be banned.

    The last time was for respectfully failing to buy into human-caused global warming. I asked if anyone knew where the original data “lived.” I said I’d love to see it and possibly do an independent analysis. It was the month before Climategate broke open – which he still ignores.

    It’s not his lefty opinions that are the problem; they’re honest. It’s his refusal to allow anyone who isn’t a parrot to comment. He seems to be psychologically incapable of dealing civilly with disagreement.

    Neshobanakni (e39656)

  85. Our doctors ask us the same questions, and it’s just fine. Doctors and patients should be able to talk about everything. The doctor-patient relationship is consensual. You no likee, no go to doctor.

    No, doctors and patients should be able to talk about everything the patient wishes to talk about, especially concerning aspects of the patient’s life unrelated to the purpose of the doctor visit.

    If my doctor believes that I am abusing alcohol or drugs and it is becoming a risk to my health, he can ask me how much I drink or use all he wants no matter how much I don’t like it. But those are not questions that doctors (it’s nurses, really, who are the ones doing it, at least in my experience) as a matter of routine.

    Questions about firearms being in the house are completely inappropriate I don’t think you disagree with that.

    The doctor-patient relationship is for the benefit of the patient, not the doctor. The patient defines how open the relationship is based on their decision as to how much openness will be best for them. Unless a real, observable health issue arises, doctors should mind their own business about their patient’s lives.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  86. Oh, yeah. I read somewhere that you’d banned Jeff from Protein Wisdom in the same fashion as Charles J. Is this true?

    Neshobanakni (e39656)

  87. Johnson had a post claiming to show the racist mentality of readers of the HotAir blog. I read the posts at HotAir and, finding Johnson’s characterization to be deeply dishonest, I went back to LGF and said, “Come on! That’s not what’s being said” or something to that effect. I got a rude reply to which I said, “That’s pretty hypocritical for someone who’s bitterly complained about mischaracterization of comments on his own site.”

    His reply? “With that you can piss off. You’re banned.” What shocked me was not so much the banning itself but the multiple and gross lies that Johnson had no problem at all telling about all kinds of things. He then proceeded to DELETE my comments and then LIE about what I’d actually said! And his SA/brownshirt stooges at the site joined in.

    The guy’s a real five-star sack of s—.

    Django aka "Uncle Joe" (b3ce03)

  88. If I wanted to “wind [anybody] up”, I would have written: It’s this entitlement mentality from trash who think doctors are there to serve them that has given us the health crisis we have today.

    nk (df76d4)

  89. If I wanted to “wind [anybody] up”, I would have written: It’s this entitlement mentality from trash who think doctors are there to serve them that has given us the health crisis we have today

    Snicker

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  90. No, Neshobanakni, that’s not true.

    But thanks for trying that particular lame troll act.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  91. Charles Johnson is a loony mashup of Lord of the Flies and Captain Queeg. But what really amazes me is that he’s got a some suckup commenters that have been there for so long. I don’t understand how any principled person could fisk lefty/muslim hatred, racism and dishonesty for years, then on the command of the paranoid Lizard King, turn 180 degrees in a matter of months and become the epitome of everything that they’ve exposed and despised. And they way they all race to “upding” every stupid exhalation that Johnson makes is truly pathetic.

    Apart from whatever illness struck Charles, there’s some real pathology over there. It’s the internet’s own version of Jonestown.

    Cicero (712c86)

  92. I was banned and never made a comment. What I did was use the ding system to ding comments up and down but I never, ever posted a comment and one day I was unable to login. The thing is, Charles is building a perfect echo chamber where he will criticize those who don’t post enough, don’t post at all, use the system he’s created, and say things he doesn’t like. All the while believing that he’s such a critical thinker. What a joke.

    Trough of Beans (9e9571)

  93. CJ is as intolerant as he accuses other people of being.
    Comment by Anthony

    It’s called projecting.

    I bet Johnson is one of those who believes liberalism instills great insight, sophistication and compassion into a person. But I also bet he is quite typical of the limousine liberal, phony and shallow to the core. So the humanity he undoubtedly believes is at the heart of his leftist sentiments is about as shallow and phony as his tolerance and open-mindedness.

    I’m guessing the shock and horror of 9-11 forced a tiny amount of common sense and sobriety into his ideology. But once the effect of that wore off, his simpleminded predominantly leftist instincts came back into play. And based on all the descriptions of the way that Johnson bans people at the drop of the hat, there must be something truly unhinged, phony and corrupt about that liberalism.

    Mark (411533)

  94. Not only was I banned, but I was the first to have 7 years of posts deleted.

    CJ’s final solution.

    savage (7dd0e4)

  95. Actually, I got banned today – and I did it on purpose, to prove a point. I hadn’t visited LGF since just after Rathergate – got a new computer, forgot my password, and found other places to go. I had heard stories, though, and it sounded like LGF wasn’t anything like the place I left. No big deal, didn’t have any real desire to go there anyway. Then, I heard about Charles’ big dust-up with Jim Hoft. I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Hoft, he’s one of the nicest guys I know of in the blogosphere, and…well, I was pissed. So, I got my password reset, logged onto LGF, and told ’em what I thought. Politely, but without reservation. Evidently, Chaz was out riding his bike – otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken the 30 minutes or so that it did for my account to be blocked and my posts deleted.
    I can say this, though – there aren’t many posters left. And what there are, ARE “left”. And Charles is positively shrill – he’s like Alex Jones on a Red Bull buzz.

    antisocialist (0b8dde)

  96. It’s this entitlement mentality from trash who think doctors are there to serve them that has given us the health crisis we have today.

    If I wanted to wind someone up, I might say that well, yes, doctors do in fact exist to serve patients, and saying otherwise is to indulge in creating a fantasy world necessary for unjustly tearing into others.

    I mean, why do you think doctors exist? For shits and giggles?

    chaos (9c54c6)

  97. I have not been banned yet.
    But I am waiting for a really good opportunity.

    Vmaximus (799643)

  98. I got banned for questioning CJ’s mental health in a post on Fark.com. I’m not sure when they have time to run a blog, when it appears they troll every website to see what is being said about them.

    sybilll (75108c)

  99. It has to have been way back in 07 when I got the hammer. I had signed up at LGF years before, only commented a handful of times, nothing controversial. I then made some pretty crude comments at Ace’s place late one night concerning chuck and his bicycle seat. I tried to go to LGF a few days later for some reason, and was banned and blocked. Good Riddance to Chuck’s crediblity if you ask me. I never was a part of the community there so mostly I think I was just amused.

    di butler (687a78)

  100. #

    I have not been banned yet.
    But I am waiting for a really good opportunity.

    Comment by Vmaximus — 1/2/2010 @ 6:40 pm

    This was probably it. If he’s not reading this himself, Kilgore Smelt or some other ass sniffer of his will be. At least get over there and give him a reason.

    Robert D (896f2a)

  101. Not a poster on LGF but an occassional reader. Did anyone notice that after the November elections, that according to LGF the Virginia and New Jersey races won by Republicans must have never occured? The ONLY race he ever mentioned was upstate New York. I guess LGF figured if you don’t mention them, THEY NEVER HAPPENED!!

    HMS (1100fa)

  102. “Since I learned that I was banned at Little Green Footballs for disagreeing with Charles Johnson, I have received all sorts of messages from people saying, in essence: “I’m surprised it took you this long.”

    Evidently a lot of people out there have similar stories.

    I’d like you to tell them here”

    To which I am sure I am not the first to say, “Paterrico, what color was the sky on your planet?”

    I mean, where HAVE you been. Whole sites have been constructed from the unwretched not-refuse of LFG. Dunk around Blogmocracy.

    And do try to pay attention.

    The only reason this thread won’t be Ace of Spades long is that it has all been said before long, long ago on other blogs.

    vanderleun (444f85)

  103. To which I am sure I am not the first to say, “Paterrico, what color was the sky on your planet? I mean, where HAVE you been

    Ok, that right there is funny. So, so true.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  104. I guess I would be banned if I was ever dumb enough to have registered there.
    Hey, Johnson…
    Is this one racist too? http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=14206

    BigFurHat (057d7f)

  105. I was banned, I think, for posting at another blog that CJ had deemed unmentionable (GCP). I never said anything particularly negative about LGF, and nothing was ever said at LGF about my banning so far as I know, just one day poof! I couldn’t log on. At that point I seldom did, so it’s not like it was a loss to me, but still. For posting at a blog he doesn’t like? C’mon–that’s childish.

    Lots of other good places to go, so I’m not mourning overmuch.

    Bob's Kid (3a9555)

  106. LGF was the first blog I ever posted a comment to, in the spring of 2002. I’d found it after stumbling across some of Laurence Simon’s non-blog writings, then finding his blog.

    In those very early days, when Charles was a self-professed ‘liberal mugged by reality’, the comments section, and the commenters, were actually engaging and there was quite a bit of spirited and balanced discussion. For a couple of years, even after the 04 election, for a while, it was a ‘daily read’ in my RSS feed, and the blog that became my home, Silent Running, was blogrolled there.

    Well, life happened, and I drifted away from spending so much time ranting around the internet – noticed, but didn’t really take too much interest when Charles began to flirt with Godwinism, excoriating people for having less than four or five levels of separation from anyone he considered a neo-Nazi – and, to be fair, some of his initial postings about the characteristics and leaning of organizations such as Vlams Belang weren’t too much of a stretch.

    LGF moved pretty far from the center of my scope for quite a bit, but it was disconcerting to see the nastiness that began with the early neo-Nazi stuff deepen and begin to become somewhat repetitive and shrill with regards to ‘Creationists’ – a spat which I didn’t really pay attention to, because it didn’t really animate me one way or the other.

    The big bucket of cold water was the breaking of the Climategate materials – and talk about a 180. Yes, literally. LGF popped back on the scope because of an almost immediate stream of derisive postings dismissing the relevance of the Hadley/CRU information – to the point Charles was threatening immediate banishment to anyone even quoting at length from the ‘stolen’ materials. I’m not sure how I didn’t get banned right out of the gate, because I immediately clashed with some ijit armed with nothing but lightweight snark calling themselves ‘freetoken’, and using an Obama avatar.

    I guess I should also be surprised I wasn’t jettisoned when I posted a rather lengthy screed announcing I was proud to call myself a ‘denier’ of AGW. In retrospect, it may have been that people were having too much fun making juvenile ad hominem jabs and hitting the down ding. CJ even engaged me in a direct exchange my last day there – and became enraged when I told him he should start using his head instead of his heart on the matter, and suggested he go have lunch with Steven DenBeste to get his concept of the science straightened out.

    A couple of comments later, I demanded to be banned – and haven’t been back since.

    That was the straw that broke this camel’s back – the irony that Charles, one of the people at the forefront of the Rathergate campaign, was actively advocating, and defending, “fake but accurate”, with a vehemence unrivaled by Marcos Moulitsas, Kos himself.

    Wind Rider (7f6676)

  107. “92. No, Neshobanakni, that’s not true.

    But thanks for trying that particular lame troll act.

    Comment by SPQR — 1/2/2010 @ 6:08 pm”

    Not being a troll. That’s what I read – something about Goldstein defending R.S. McCain against racism charges and Patterico piling on. Not that McCain might not have racist tendencies (his take on Emmett Till’s murder is just plain disturbing). Anywho, Protein Wisdom seems to have morphed into some kind of bareknuckle fighting / fantasy-mercenary site.

    And why do the Senate and People of Rome answer for Patterico?

    Neshobanakni (e39656)

  108. I suspect drugs. Not only that but I blame Bush.

    glenn (757adc)

  109. Why is CJ such an expert on theology, climatology, and biology? Because he isn’t, despite his unfounded arrogance.

    It’s ALL about politics.

    He needs to be reminded of…what was the expression? Oh yeah: “Dissent is the highest form of patiotism.”.

    So what would one call an intolerance of dissent?

    Eric Blair (8bcc33)

  110. I was a visitor to LGF a LONG time ago, before RatherGate. He used to occasionally have discussions about doing code for web work.
    Back then , he was already anti-religion. The 9/11 attacks fed directly into this and he started attacking all of Islam, including the non-Jihad aspects of it. He was definitely no friend of the “right” after 9/11.
    Then came RatherGate. and hoo-boy, did things get whacky for a while there. But if you paid attention, you noticed that nothing really changed expect his attitude about about the media and their biases. Someone mentioned the bias in the media against Israel, and he started the ‘Palestinian Child Abuse’ threads (does he still do those). But then he started going the rails, starting with the ‘European Racists’ and his increased attacks on Islam which included items that were shared by religious Judaism and Christians. That was when I bailed.
    I visited about a year ago when some blog mentioned the purge going on and was really dismayed to see it had became an anti-creationist and anti-anything-asscociated-with-Beck site.

    seaPea (f72564)

  111. #110 Eric Blair:

    So what would one call an intolerance of dissent?

    Paranoia. Really, sad to see somebody lose their mental health that quickly, but it really has been a long time agone now…and not really worth much interest anymore.

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  112. SPQR: Just followed a link to some kinda ruckus ‘tween Goldstein and nk and Scott Jacobs. Looks like there’s a lot o’ bad blood I don’t understand. Seriously, forget I even asked – it’s just too weird!

    Neshobanakni (e39656)

  113. The only site that has ever banned me was FREE REPUBLIC …. any guess’s on how long FREE REPUBLIC’S latest donation drive will take?

    Kevin (13aea4)

  114. The list of LGF bannees that we have collected is over 1700 names now. We have a great chat like the old lizard lounge at http://table9chat.com

    Stop by and say Hi. You may find some old friends and or make some new ones.

    Birkenstock Cowboy (7c6aff)

  115. banned, eh? get your nic in The Official Book Of The Banned

    http://kirls.blogspot.com/2009/05/banned-monium.html

    Kirls (2eb776)

  116. My all time favorite quote from Charles is:

    A poster asked: “what is an evolutionist.”
    Charles replies: “an evolutionist is a smear term invented by creationists.”

    Oh, the irony of stupidity.

    ML (f060a0)

  117. I stopped visiting and posting at LGF a long time ago when it became evident that Charles had made a fairly quick turn to somewhere left of center. I used to really enjoy reading his posts, and will be forever thankful for his exposure of RatherGate and other faux news stories. I was never banned, but I did eventually send him an email asking him to delete my account. Self banned myself, you might say……

    RightInAz (84d144)

  118. I wasn’t even banned for posting a comment. I was banned (apparently) for down-dinging a couple of comments that Emperor Charles I apparently personally up-dinged. And I might’ve downdinged a couple comments he made as well. I honestly don’t even remember what the thread was about.

    He’s off the deep end.

    Kevin–as a 10-year vet over at FR, I can honestly say that the vast majority of people that get banned over there are either trolls, or ask for it (as in, literally dare the mods to blow them away).

    Moose4 (7a6ab8)

  119. I read LGF daily since 2003. It was the first blog I read each day — before Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, and Patterico. I was there for the triumphs of Rathergate in 2004 and the Reuters Photogate Scandal in 2006. I even received a hat tip for a story in June of 2006. I stopped following the blog daily when the focus shifted from Islamic Fundamentalism to Creationism. I stopped completely after he attacked Robert Spencer. It’s very disappointing — especially since Johnson was so valuable during those first years after 9/11. He become everything that he once found repulsive.

    aunursa (1ca021)

  120. Chuckie banned me ’cause I found a better band of folks to hang around with, the Blogmocracy and Table 9. Last time I checked, he wiped out my entire comment history too.
    Add that to the Indian Government too!

    Macker (430b4c)

  121. There’s a whole “lizard diaspora” of sites built by or around LGF refugees.

    I’d be off LGF for months at a time due to overwork. Then I’d check in during slower periods and get a “boiling frog” experience. See that people I used to see all over the place for years had become “unpersons”. In the beginning I could at least rationalize the bannings. As time went by this became increasingly difficult.

    Then the “secondary boycotts” started. Now you could get banned for linking to a “verboten” site in your own blog. Once you join the “verboten” list others can get banned for linking to you (“tertiary boycott”), etc. (Similarity with the Arab League’s boycotts of Israel is intentional is neither intentional nor coincidental, merely unavoidable. Oh delicious irony.)

    The “memory-holing” of thousands of comments of a long-term contributor, from a rare event aimed at dealing with somebody who left too much problematic stuff to scrub by hand, became a standard “capital punishment” for major commenters that dared step out of line, or that simply got into fights with one of the “monitor lizards”, particularly “Iceweasel” who I think is de facto running the site now.

    And don’t even get me started on CJ’s scientific dilettantism. Once a big booster of AGW skepticism, he’s now “educated” himself and throws the loaded terms “warming denier” at everybody who disagrees with him, including people with actual Ph.D.s in the hard sciences.

    In fact, his new positions are so cartoonish that I wonder at times if it is all an elaborate hoax. As somebody else put it, it wasn’t so much that the substance of CJ’s convictions changed, it was that the style of argument went from the agora to the gutter.

    I kept hoping against hopes that things would turn around. While I was away again another mass-banning occurred, which included oldtimers like realwest, and such “threatening” people as littleoldlady (for allegedly posting comments on a “verboten” site — which I later learned she didn’t ;-))

    Once Zombie was hounded off the site I decided I’d had enough, but decided I’d sleep on it — I’ve learned the hard way never to make decisions when tired or angry if I can avoid it. The next morning I looked it was “global warming deniers” again, and bit the bullet. I simply reset my password to a random 20-digit string which I threw away, not wishing to give “Stoats and Weasels” the auto-erotic pleasure of banning me.

    I’d previously read references by CJ to a “site where the stalkers gather to coordinate their flounces” which turned out to be correspondencecommittee.com. This site actually turned out to have an explicit policy against discussing CJ or LGF — proving once again how delusional CJ (or whoever was posting in his name) had become. I joined it and have been there ever since, as well as started my own blog.

    Reading CJ’s pathetic “why I parted ways with the Right” provided closure, but I’ve not wished to dwell on the past. LGF is no more — it is a ‘corpse without soul’. The spirit of LGF lives on elsewhere — in the multiple “diaspora sites”.

    Lightmore (785d4d)

  122. I had an account since 2004 and the Rathergate hoo-ha. I was banned on CJ’s thread where he threatened to ban anybody that gloated about something. So I posted a comment that said “Gloat!”.
    Worked like a charm.

    Kyle (78be14)

  123. I banned myself from visiting LGF for CJ’s virulent Darwinist worldview. The man is oblivious to his own religiosity.

    Dadmin (cbacc3)

  124. In fact, his new positions are so cartoonish that I wonder at times if it is all an elaborate hoax

    No, it’s because Charles really is a cartoon character.

    Official Internet Data Office (0247d7)

  125. #124: I have little more time for creationism than CJ himself. Even I was turned off by his incessant harping on the subject.

    And even if he felt the need to vent over and over again on the subject, it didn’t give him an excuse to behave like a weapon-grade A-hole to his commenters.

    Lightmore (785d4d)

  126. I was banned for nothing more than posting on another blog. I went there under a different nic for a week, then decided I’d rather let people know who I was. Within a few hours, I was banned at lgf.
    That’s it. No insults, no disruptive posts, just posting somewhere else, where the policy is to NOT put down other blogs (not the real stalker blog)
    I guess he’s like the kids “If you play with them, you can’t play with me any more!”

    Kosh's Shadow (efc528)

  127. A while back, Chuck posted on his site (paraphrasing) that he was such a great reporter, the mainstream media should be paying him.

    I commented at Gulf Coast Pundits (now Grouchy Conservative Pundits) that I thought he was arrogant. And thus got banned.

    Considering what LGF has become, it’s a relief.

    flick (bf5814)

  128. I was wondering the other day if my DR worked for me or for my insurance company… I’d go out of network if I could afford it.
    There is another provider 35 miles away, but maybe it is easier to just tell the evil little SOB here to stfu and mind his own damn business

    SteveG (11baba)

  129. I was banned for saying it’s a waste of time for anyone to defend Al Gore. I never even disagreed with the AGW theory itself, I’ll admit I don’t know enough about it. All I said was that Gore is an enviro-hypocrite and for that I was permanently silenced.

    G Wiz (86b3de)

  130. (not the real stalker blog)
    The real stalker blog is The Blogmocracy of course.

    How reading and commenting on what some dip shit wrights on a public website can be construed as stalking, I myself have no idea.

    The two most common elements in society are hydrogen and stupidity!

    ML (f060a0)

  131. A while back there was a post on LGF about an abortion protester. Charles Johnson refered to her as “anti choice”. I asked him why he refered to her as “anti choice” instead of “anti abortion”. My post was deleted, but not before someone quoted it and refered to it as a “flounce”. I had to look up the meaning of the word. Apparently it’s what 10 year olds call a “goodbye” post. I kept visiting LGF for a couple of weeks out of morbid curiosity, but it just got to be too sad to continue reading.

    Joker23 (299ccf)

  132. I registered at LGF in 2002, and found it invaluable for a variety of posts it brought to my attention that I would otherwise have missed. I rarely commented.

    I did notice the gradual change, and was dismayed by it; I still think that there might be some creeping mental illness there to explain the sudden turn-around.

    My banning came back in September 09 during the whole Van Jones fiasco. I think my comment on this post was what did it, because the next time I tried to log on, my account was blocked. I admit I’m surprised that my comment still is there, though.

    While I do mourn the loss of a valuable resource, there are so many actual good sites out there that LGF’s decline is at this point of little consequence to me. And I wish for all good things for Charles, but I do fear for his mental health.

    Stoutcat (d6419f)

  133. I was never banned either, but still hang with the original “banned of brothers”. I left shortly after Katrina when “Nancy” told us to take the conversation about a fraud stealing money from us somewhere else. Went to the original GCP and never looked back.

    Robert D (896f2a)

  134. Jeez, where to begin.

    ‘I was born a poor black child.’ No, that’s not it.

    ‘once upon a time’ LGF had a reputation for being ‘the place that fact checks your ass’.
    And the place to go for daily anti-jihad news. And Anti-Idiotarian laffs. And seeing how most of the Idiots were on the Left, it had a primarily Center-Right membership.
    But it was run by a mushheaded liberal poseur with a cv thinner than a sheet of guitar music.
    That being so, he had a tendency to leave moonbats festering too long in his comments sections. That and some real genocidal PsOS, one of whom (whazzername, she of the border machineguns) dogged a long-time contributor there so much that they and several others hade quite enough of it. May12’06 Reaganite called it quits and Nancy (Charles) said ‘good riddance’. The Fact Checkers were perturbed. This followed a winter (and spring) of discontent which overlapped the Israel-Hezb’allah war. The summer saw several communities of commenters splinter away, some at Nancy’s invite, then at his assertion of their being ‘stalker blogs’.
    This culminated in the first ‘mass purge’, of the ‘Banned of Brothers’, the principals of GCP / Gulf Coast Pundits (and there’s another example there of their setting up a community to pursue a Katrina aid theif, after Nancy getting peeved their hunt was happening on HIS blog).
    Many of his Fact Checkers were in this purge, Aug31/Sep1’06. Myself. Swampwoman. SarahD. A ‘Dirty Dozen’ in the initial batch. Several others quickly followed.
    And frankly it’s when his own reported visit stats began to plunge. The purges became more frequent after that first mass ban.
    Now, we are Grouchy Conservative Pundits,
    http://www.grouchyconservativepundits.com
    And if you enjoyed what LGF was in ’03/’04 – you know, when Nancy posted infrequently and his editorial content was next to nil (other than his topic selections – you’ll find many of those folks there.

    rayra (b088ec)

  135. I banned myself years ago….

    Chaz is nothing more than a twit.

    Teetop (1f1551)

  136. This post got me banned.

    Johnson had made a comment that he was impressed with Bobby Jindal until he stood up for his beliefs in creationism. I simply made a play on Johnson’s words and he banned me instantly.

    windbag (4570ae)

  137. Christ, now I know how Ulysses felt upon his return to Ithaca after 20 long years. Look at all these damned pretenders to the ‘Banned of Brothers’ throne, hanging about. Eating our food, drinking our wine. Stealing our blog-valor.
    Ridiculous.

    /The former “LGF Operative” rayra. Back when that title meant / was worth something.

    rayra (b088ec)

  138. I got banned from Chucky’s lame site because I made a comment about him constantly bashing Christians.

    Eff him, he’s a freak.

    thebronze (0ef15e)

  139. […] I was rather tied up yesterday as you might have heard so I missed every bit of the Gateway to Johnson to Patterico and then the […]

    The Johnson wars continue « DaTechguy's Blog (44368e)

  140. I was banned for calling Kilgore Trout a sissy!

    Which he is, btw…

    DesertSage (844614)

  141. It was sometime in 2009. He blogged yet another entry on the insidiousness of creationism. I commented that he seemed to be getting obsessed with it and radical Islam was a lot more dangerous. IIRC I ended with “Get a grip.” The next time I tried to sign in, I was blocked. As far as I can tell, that post was deleted.

    Jim C. (b33a68)

  142. @Sage: you’re way too kind to KKKilgore Trout…

    Lightmore (785d4d)

  143. Patterico,

    A few months ago, Charles was going through a period when he was doing a lot of Christian bashing. His point seemed to be that all Christians are stupid. A reader sent Johnson an email – not a comment – in which the reader asked him to “lighten up.” I viewed the letter as a private communication to Johnson, a mild and respectful one at that, and very much to the point. But Johnson didn’t view it as private, posted the letter as a thread topic, and used it as a vehicle to further comment on the idiocy of Christians.

    I’m not a particularly religious person, but his nastiness seemed way over the top and motivated me to comment – my last comment on LGF. In the nicest way I could muster, I stated that surely not all Christians are stupid and such commentary comes across as bigotry, plain and simple.

    That comment was up for all of 2 minutes before it was deleted and replaced with Mr. Johnson’s gracious farewell: “Bite me.”

    What struck me about my banning was just how petulant and thin skinned he was. He’s not really looking for a reasoned exchanged of ideas in his readers’ comments. He wants servility from his legion of lizard-sycophants.

    Shortly after my banning, the guys over at Powerline noted the increasingly shrill tenor of Johnson’s blogging and dropped their link to LGF. It felt good to see that others were on to Charles. And now you have caught on too.

    I was once a devoted Andrew Sullivan reader, so seeing a blogger I once respected go off the deep end is not new to me. But it is painful to witness.

    Yours truly,

    Neobuzz

    Ps. Maybe this is a good sign about how you guys in pajamas are making the transition to the mainstream. Charles Johnson seems every bit as narcissistic as Dan Rather.

    Neobuzz (c40c92)

  144. I don’t know why I was banned. I can only guess. I am a center-right type of individual. I expressed reasonable concern over a controversial issue regarding Obama. I wasn’t addressing Charles, but Charles answered me.

    To say he sneered and condescended to me is an understatement.

    He rarely addressed me in my years there, even if I asked him a direct question. I came to the conclusion after a while that whatever his political views, he really isn’t a very nice person, or a very good person, either.

    I started noticing that his inner circle was filled with incredibly dysfunctional people (Killgore Trout, Sharmuta, iceweasel-Jimmah, Hoosier Hoops, and on and on), and it made me start to wonder what sort of person he might be.

    I frankly don’t trust a word he says anymore. I have concluded he is either delusional, or a liar. He is a smear artist, a man who makes the Wizard of Oz look positively rational. How did he fool so many for so long? By not saying much. When he finally started opening up, it was ugly.

    I kept my opinion to myself, and simply posted less and less on LGF. Eventually, he just blocked my account.

    I couldn’t care less. I think he’s nuts.

    PersonaNonGrata (37c768)

  145. LGF has been a totalitarian state for quite a while now, as is well documented by the umpteenth-hundred “WTF, I got banned” posts that litter the blogosphere.

    This really isn’t news.

    Ironically, however, a thread like this one demonstrates that the “free” blogosphere is the noble way to roll. I mean….rayra and I, in the same thread? ‘Nuff said.

    ChenZhen (a83638)

  146. This will be my last posting ever with this nick. I was banned about mid September of 2009. My crime? I “updinged” a post that CJ downdinged later. Banned within minutes of that happening. At least that’s my understanding. No warning, nothing. I was on the way out though. A lot of posters that I had become friends with over the 3 years almost of being registered there had been banned in the great end of summer purge. I have moved on to other sites and did what CJ told anyone that disagreed with him “Get your own damn blog”. Bye Chuckles, I hope you get the help you need.

    BlueCanuck (abb87e)

  147. I should add that his usefulness as a blogger is a thing of the past, as is any sense of decency he may have once possessed. His thing now is aggressively going after people who were once his friends.

    He’s (quite despicably, in my opinion) stalking HotAir, sanctioning Killgore’s planting ugly, racist posts there at an hour when Allah and Ed were sleeping, going after Ace, zombie, and others, and trying to pick fights with anyone he can.

    That’s all he’s got left.

    Pathetic.

    PersonaNonGrata (37c768)

  148. I was stealth-banned. I didn’t make any controversial comments, just began to (this absurd word sticks in my craw, here) “downding” some of the comments–without comment. One day, boom–I was blocked. It felt good! I celebrated by “coming out” (using my real name instead of alias on other blogs)– something I wish I had done before–I felt like a coward and a hypocrite commenting on that site without telling the sycophants and CJ what I really thought of them. I feel cleaner now. It feels slimy over there–and I do wish that the calendar salesman would just R.I.P. –the trainwreck has happened–even if the wheels are still rolling down the hill.

    katemaclaren (fb058e)

  149. Haven’t been banned because I haven’t been back to his site in over a year. The guy used to be interesting but has since made himself irrelevant, why give him any more coverage? I agree with #16, there are much more interesting things to talk about, and few people like to hear about the personal disagreements between others. I also know from personal experience that dwelling on them is corrosive to your psyche. Time to move on.

    Socratease (cf8d02)

  150. I got banned for asking questions about his near obsessive views on global warming. I raised questions about how the science was performed, why the data was not made public and why, to him, the conclusions of the IPCC were written in stone. I came back the next day to find my account disabled. Apprently he has a very thin skin.

    David (6941c8)

  151. I was banned because I suggested Nancy was a hypocrite for bashing Robert Spencer while advertizing his book on the sidebar.

    This was a few moments after I suggested that his posts were getting a bit stale because most of the things he posted I had read days before on other blogs.

    Now I go there for laughs while scrolling through the comments for down-dings to see the sycophants swarm.

    SoulSurfer (00b0f7)

  152. I wasn’t banned; I quit in May 2007. (Much later I learned that I had been banned, probably after somebody caught me posting at GCP, which is where I tend to hang out nowadays.)

    Anyway, I have a pretty good story about it. I’ve been reading blogs for a long time now, at least since 2002 and maybe as early as 2001. I started to become an Internet addict in the wake of 9/11. Some of the earliest blogs I remember are USS Clueless, A Small Victory, Rachel Lucas, Eject!Eject!Eject!, and LGF. (Many people don’t know that Bill Whittle got his start as a commenter at Rachel’s site.)

    I don’t remember the exact order I discovered the sites listed above, but I’m pretty sure I was reading LGF by 2002. At that time I didn’t have a home computer and would stay after work to read blogs. I just read them and practically never commented.

    I finally got a computer in 2004 and started commenting. By then some of the pioneer bloggers like Steven den Beste, Michele Catalano, and Rachel Lucas had folded their blogs for a variety of reasons. But there were plenty of new ones to replace them.

    Anyhoo, I registered at LGF in the fall of 2004 and stayed there through the first wave of bans. The exact circumstances are fairly trivial, but by May 2007 I was getting tired of some of the comments and decided to leave. It was a painful decision since it had become such a big part of my life. Finally, one Saturday afternoon I deleted my LGF bookmark.

    I clicked over to Eject!Eject!Eject! and was stunned to see a guest post by Rachel Lucas announcing her return to blogging. I flew over to her site and left this comment.

    As you can see, mine was the third non-Rachel comment at her new site. Like I told her, not more than 15 minutes passed between my deleting the LGF bookmark and adding hers. That really gave my morale a boost. Of course, she’s since gone on hiatus again…, but today there are so many excellent blogs that I don’t miss LGF.

    rickl (d5b4c0)

  153. My story is much like David’s, in the comment above me (@152)

    Charles was arguing AGW one evening several months ago, and, having had an account there for years, but having stopped reading him in 2007, I entered the fray.

    He made his argument, and it made no sense at all. I very politely pointed out that what he’d said was not supportive of the point he thought he was making, and Poof! “Good day to YOU sir!”

    He has extraordinarily thin skin, and a complete inability to deal with anyone who’s not a sycophant for whatever happens to be his issue du jour. I can’t believe anyone ever took such an intellectual lightweight seriously.

    Patton (27d14a)

  154. I saw his move from sanity to insanity as he banned the likes of Fjordman, then Robert Spencer, and so forth. So I decided to work to get banned. It took more work than I thought it would.

    I haven’t voluntarily gone back there since then. I’ve clicked on a couple links that took me there by mistake. I quickly left. He has nothing to say to me. He’s turned into a total jerk, a clever jerk with Ajax, to be sure. But, nevertheless, he is still a jerk who got tired of masquerading as a semi-conservative.

    {^_^} <- Takes her badge of honor from being banned at LGF.

    JD (847e52)

  155. Ah, it was about six months after the first changes in Nancy, after he banned people like Rayra and Swampwoman because they were tired of a psychotic who preached genocide and mass deportations of US citizens and accused one poster, an Air Force vet who did ordnance disposal well enough to sometimes be detailed with the Secret Service, of lying about his service.

    Many of us met this poster, some recognized him on TV in uniform for Reagan’s funeral, others went to his USAF retirement party. But she wanted proof from him that he never claimed to actually be a USSS agent. Which he had never claimed, but proving a negative isn’t easy.

    No, I was banned when he suddenly decided that Pamela Geller was a closet Nazi, and all Europeans who opposed unlimited Muslim migration were Nazis. Geller, of course, is Jewish. But I digress. He decided a European poster who used the nic “Fjordman” was not only a Nazi, but a coward for using a nic, not his real name for his posting. This in the land of Theo van Gogh and hate crime laws.

    I criticized him there, and then, sort of to choose the time and place of my own banning, I copied and pasted my criticism at GCP.

    He still pretended to be an ‘anti-idiotarian then.

    Of course, now, Obama and his appointees can do no wrong.

    I suspect a gay crush on Obama, but can’t really prove it.

    For some reason, I was one of the banned he obsessed on and commented about after I was gone.

    I’m a back-stabber, and a creep, and one of his sycophants, Irish Hose, even devoted an entire thread about me on her blog. “Defending the Defensible”, I think it was called.

    I sort of suspect he is mentally ill, and sometimes I worry about mocking him, because I might feel guilty if he kills himself.

    His readership is down, and he’ll never be trusted by the Daily Kos or Demonrat Underground crowd. It is basically just him and his loyal followers now, almost a cult, still seeing Nazis and racists everywhere.

    Jonestown, without the generic Kool Aid and warm South American weather.

    Ed Mahmoud (51295d)

  156. Well, now- if you really want to see the degeneration of the former “fact check your ass” site in its miserable glory, do this:

    Punch
    the dark underbelly

    Punch “skip to comments,” punch “go to ‘last'” and then!

    Using your browser’s “find” function, enter the search string

    BlogWarZ!

    and start scrolling backwards to around Novemember 2007, and you’ll find enough documentation to keep you busy for days.

    My personal synopsis?

    Been online since 1981.

    Banned one place- guess which?

    In the steal of the night ( no “knock it off,” no warning, no refund of contribution… ) for belonging to another site formed at the behest of Teh Crazy Guy…

    And like I keep telling people- SelrahC banned all the best writers and researchers and commentators, so why wouldn’t his blog degenerate into an echoing cesspool of sycophants?

    backhoe (0c907d)

  157. My sin was suggesting that Mr Johnson’s blind devotion to the climate-change cult wasn’t a whole lot more rational than the creationism he was so fond of slagging.

    JEM (a0f32a)

  158. I was banned for posting something rather innocuous that questioned CJ’s line of reasoning. He had approvingly quoted some idiot the left (don’t recall who exactly) for beating up on some idiot on the right (Tom Tancredo?) as if either had anything worthwhile to add to this particular debate. It was like he watched a drunk Steelers fan mixing it up with a drunk Cowboys fan after a game and was cheering about how the Steelers fan got in a couple awesome left hooks only because he was a Steelers fan himself. What this had to do with the score of the actual game on the field, I have no clue.

    I didn’t even realize I was banned until a few months later when I happened upon the “banned from LGF” list and saw that my name was on it! Oh well. Obviously no major loss.

    Sandman in OC (024a24)

  159. Never registered there, never banned. Never bothered.

    Watched from the sidelines as he had a mental meltdown. I was curious why he remains “registered as a Republican” when there is next to a nil chance of ever voting for one again…..etc, but not curious enough to bother enabling cookies to actually send the email with the question. Glad I didn’t, as I read above (145) he uses private email as fodder. OTOH, it could be a great way to join the Fraternal Order of the Banned

    So now I wonder…. what the heck happened to him? maybe he’s tied up in some basement and a doppelganger is the new keyboard-banger in Lizardland…..

    …nah. He’s just a nut.
    Oh Happy New Year, ya’ll

    Chris (47bbb2)

  160. I was banned last year for defending Geert Wilders and saying that if his tactics weren’t for the US, they obviously were for Holland.

    Pitiricus (24e291)

  161. I took years just to be a “hatchling” and then I realized it WAS NOT the same site I had wanted to join and haven’t been back since so don’t know if I am banned or not don’t care….the guy is LOONEY TUNES!

    Jaded (1f19fe)

  162. Banned for just leaving. “Hey, I don’t know why these people flounce off, why don’t they just leave?”
    Agreed ! So I did. Found out a couple weeks later that I had been ‘caught’ posting on another blog.
    Who’s stalking who ?

    The saddest thing isn’t the owner of the blog, but the ones who’ve sold their souls to the place.

    squatch (346b7f)

  163. My account was blocked after I left a comment praising one of CJ’s posts. He wrote about someone who was being criticized for their associations and how wrong it was to do such a thing. This was long after he had started on Pamela, and a few months after his attacks on Robert Spencer. His post was so accurate, and such an example of cognitive dissonance, that is was bizarre. He here was lamenting the very thing he had become famous for doing. I said it was a great post and he should take his own advice when it came to people like, oh, Robert.

    The really bizarre aspect of LGF could be seen plainly at the Lizard Lounge. I was going through menopause, so would find myself wide awake at 3 or 4AM. I got in the habit of watching Red Eye on Fox, and then would go online after it ended. I spent many, many early morning hours watching the chats there.

    Charles was like their king. Seriously. They worshipped him. One night (this was about 5AM my time in Massachusetts) there was some kid in the chat who started criticizing CJ for some post he had recently made. The room started filling up very quickly. Then the King himself showed up after about 20 minutes.

    It was literally like a mass bow to the King. The reaction to Charles being in the chat was immediate and typical chat room crap. People were falling all over each other to rat out this kid and what he had been posting about Charles. Most of what they typed were lies about what the kid had said before Charles joined.

    I sat there for a few minutes reading the stuff as it quickly scrolled by. I corrected a couple of the misstatements by posting “that’s not what he said, this is what he said:” and I would scroll back and actually quote the kid.

    Somebody PM’d me and asked me why I was “defending the kid”. Cripes.

    I logged out after Charles banned the miscreant and I didn’t bother going back to the Lounge after that.

    A few months later Charles had one of his biggest fits and closed the Lounge after he discovered people were using it behind his back. Now THAT was funny. CJ finds out he’s not the brilliant technical guru he thought he was. That must have really hurt.

    Jaynie59 (18e5d1)

  164. I got banned for mentioning Golda Meir’s moustache….

    Bweep (579620)

  165. #145 Neobuzz:

    I was once a devoted Andrew Sullivan reader, so seeing a blogger I once respected go off the deep end is not new to me. But it is painful to witness.

    I was reading this thread and had the same reaction. Early on in the Iraq War I read Sullivan and LGF daily. Sullivan started going off about gay marriage and I had to wade through that to get to the good commentary. Eventually there wasn’t any good commentary left.

    The same thing happened more recently with LGF. I thought he did a great job exposing radical Islam. But then he started going off on Intelligent Design and I had to wade through that to get to the good commentary. Eventually there wasn’t any good commentary left.

    Jim S. (49d69c)

  166. I just made a snarky comment asking about the birth certificates of Bush and B Clinton, and got a profane banning notice.

    AreaMan (8e4a99)

  167. I was banned by Charles because I posted on a new blogspot – one that he was “sure” would BECOME a Stalker Blog the way LGF 2.0 had started out. This in spite of my having been a regular on LGF for over 5 years, made more than 50,000 comments, and hit his tip jar for a total of almost a nickel a comment over all those years.
    He then proceeded to “trash me” and of course his “posse” then jumped in; of course that’s because I was banned and couldn’t reply to him or them. To his credit, he broke Rathergate, Reuters fauxtography, and revealed some truly horrific European White supremacist connections with supposedly contra-jihad blogs as well. But other than that, I went to LGF for the quality of the comments and the commenter’s, not for him.
    But that he’d throw out a supporter of long standing, who’d put his money where his mouth was, because I posted at a blog he was sure would BECOME A STALKER BLOG (and which, 5-6 months later has still never criticized him or LGF) says it all; it’s all about him – no warning not to post anywhere, nothing. Just there one day and then gone the next. Oh and of course he complained that the blog I posted at (which such posting got me banned) didn’t even LINK TO LGF. Yep CJ, it’s all about you, you Johnson.

    Jimi Hendrix (70710b)

  168. #162 “So now I wonder…. what the heck happened to him? maybe he’s tied up in some basement and a doppelganger is the new keyboard-banger in Lizardland…..”

    That thought has occured to me on occasion when I compare CJ’s stuff from years back to the stuff now. Did he sell the site and persona to someone else and not tell anyone about it? I think he just went cucko myself but it is an interesting theory…. 🙂

    tps (dedf5d)

  169. I was banned last summer for asking CJ questions. The topic doesn’t matter, the point was I wanted him to clarify something and after refusing I found my account blocked.

    A Totalitarian Progressive in action

    Horatio (55069c)

  170. To his credit, he broke Rathergate, Reuters fauxtography, and revealed some truly horrific European White supremacist connections with supposedly contra-jihad blogs as well.

    His “European White supremacist” stuff was horrific all right. Horrific garbage culled from the files of the $PLC.

    Subotai (e4af78)

  171. That’s right.

    Jimi. Maybe you haven’t been out long enough to realise it yet. But, NOTHING that you think you ‘learned’ at LGF should be believed.

    Bweep (579620)

  172. According to Charles, if you point out anything about Barack Obama’s “Safe” Schools Czar Kevin Jennings’ sordid record of promoting explicit, outrageously age-inappropriate sexual filth in the classroom you are a “homophobe.” He must have started reading the Soros-linked Media Matters since he flipped. . . .

    Not since he flipped. He was a lefty before 9/11 and he continued reading lefty sites and publications all along. At one point about a year ago he mentioned in a comment thread that the Southern Povetry Law Center was one of his favorite sources. That’s easy to believe, since a huge amount of his stuff is cribbed directly from them.

    When you consider that The Nation regards the SPLC as dirty, that says a lot about CJ.

    Subotai (e4af78)

  173. […] Patterico is asking people to tell their banned by Mad King Charles stories […]

    Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup » Pirate's Cove (368bcc)

  174. Back before there was AGW or Creationism or BlogWarz in that vacuum reputed to be Chaz’ head, I got banned. August 2007. By some people’s judgement, my banning was the start of what we like to call Purge II, which has been ongoing ever since. Purge II was the start of banning people because of them posting on forbidden sites.

    I had started posting on GCP shortly after the Friday Night Massacre (which, as EW1(SG) has already pointed out, resulted in the original “Banned of Brothers”.) I was not exactly wall recieved there at that time, because I had poked fun at them on LGF, but I persisted, and it all worked out eventually.

    Anywho, I had posted some story or other on an open thread at LGF, and had (as is my practice) given a hat tip to the person that had made me aware of the story. In this case, rayra at GCP. Chaz issued a stern warning that he would block my account if I hat-tipped anybody at GCP again (GCP was THE ‘stalker blog’ back then.) So, on GCP, I said that I would simply have to stop posting stories to LGF if they required a hat tip to somebody at GCP. The next morning on the Dead Thread, “Geepers” made some comment about how LGF used to be a biker bar of a blog. It was then that I made my fatal post, which I will now repeat in it’s entirety – “Heh.” BOOM ! I was banned, banned, banned. 25.8 K posts with never a deletion.

    This may have been the first instance of somebody being banned for posting on a forbidden blog, but it sure as hell wasn’t the last.

    Now, in all honesty, everybody on here were late-comers to the truth. One man (other than Dave Ray, who is a whack job) called it way early. Dennis the Peasant. Personally, it took me until The Great Google Boycott to realise that something wasn’t right. For those who don’t remember, The Great Google Boycott, promoted mainly by Chaz and The Raj, lasted right up until the femtosecond the first Google ad check hit the old PJM bank account, then vanished without a trace. Ka-ching !

    Mike C. (26a284)

  175. Banned for saying in one of his Darwinist threads that I believed in a higher power.

    otcconan (12c8d5)

  176. #177 Mike C.:

    Heh.

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  177. i was part of the lounge purge. the lounge is where you went and hung out with your friends and kept chit chat off the threads…… cj began threatening to shut it down because it cost tooooooooooooooo much money…… a group of loungers went on an upding downding raid one evening and the updings downdings weren’t to cj’s liking…….so that group was banned…..about a week later…..he came in the lounge and APOLOGIZED TO ALL WHO WERE IN THERE ……he said he was sorry but he was shutting us down…..then he left…..came back in APOLOGIZED AGAIN…..left…..came in one last time…..APOLOGIZED A THIRD TIME…..and then left……the lounge was gone…..that same evening…..
    he began posting about how evil the lounge was….how everyone was talking badly about him….got a bunch of threaders who never had gone into the lounge comforting him…..i updinged anyone on the thread that said something nice about the lounge….next morning my account was blocked….a few days later my brother….johntonmo went on a thread and asked if anyone had seen phoenixgirl….his account was blocked…lol haven’t been there for months but theblogmocracy.com posts comments pulled from there and the insanity continues…..word on the net is cj is going to contribute at true slant…..that’ll be great! there are a hundred other contributers there…..he must have spent months vetting all their opinions to make sure they were ideologically pure enough for him to share space with!!!!!!! i pity the first one that critiques his writing……..he’ll stomp his feet and take his keyboard home!

    phoenixgirl (7ee8f5)

  178. IIRC LGF was not the first to break Rathergate. He was something like #3 but had the biggest blog around back then so he got all the credit, and the inflated ego that finally exploded recently.

    And back in the glory days of LGF it was the commenters that made the blog. Charles had very little to say and would just link to others stories and leave it to us to keep the threads going. It all started downhill when he decided to get more involved.

    Robert D (ec8f19)

  179. # 179 EW1(SG)

    Indeed.

    Mike C. (26a284)

  180. phoenixgirl, that explains why you hang out in Table 9 chat (at least I’ve seen you there I think).

    otcconan (12c8d5)

  181. Posted this the other day but might as well post it again. LGF accused a DC think tank (CEI) as being a corporate front or something like that and dismissed its position on some matter as bogus simply because it received money from oil companies. I used to work at CEI over 10 years ago and when I told him the people I worked with there had little interest or knowledge in where the money came from and were authentic free marketeers and he should not make unfounded comments without knowing the facts, he erased the comment, called me a shill, and then cancelled my account. Shilling for what I’m not sure. It was the second comment I had made at LGF in about 5 years. And I used to read LGF virtually every day so the experience was a bit surreal. My emails to him asking for an explanation went unanswered. He has become quite intellectually dishonest and it’s a shame.

    Hogstomp (1b20f7)

  182. All this could have been avoided if Chuckles had let Leann (Zulubaby) run the blog for a couple of weeks in 2004 and gone to the beach and drank a rum based drink from a coconut inside a hammock stretched between two palms.

    Or maybe not. He sure seemed normal in 2003 and 2004, and now he is a stark loony.

    ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
    BTW, I saw a B&W picture of Golda Meir as a teenager dressed like the Statue of Liberty for Halloween, or maybe Purim. Nothing wrong with her.

    A lot of 60 and 70 year old women start to grow little ‘staches, and when surrounded by bloodthirsty Arab types, weekly waxing slips down the chain of priorities.

    (For Bweep)

    Ed Mahmoud (51295d)

  183. It’s so nice to see some familiar nics here–where have you gone? I love Table 9 and the Blogmocracy and another couple of sites that are interesting and funny (Ace of Spades). I just came back for a second comment to say that I, too, thought CJ had sold his blog to Kos, but then since I have seen him (not really SEEN or HEARD–eww) on air or in print media in photos after his big coming out announcement–it’s really him unless it’s like Weekend at Bernie’s –and he is a corpse (his pix posted today on LGF actually LOOKS like a Madame Tussaud wannabe). Anyway, all of us who were banned–are not unhappy, are we? 😉

    katemaclaren (fb058e)

  184. I was banned for calling the sycophantic up-dingers “Kiss-butts” for up dinging Chuckie for saying “I’m on hold!” while he was waiting to speak to Alan Colmes. I went on to ask, ironically, if any of them were Norwegian: if they were they could nominate Chuckie for the Nobel. No sense of humor!

    I was banned within the hour. When I posted I was at something like number 300: the next day when I was doing my post-ban review, I noticed the post count was down to less than 225. He deleted a full third of the posts!

    LGF used to be spirited and fun 5-6 years ago. Now it is merely an echo chamber with less than ten active posters. Good riddance comrade!

    Crashnburn (61706e)

  185. ______________________________________

    In those very early days, when Charles was a self-professed ‘liberal mugged by reality’ – Comment by Wind Rider — 1/2/2010 @ 7:33 pm

    Charles Johnson is listed as being born in 1953, and I would guess his description of himself as “liberal” was made not that long ago, or certainly far beyond the time he was a teenager or in college. For somone to have been embracing liberalism well into his middle-age years points to innately mediocre judgment and inherent misguidedness when it comes to harsh reality (therefore his desire to put his fingers in his ears and go “ne-ne-naw-ne, naw-ne-naw-ne, I can’t hear you”).

    I bet the common sense that Johnson previously displayed regarding issues like global warming was superficial, probably expressed merely to show camraderie with various people (largely of conservative bent) drawn to his blog.

    The mental flaw of liberalism — of limousine liberalism in particular (which Johnson likely is guilty of) — has always been in the guy’s brain, so the way he’s behaving today really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

    Mark (411533)

  186. I not sure why I was banned and really don’t give shit.

    easy (24f571)

  187. What is it that makes some seemingly normal people go batpoop crazy when they grasp the banhammer? I was once a reader, never a commenter, at LGF, but I have seen the Overzealous Moderator phenomenon play out again and again in discussion forums.

    In its most common form, it’s an ordinary commenter who is elevated to moderator status and immediately goes psycho. Often enough, it’s somebody who seemed regular and decent before getting a taste of the power.

    When it’s the blog owner, it can get real ugly.

    S. Weasel (83bf20)

  188. A bunch of us in the Lounge were banned for updinging ‘Eric Cartman’s Conscience’ on one of the many vax threads. The gangdingers were attacking a father who dared express his opinions. We updinged him to try to get him even. We knew we were “risking” it – and that really says it all – you dare not express yourself, even by updinging a post.

    LGF posts are predominantly about Charles and his fights with other bloggers. In the threads he stalks his own readers, especially the newly registered, he mocks, he taunts, it’s a mad hunter patrolling his perimeter and shooting at shadows. the remaining commentors make inane chit chat and apologize profusely if they appear to transgress the “lizard” line – no one really knows what the line is though – as you can see from reading the comments here and at Kirly’s list of the banned… some are banned simply for using his search feature to look for banned friends. It is flat out insane.

    We started the ‘new Lounge’ – table9chat.com before he closed his Lounge. We managed to get in contact with those who were still left in the Lounge and were letting them know where they could find missing friends. We’re still missing some, like marsl, and Elias Israel… You can find Table 9 at Blogmocracy, Stop The ACLU, The Coffee Shop, Kirly’s, at 34 blogs, stop in and visit, and feel free to link in as well.

    It will be good to see you – and Thank You, Patterico, for the post.

    Rose (e71469)

  189. Any bets (rhetorically) on how long before CJ comments on this post and bashes us to little pieces?

    BT (74cbec)

  190. I left more because of the baying pack mentality than anything else. Charles had changed, yes, but the baying pack was too much for me.

    I’d politely disagreed with Charles for quite some time. I have no idea how I lasted as long as I did. The thing I still take offense at was when I sent an email listing my accounts and asking to leave, thanking Charles for all the good times, he called it a flounce. The pile-on that followed was a perfect example of why I left.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  191. Any bets (rhetorically) on how long before CJ comments on this post and bashes us to little pieces?

    He’s been commenting on this post and the commenters in his own threads since yesterday. Kinda cracks me up.

    pajama momma (e72e1b)

  192. He’s been commenting on this post and the commenters in his own threads since yesterday. Kinda cracks me up.

    How very sad.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  193. I registered at LGF a couple-few years ago but I don’t think I ever posted a comment. It was always so coffee-klatschy and cliquish, and I had nothing to add to that.

    Last fall when CJ made it clear that he had gone ’round the bend I posted a very polite comment to the effect that “I’ve read your blog for years, maybe not so much lately, but you did some great work in the past and whatever’s going on I hope that you are okay.”

    Result? Yep. Banned!

    Once Was Bart (f27b79)

  194. #193 Dianna:

    Comment by Dianna

    Was just pointing out a few minutes ago to somebody that I’d lost contact with you because I lost the cell phone I had your number in: would kindly invite you to swing by, and knock us up!

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  195. I was banned sometime last year in the early summer I think. I do not recall exactly. It was back when he was still pretending to be a conservative. Why did I get banned? I got banned for asking him why he was so against creationists and creationism. I wasn’t being negative or hostile; I tended to only comment in tech related blog postings. I honestly wanted to know why the recent change and focus on creationists. I asked again why my comment was deleted as my question was authentic and meant no hostility (or something along those lines) and my second question got deleted, I got called a moron or something along those lines and I got banned.

    What is sad to me is that Johnson’s most devoted followers would immediately agree with creationism if Johnson himself had a change of heart and said that he did too. No individual thought at all. And God help you if you do have a thought that disagrees with Johnson; he will just delete it and ban you.

    ZeroDamage (efd122)

  196. A lot of hashing this over has been done and reasonable speculation is that CJ has intentionally moved to the left side in order to attract financial support to run his blog like many of the far left blogs receive.

    CJ never was and still isn’t a good blogger. He adds only a short note to material gathered elsewhere.

    The attraction was his many commenters which used his post as a starting point for research and expansion on the thread.

    They are what made the blog worth something and NOT CJ.

    He has now banned over 1700 of them to reshape his comment crew to match the left side agenda and demands only yes men type of comments.

    The nutroots used to hate him but now they are taking him in as a blog that ‘saw the light’.

    Day Trader (ea6549)

  197. I strongly recommend that you do not click on Little Green Footballs unless you want spyware, and worse, installed on your computer.

    For my part, I’ve never been banned because I never commented and visited maybe a handful of times maybe five years ago. There was always something about that site that rang my alarm.

    nk (df76d4)

  198. #200 nk:

    There was always something about that site that rang my alarm.

    That was probably me. ;0

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  199. I don’t want to pile on because I really don’t know the man, but something always rubbed me the wrong way at that site even during the 2004 elections when he was practically a hero.

    nk (df76d4)

  200. I strongly recommend that you do not click on Little Green Footballs unless you want spyware, and worse, installed on your computer.

    Oooops! Sorry hubby.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  201. I was an LGF member since 2004 and got banned in the fall of 2009. I simply would not fall in with his mind control, his bevy of sycophants, his desire to be worshiped, and with his full 180 degree return to the far left.

    It’s a shame that what was once a good site with great information – mostly about the threat of islam – has become a blog that is only significant to the few who have been allowed to stay in order to revere, bow down to, and agree with CJ.

    There is zero tolerance there for any opinion other than Charles’, which makes it completely totolitarian – a typical hallmark of the left.

    All that said, I knew my ban was coming as I repeatedly would post things contrary to CJ. When the day came, I celebrated! It’s a great psychology experiment for any willing to take the time to study the evolution of his blog, and how there are many in cyberspace and in the real world who ache to be told how to think.

    That’s scary.

    ladycatnip (7a09ee)

  202. pajama momma, you are Charles Johnson material. You cannot brook disagreement.

    nk (df76d4)

  203. Unless I misunderstood you, in which case I apologize.

    nk (df76d4)

  204. Because I feel bad for my hubby that I might have put a virus on his computer? ok

    If you’re talking about yesterday, I have no problem with your opinion about doctors and the questions they ask their patients. I just don’t agree with you.

    We spend almost $700 a month for health insurance. There’s no entitlement mentality there. Never had any major surgeries other than 2 miscarriages and so there’s no way I take advantage of the system.

    And you bet I found myself a different doctor. A strict Roman Catholic one. I had no desire to be reported for having a gun in my home by some liberal nut doctor that felt I shouldn’t own one.

    The issue on LGF was whether pediatricians do indeed ask that question. They were saying they didn’t, I disagreed and said they did. Because of my disagreement, I got banned.

    If you came to the Hostages and disagreed with me, I would not ban you, there’s only one person who’s ever been banned from there and that was wickedpinto (if you know who he is) and that was after putting up with a LOT.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  205. I subscribed to LGF for a couple of years.During that time, I enjoyed the riposte from various contributors. There were a number of times, however, when I became extrememly distraught over what King Charles spouted. I never actually got axed but there were times when his BS led me to avoid his site for months. The killer was when the King discovered the lounge was “conspiring” against him. That was the end. It was a good site, now it appears it is the realm of a self centered megalomaniac. Or a spoiled child.

    George T Talbot, PhD, MD (bec1a0)

  206. Unless I misunderstood you, in which case I apologize.

    You did. 😉

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  207. Thank you, pajama momma. I apologize again and hope you will accept my apology.

    nk (df76d4)

  208. We have a wonderful pediatician. He saw the baby at the delivery room, the day she was born, and every day after until we went home.

    A little later, at the first office visit, he asks, “Are there any smokers in the house?” My wife says, “Daddy”. I rush to say “I don’t smoke in the house”. Next question, “Are there any guns in the house?” My wife and I lie through our teeth, “No”.

    It’s seven and a half years, now. He’s a wonderful doctor that has seen us through several strepthroats and two scarlet fevers, a skateboard cut on the chin that required microstitchhes, and any number of the other usual things.

    I feel that I can talk to him like a friend or a brother. Listen to what he has to say and not resent him for it. And maybe just listen and not talk back.

    nk (df76d4)

  209. A little later, at the first office visit, he asks, “Are there any smokers in the house?” My wife says, “Daddy”. I rush to say “I don’t smoke in the house”. Next question, “Are there any guns in the house?” My wife and I lie through our teeth, “No”.

    HAHAHAHA!

    And that’s great. You have a rapport. Some doctors (that I’ve dealt with) scare me. I don’t want to be put on some list that they’re keeping somewhere. Yes, I’m a little paranoid in that department. You will NOT take my guns.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  210. When my doctor retired, at age 72, after more than twenty years of being my doctor, he kissed me on the lips at his retirement party. And we are both men.

    I’m sorry for taking my frustration at the assembly line health care we are heading to out on you, pajama momma.

    nk (df76d4)

  211. I’m sorry for taking my frustration at the assembly line health care we are heading to out on you, pajama momma

    Ok, you are the sweetest thing in the whole wide world.

    Now knock it off!!

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  212. Ok. Back on semi-topic, I did Google Little Green Footballs, and clicked on the link Google provided. And then something tried to install itself on my computer. And it did not come from Horseland that my daughter had been watching on Netflix just before.

    nk (df76d4)

  213. pajama momma – I didn’t know Wicked Pinto was banned over at the Hostages. He must have done something more seriously demented than usual.

    daleyrocks (718861)

  214. #197 E – and Sarah! –

    I may still have you guys, if you’ve got the same number as back in ’05. I’m still using the same email addy – I’m to be found over at correspondence committee, too.

    Dianna (f12db5)

  215. I got banned twice

    first time i asked if he was going to have a sept 11 link. since he has changed the nature of little green froger.

    the second time I disagreed with the size and nature of the sept 12 demo’s. who am i to believe my own eyes or the little nosnhoj who wasn’t even there.

    yochanan ben avrohom (24bb7d)

  216. Partial list of Bannage related posts – just for fun…
    LGF 2 The Blogmocracy Charles calls this the stalker blog, but in fact it is where ex-LGFers can once again participate in free wheeling, raucous, fun disucssions.
    LGF Banned & Blocked (A history) A fascinating read
    LGF Watch
    As their Lizard World Turns Hilarious! Highly recommended.
    FREE LGF!
    ChenZen’s post
    Devil’s Advocate’s post
    The famous Ace of Spades post
    The 2nd Ace Post – What Has Happened To Little Green Footballs?
    Yid With Lid banned

    Rose (e71469)

  217. Oops, that blogmocracy address is wrong – here’s the new one: http://www.theblogmocracy.com/

    Rose (e71469)

  218. The only people left at LGF are fawning yes men. It’s like Charles is engaged in some weird self-cloning experiment.

    I was banned for something so benign I don’t even remember what it was. Suddenly Charles just got his inner Stalin on. The last I checked he was ripping the Tea Partiers. THE FREAKIN’ TEA PARTIERS!–that leaderless, non-party affiliated movement of folks protesting government overreach with homemade signs while braving politically dispatched SEIU goon squads. If that’s not pure enough for Charles, NOTHING IS.

    Welcome to the dark side, Charles. I hope you got a good price for your soul.

    kyleb2112 (334930)

  219. pajama momma – I didn’t know Wicked Pinto was banned over at the Hostages. He must have done something more seriously demented than usual

    *sigh
    The whole thing just makes me sad.

    pajama momma (b4a1db)

  220. I self banned when it started to get ugly.

    CLN (9a80db)

  221. I just checked and my account is still active over at LGF, though I rarely visit there now and hardly ever commented when I did.

    It’s sad, because I used to visit there several times a day starting in 2001. If I remember correctly, he was early on a part of Pajamas Media, but dropped out right before it started up. I thought that was strange at the time but now I think I know why.

    Anyway, while I haven’t been banned, I suspect that my presence in this comment thread might be my “flounce.”

    Pious Agnostic (b2c3ab)

  222. I was never banned from LGF, I quit visiting last year because is was no longer interesting.

    While I was still going there I did succeed in getting CJ to understand that evolution and the belief in creation by a higher being are not contradictory theories. Both could be true, the universe could have been created with evolution as a function for perpetual development. It took awhile but he did come to understand one does not void the other.

    Rick (a28cec)

  223. I was never banned from LGF, but then I never had an account. However, it was one of my favorite blogs for many years, and one of the two (instapundit being the other) for which I had a shortcut bookmark in my web browser. Unfortunately, Charles and LGF have gradually lost my respect and trust.

    A few years ago, Charles posted a link to a church manifesto of some sort which was purported to be written by Obama’s pastor. Now, it was definitely posted to Obama’s church’s website, but it almost certainly was not written by him. How do I know? Because I saw the same piece of writing (“The War On Iraq IQ Test”) forwarded to me before it was posted on the site. It contained the same errors and similarly incorrect attribution.

    I emailed Charles to point this out, and he never amended the post or even responded. For a guy who rails on and on about playing fast and loose with details and not correcting yourself, he has shown a repeated willingness to do so. The only time he responded to any contact is when I sent another mail expressing my concern that he was going off the deep end and being unfair. He responded that he was not being unfair but could really not explain why… par for the course.

    I’m disappointed and bummed that Charles has headed this way, but it’s fair to say that the signs have always been there. A shame.

    =darwin

    Darwin (ad1429)

  224. #218 Dianna~Yes, I do.

    I’m to be found over at correspondence committee, too.

    I’m sure I can manage to wander by.

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  225. Well, back in October, Charles posted some outrageously outrageous quotes from Rush Limbaugh. All I did was state that I didn’t really see how the quotes were particularly shocking. Within three minutes… BAM!

    Pretty amusing, actually.

    DRH (1999a7)

  226. I have a more complex history. I maintained a presence long after my views became contrarian. Not one to pick fights, I simply tried to cite links that showed I was correct. When CJ, rather suddenly became a totally irrational, and frankly uneducated global warmist, I tried to point him to more scientific places, other than the silly agenda driven drivel he tried to maintain was science. I was then prohibited from linking. About 2 months later, to no one’s surprise, I was blocked at 2AM in the morning.
    I note that his link feature is decidedly empty. Can’t imagine why.

    pat (f6ae65)

  227. Wow. I see some of my favorite people here. If you all still like to chat, Rose at The Coffee Shop hosts the same. As for pure commentary, it appears that LGF has spawned a number of blogs. I do not know about the rests, but ours has surpassed LGF in traffic for a time now.

    pat (f6ae65)

  228. Another one? Oh gosh, I am getting tired of telling my story. 😛

    I was banned because I am a creationist. I dared to question the Holy Theory of Evolution, and got sacked.

    Mats (9ba7bd)

  229. I was never banned from LGF, I quit visiting last year because is was no longer interesting.

    While I was still going there I did succeed in getting CJ to understand that evolution and the belief in creation by a higher being are not contradictory theories. Both could be true, the universe could have been created with evolution as a function for perpetual development. It took awhile but he did come to understand one does not void the other.

    Comment by Rick — 1/3/2010 @ 5:16 pm

    Rick, on this matter, I came to a related conclusion: If evolution requires an intelligence to make those ‘irreducibly complex’ jumps, and God is good, but we see many ‘cruel’ evolutions such as poison and parasitoids, how do we reconcile those assumptions?

    http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/the-sin-theory-of-evolution-reconciling-evolution-creationism-and-intelligent-design/

    Scott (9ef93d)

  230. Well, according to Kirly I’ve been banned. And upon further review, the ruling at Kirly (not a bald stooge) stands. Makes me wonder if I’ve simply been banned or if I’ve become an unperson. That used to be something Charles took issue with (Kos and his “Screw them” comment come to mind) though I won’t send the traffic his way with a link.

    I’m sure my cardinal sin was registering and commenting at Hot Air. Oh, I publicly disagreed with Charles a couple of times but I also knew it wasn’t worth my time or effort. It was easier to simply stop participating. I hadn’t bothered to check & it’s been months since I last posted a comment. Apparently, since Charles issued his fatwa, he and his mujahadin have taken up jihad against creationists/adherents of intelligent design or people who disagree with him or with people who leave comments on sites he doesn’t like or link to sites he doesn’t like or… okay I’m sure you get the picture.

    Makes me a little sad. Little Green Footballs in 2002 was a great place for spirited, intelligent debate. It hadn’t devolved into the bootlicking sycophantic morass that it is today. I miss that and all the cool people I got to know. I even organized a couple of LGF get-togethers in Southern California. I miss them and they’ve dispersed all over the place.

    NTropy (b632c8)

  231. I was banned from LGF a few months ago.
    I posted a clarification about Johnson’s post about something Beck said. I went on to say that I was very unhappy about the direction LGF had taken, that it was 80% snark, 20% music and 100% not very interesting to me.

    At the end of my last post, I said that LGF had become DailyKos Lite and closed by saying “So long and thanks for all the fish”.

    My post stayed up for just a few minutes (Johnson must scan each new post as it arrives) and he deleted my post and my login.

    A short while later Power Line deleted LGF from their blogroll and Johnson used my farewell “thanks for all the fish” line in his snarky post about Power Line taking him off their blog roll.

    Ironically, a few months later Johnson posted his farewell to the right and returned to his pre-9/11 leftism.

    So LGF banned me for saying his site had become DailyKos Lite, yet just a few months later Johnson himself trumpeted his return to the left.

    After thinking about Johnson, I got it.

    He’s Captain Queeg from the Caine Mutiny.

    Carl Hardwick (d84450)

  232. if your amoung the banned or just like free thinking come over to table nine enjoy the coffee sit a spell.

    say hello to our wonderful rose

    yochanan ben avrohom (24bb7d)

  233. I got banned by LGF about 6 months ago. Don’t know why but it seemed to coincide with my giving a thumbs down to Charles’ post about Obama being pictured as a witch doctor being racist. Anyhoo, I removed him from my blogroll and haven’t been back since.

    I have a theory that Charles was only on the right during the Bush years in order to boost his popularity and influence. Now it’s the Dems in power he’s shifted to the left to try and appear ‘mainstream’.

    Jack Lacton (a339dc)

  234. […] How They Got Banned From Little Green Footballs By Scott Thong The following are my favourute picks from the comments at Patterico’s Pontifications, who asked people to share their stories of how/why they’ve been banned from LGF. […]

    How They Got Banned From Little Green Footballs « BUUUUURRRRNING HOT (81c1e0)

  235. More interesting than my actual banning (posts here) was a discussion I had in comments a few days before.

    The subject of the tea parties came up, and I mentioned my crazy uncle rule where 1% of any group is likely to consist of “crazy uncles” so with a march of 200,000 it will not be hard to find a significant number ,1,000-4,000 who are nuts.

    As I attended a tea party in Boston I offered to answer any questions concerning the party and the people and made myself available for almost 100 minutes to commentators for any question they had:

    I received none.

    That in itself was more telling than anything else. Nobody was interested in knowing. That is an indictment of Charles’ remaining readers much more than Charles himself. They either had no desire to risk banning by asking (would he have done it for the questions?) Or so slavishly following the line that no question occurred to them.

    datechguy (ccf661)

  236. I somehow found lgf shortly after 9-11. I didn’t comment much, but I followed the blog everyday especially when my husband was sent to Iraq.

    I just saw my name on the list of the banned. I cannot remember exactly what I said to cause my banning, but I think it was in response to yet another post about a blogger (forget who) with supposed white supremacist ties, the comment was along the lines of it must be exhausting to see a racist and nazis behind every tree, not the greatest exit line in history and kind of harmless snark you see just about anywhere. I guess it was totally out of bounds.

    kaymad (f02553)

  237. I was banned, unbanned, and then banned again.

    It was all over the evolution crap. Here’s where I come from on faith v. evolution.

    Let me explain where I come from on this. First on the substance of the issue this is the way I see it. Science is the attempt to explain phenomenon without resort to the divine. As such science does a pretty good job explaining how we got here, from big bang to the descent of man, all without bringing God into it. And I am cool with that.

    But a system of logic cannot disprove something if it simply assumes it away. That is science cannot disprove faith. Indeed if you believe in an omnipotent deity then think about it: you believe that literally anything is possible. So its easy to imagine a scenario whereas the scientific evidence says “big bang/evolution” and the truth is “created in seven days.” And that is assuming that God was telling us the literal truth in Genesis. I am not so sure he was. Maybe the truth really is God created the big bang, and in his infinite wisdom knew exactly how it all would turn out. This isn’t even a hard concept under Calvinistic predestination. Its not that we don’t have any freedom. We can choose freely. It is just that God knows so much he can literally predict what choices you will make.

    So that is my p.o.v. on the substance. Now my second belief is this:

    This whole topic is just boring. I mean to hear CJ speak, creationism is the greatest threat to America, ever. That is ahistorical claptrap. Many, many schools in the United States refused to teach evolution and despite that we became the most powerful nation on earth. And frankly I am more worried about a nuclear Iran than whether the governor of Lousiana is a creationist.

    Now, a lot of your will disagree with my religious and scientific view. That is fine. and maybe even on the importance of the issue. That is fine, too. but all I did was assert them, and without vitriol, and CJ banned me for it. twice.

    And you know what? That doesn’t really burn me as much as when he seeped into mendacity. The first time when Obama bowed to the Saudis, CJ was out front defending him from reality. First he vociferously denied it was a bow until of course the youtube video gave lie to that. And at the same time, he claimed Bush bowed to them, too. And then when more than a few people pointed out that bush just lowered his head to receive a medical, he changed it to “Bush bowed metaphorically.” It was a moment when he just should have said, “okay, I admit it, I was wrong.” But no, CJ just dug in.

    As I said to someone in the debate over McCain, the first time I heard the charges was from Johnson, so I had thought they were presumptively wrong. That is how unhinged the man had become by then. Look, there is nothing wrong with saying that the right shouldn’t embrace every racist retard on the planet, or radical impulse. But the problem is that CJ is raging against the right in the absence of all facts. And it’s a sad thing to see the guy who helped hold Dan Rather accountable to the truth turn into a liar for the president.

    A.W. (e7d72e)

  238. One of our workstations was blocked.

    http://www.therudenews.com/archives/5922

    Then they sent over a hack to bug us.

    http://www.therudenews.com/archives/5993

    The Rude News looked into who really frequents LGF the next day.

    http://www.therudenews.com/archives/6015

    Now, for some reason, the block has been lifted. What can you say?

    Here is our LGF tag, which includes my own personal evolution with LGF.

    http://www.therudenews.com/archives/tag/lgf

    The Rude Dog (1f4000)

  239. Besides being banned, every article I ever linked to was deleted. Likely my comments also, but I never checked.

    pat (f6ae65)

  240. I linked to a pro Palin article of mine and that got me banned over the summer. I guess Charles was in his anti Palin kick. I’ve also been banned from Free Republic for an anti Malkin article, so it’s not only Charles.

    Everyone is a believer in free speech in theory.

    Mike Vlpe (20493c)

  241. I had been a member for a few years without commenting. When he accused Inhofe of being a flake (I forgot the exact term used) due to his creationist ideas, I posted that Inhofe had done some useful things and didn’t deserve to be dismissed. Then the kiss of death: I asked if this ‘guilt by association’ was also at the root of his problems with Spencer and Geller. When I checked later to see if there were any additional comments, my account was terminated. I emailed a request asking why I was banned and how my posting conflicted with his guidelines… no answer.
    He must have a very long list of banned accounts…

    EarlW (bb7af8)

  242. I banned myself. I no longer wanted to be associated with a far left blog, where anti-Catholic racism is tolerated.

    And what kind of a business model is that? You ban people and block their IP addresses?
    I guess that’s why he has to beg for donations

    Arthur (0c1de3)

  243. I didn’t even post a comment that I got banned for a couple of years back. When he went on the start of his anti-creationism crusade I started to give these post a thumb down to let him I would prefer he get back to what he was known for and was banned within 2 days of doing it.

    Jeff (c3177f)

  244. I was banned, don’t know why, I wasn’t a regular commenter, or even a regular reader, but I did regularly upvote or downvote stories. One day, the “account is blocked” alert popped up and I never went back. Just checked it now, learned that Tea Party Attendees are all racist, left. Nothing worth my time there.

    dave (736014)

  245. I had been an allowed participant at LGF for over four years, an almost daily visitor, and at the very beginning even a defender of CJ.

    But then I sinned grievously. In his coverage of the Tea Party events he emphasized the only few radical far right-wing signs he could find. My sin – posting a simple observation that LGF emphasized only the most radical. He did not include any of the more representative signs.

    JohnFLob (f9d4ab)

  246. The Little Johnson banned me for calling Rick Sanchez of CNN “A flaming liar” This apparently got him aroused and he accused me of making homophobic racist slurs……….

    DoctorTed (723101)

  247. I was banned for the way I voted on issues.

    By proclamation the 2009 Fiske award goes to Charles Johnson the idiotarian of the year.

    Last Man (23a8ee)

  248. I was a longtime commenter and photo essay contributor, even an ‘operative’ at LGF from about 2005 to mid-2008 give or take. I walked away out of boredom long before I was banned.

    Ultimately I got the stick because I took a photo of a guy in a ‘Fuck Glenn Beck’ t-shirt and put it on my blog and the ensuing captioning on the interwebs.

    Moral of the story? You can’t ban the willing.

    Urban Infidel (e93099)

  249. Allow me to introduce myself – I am the LGF uber-troll, “Gordon.” With several thousand posts to my credit, my admittely egomaniacal diary of my LGF experience battling with the likes of Rayra, Ed the Weatherman, and others who have not posted here can be found at nodrogsgreatesthits.blogspot.com.

    My now-continuing analysis of the LGF bannings can be found at lgfbannedandblocked.blogspot.com.

    Another whole gang of ex-LGF’ers can be found at the Discarded Lies blog. The story of their final dismissal, told in their typically irreverent way, can be found at http://discardedlies.com/entry/?41042.

    Nodrog (819b0a)

  250. If you want the admittedly egomaniacal story of my four-year odyssey as LGF’s primary troll/paragon of common sense, go to nodrogsgreatesthits.blogspot.com.

    Nodrog (819b0a)

  251. It looks like I’m a couple days late to this thread, but it really is reassuring to see that I’m not alone.

    I joined LGF around 2002, I think. I was a student at SF State then. Not only did 9/11 happen in the Fall, but my campus was a cesspool of Palestinian and left wing hatred of Jews and Israel.

    I mostly lurked, occasionally posted, but seldom got into serious arguments. Except once when I defended religion as being useful when used positively. That earned the ire of the Atheist crowd. But I wasn’t blocked for that. Not yet.

    I really can’t remember what I was blocked for. It seemed that random. One of the last comments I remember making was in one of the Creationist threads. I’ve become a bit more religious in the last few years (Judaism) but I have no problem with Evolution. G-d could put the operants in motion, and G-d works behind nature anyway, so why shouldn’t that be the method by which he developed life? I think the Creationists who think the only way G-d could create life is to say “Abracadabera” and have it appear in a puff of smoke are pretty ridiculous too.

    I once taught a class on Environmental Science. One day, when I opened a chapter on Evolution, I had some catholic college students (this was a private vocational school) protest that Evolution was “just a theory.” Old arguments. I said I was teaching a science class, so I was teaching the scientific view on how life started. They should know it; if they believe it when they leave, I didn’t care, but they should understand the theory instead of being ignorant of it. If the school ever asked me to teach Religion 101, then I’d teach the religious view of how life started. But not in a Science class. Anyway, that worked. I got no more protests from the students.

    I told that story in a post on LGF. A few days later, I found my account blocked. I had trouble believing it. I wrote CJ, to see if there was a mistake. No response. Was it a fluke? Was it a mistake?

    It’s nice to see that my story is hardly exceptional, and that there’s a crowd of fellow travelers. Seems kind of odd that CJ thinks he should be able to ban hundreds of people and that they will all freely dissipate into the Ozone and not congregate to other websites.

    Dayenu (e22e0c)

  252. #255 Dayenu:

    to ban hundreds

    Thousands, now, I think.

    EW1(SG) (edc268)

  253. i established an account there sometime around early 2004. posting at lgf was an occasional supplement to my usual activity on the now-defunct protest warrior site.

    i started to lose faith in lgf and the entire “anti-jihad movement” after the Free Muslims Against Terrorism rally, which i attended. i was put off that almost no one from the “anti-jihad” side appeared. i was doubly unimpressed that, after not attending, lgf and related outlets pointed to the general non-attendance as a sort of backwards reasoning for why no one on the “anti-jihad” side should have had anything to do with it. i took from this that “anti-jihad” meant suspicion of muslems in general and that the calls for muslem moderates to raise their profile against extremist pr fronts like cair and the maf were hollow and insincere.

    following that was another event in the “anti-jihad” saga which bothered me. this was the controversy surrounding d’nesh d’souza’s book about the error of the west’s “hearts and minds” campaign in the islamic world, by which it is erroneously supposed that the average pakistani wants to supplant religious extremism with a western liberal social order. the conservative mainstream took to the task of smearing d’souza and misrepresenting his argument as an affirmation of radical islamic portrayals of the west. in this fight between liberals and conservatives on the one side, and d’souza alone on the other, the final arena was a cpac panel between d’souza and robert spenser. spencer at that time was the ascendant hero of the “anti-jihad movement” and charles johnson still breathlessly linked and praised everything he wrote.

    by that time, i had already come to the conclusion that spenser was bad news, because in fact it was his central conceit which echoed the al qaeda line – the idea that there’s no such thing as a moderate muslem because a muslem who does not interpret literally and follow each surrah to the bloody letter is not a genuine muslem.

    but lgf was a dedicated outlet of the spenser line. correspondingly, the vile eliminationist racism liberals had long noted of charles’ site, voiced by the likes of ironfist, wasn’t so much the pique of a few hot-heads, but the output of a doctrinal line which charles endorsed. indeed, i noted at the time that people who would call out some of the bigotry and racism at lgf for what it was were swiftly banned by charles.

    rather than risk losing my account altogether, i simply refrained from posting and, eventually, reading. i didn’t return for some time.

    about a year later, i discovered, via allahpundit, that charles had broken faith with spenser over the vlamms bellang thing. without looking too deeply into that specific matter, i assumed that charles had finally developed a conscience about the sort of rhetoric he filtered into his site. i started checking back in.

    but by this time i was skeptical of johnson’s integrity and consistency. when the 2008 primaries came about, the conservative base was in a quixotic snope-hunt for the realest “real” conservative out there. i was pro-giuliani by default, but i knew i wasn’t going to vote for either obama or clinton, so the matter less important to me than to debunk factional claims against mccain or romney or giuliani or whoever so the gop might have a chance in the general election.

    it was in this context that charles johnson took up his case against paleo-libertarian candidate, ron paul. i was far from a paul supporter, but, in the wake of neo-conservative miscalculations in iraq and the failure of “compassionate conservatism” to reduce government and preserve libety, i thought that paul represented a version of conservatism that the mainstream could profit from at least dialoging with.

    but neo-conservative and “911 republican” factions like charles johnson, were too ready to apply tendentious smears against paul because of their crankier elements. this is where charles let loose with some very obtuse inductive logical errors. essentially, any character who supported paul was presented as representing paul’s “real” views. now, it’s one thing that paul refused to return campaign donations from don black, but prior to that, the claims were more along the lines of “because stormfront has a ron paul banner on their site, ron paul supports stormfront.”

    my banning came when i was reading one of these threads and sharmuta, or whoever, had dug around in the white supremacist google groups threads and was quoting support for paul as further “proof”.

    my only retort – my first posts in months after a fairly robust carreer as a comrade – was to quote from the same google groups thread of anti-jihad sentiments, including some who cited jihad and support for the war on terror as a reason not to support ron paul.

    i was banned and my comments were deleted before i could refresh my browser.

    now that was a long story, and one which contains elements which confess a certain dischord with much of the lgf2 crowd, but the point to be taken from it is this: one doesn’t have to be an extremist, creationist, global warming-denying wingnut bitcher birtherracist milita crackpot to be banned. all one needs to do is to fall out of absolute consonance with charles’ capricious will.

    i don’t respect charles’ “reformation” because it’s no such thing. it’s something pathological, rooted in control issues and the need to get negative attention.

    -=@$$=- (126065)

  254. charles bans people for politely arguing with facts – whether they argue with him directly, with older users or with newer users.

    charles bans people for using the comment rating system to “down-ding” or “up-ding” in a way he doesn’t like. this, despite the safeguard of barring the feature from users with less than fifty comments.

    charles bans users for running search strings he doesn’t like. he blocks google’s search spiders and limits most search features to users in good standing. as you might imagine, charles doesn’t like to be contradicted by reference to things he wrote nine months ago, so he bans people for linking to the archives.

    charles bans people for not posting at all, or not posting frequently. he needs new users to establish some sort of “baseline” of fealty, so he has no patience for the registered user who only posts when they have something of substance to say. many seem to maintain their standing by jumping to post in each thread hollow, lugubrious praise of charles.

    charles watches incoming and out-going ip addresses and monitors his users comings and goings on other sites. by this method, charles bans people he suspects of having posted on sites he disaproves of. these include sites which are anti-lgf. these include sites which have had no part in charles’ controversies.

    charles claims to have an algorithm which can positively identify sockpuppets. from personal experience, i can say that this algorithm is either completely faulty, or a fiction charles presents to remaining users when they have the temerity to ask who was banned and why.

    charles has been caught lying about the content of banned posts, and the behavior of banned users.

    charles has also been caught going back into his archives and user base to “correct” older entries and erase others, and to “unperson” users whom he once favored, but who are now problematic in retrospect.

    did i miss anything?

    charles’ moderation behavior has begun to fly free from the strictures of the system outlined above. here is an example of charles threatening to ban mandymanners, one of his more sychophantic users, because she said goodnight by linking to video of supertramp’s “goodbye stranger”:

    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/165/7975604

    charles is a malignant narcissist who seeks to attract negative attention to his site so he can experience release by banning users.

    -=@$$=- (126065)

  255. I made some joke about me being a thirteen year old boy in response to Babbazee and Nancy started harrassing me with lewd and suggestive emails. I was shocked. I tried to explain it was just a joke, but he was relentless. The emails got more and more explicit. I told him I was a man in my forties and would pass for a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, but he wouldn’t believe me. In the end I had to change my ISP.

    Bweep (b66f29)

  256. I was banned so quickly that I didn’t have time to turn around before it was done.

    I forget the subject, but I thought that Charles had over-reacted. I said something along the line of… “Charles, I think you might be over-reacting a little.”

    I read a couple more comments and moved on to the next article and found that I had been logged out. Tried to log back in and was told the account was blocked. Probably took all of two minutes to happen. I imagine him sitting there, like a vulture, ready to pounce on the slightest slight against him.

    BC (bac0f5)

  257. I joined the banned list several months ago simply for being some place on the internet that was not lgf, the Table Nine Chatroom.

    FurryOldGuyJeans (220950)

  258. The Town Hall Meetings, and a thread condemning the attendees at these meetings for their bad manners was the final word for me. I updinged too many comments defending the right of constituents to petition their congresscritters for redress of grievance. My one comment stood, but my credentials were evermore invalid.

    Semi Cartman (1bf5e3)

  259. Your Last Posting
    (Los Angeles)

    –apologies to Robert Browning and “My Last Duchess”

    That’s your last posting ever on this blog,

    And henceforth your account is blocked. You’ll dog
    
My site no further with your words; your nic 

    Is banished, and I gave your posts the stick.

    You know I’ll call your banning here a “flounce”
    Though I’ve been waiting for some time to pounce
    On your account, and with prevarications
    Distort and demonize your observations.
    The Toad Hall where you reveled, if you please’ll
    Be given entire to the stoats and weasels,

    My countenance beaming on each one that

    Comes to me bearing tales of Mole or Rat,

    Or Badger, or…sockpuppet. No, ‘t was not

    This writing only, placed you on the spot

    And caused me to invoke the ban: perhaps

    You chanced to differ with my own claptrap
    
And stick to your position, or dispute

    Conventional wisdoms to which repute

    I’ve lately granted. Don’t you dare to say

    That I or my site might have lost their way

    Obsessing on my personal vendettas;
    
I am neither forgiving nor forgetter,

    And will not brook a failure of obesiance

    By anyone I feel owes me allegiance.
    Yes, I took Rather down, on grounds that he
    Could not support what he claimed factually;
    But now I set my sights at lower bar
    (On personalities, not things that are)
    While I squat ‘midst the wreckage I have made

    Like mad Kurtz ruling from his bush stockade,

    Ringed ’round with skulls. For I no longer deign

    To weigh a fact itself; instead, maintain

    That source determines truth, and to that end
    The nature of veracity I bend,
    Citing to midden-heaps of rankness such

    That I would not long since have scorned to touch.

    A turtle is a lizard in a shell,
    And I, lord of my self-created hell

    Remain King Yertle of the Turtle Stack

    Exalted on my Posting Turtles’ backs–
    Yet conscious, as I proclaim my renown
    
It’s just posting turtles, all the way down, 

    Which is why I respond with rage and fear

    Should anyone mouth what I deem a sneer
    
Or contradiction. So I flip a switch,
    And all posts stop together, with a bitch

    Given reign of my elegant designs.

    Yet, if I still retained but half a spine
    
I would despise appearing to be led

    As I now seem to, by the lesser head.

    Hark! Look you! See how Glenn Beck weeps!

    Do you not loathe the company he keeps

    Regardless of whatever he might say?
    Here is the global warming word today; 

    Do not dissent, the banning stick is toward

    I care for no voice save that of accord!

    buzzsawmonkey (ab5dbf)

  260. Your Last Posting
    (Los Angeles)

    –apologies to Robert Browning and “My Last Duchess”

    That’s your last posting ever on this blog,

    And henceforth your account is blocked. You’ll dog
    
My site no further with your words; your nic 

    Is banished, and I gave your posts the stick.

    You know I’ll call your banning here a “flounce”
    Though I’ve been waiting for some time to pounce
    On your account, and with prevarications
    Distort and demonize your observations.
    The Toad Hall where you reveled, if you please’ll
    Be given entire to the stoats and weasels,

    My countenance beaming on each one that

    Comes to me bearing tales of Mole or Rat,

    Or Badger, or…sockpuppet. No, ‘t was not

    This writing only, placed you on the spot

    And caused me to invoke the ban: perhaps

    You chanced to differ with my own claptrap
    
And stick to your position, or dispute

    Conventional wisdoms to which repute

    I’ve lately granted. Don’t you dare to say

    That I or my site might have lost their way

    Obsessing on my personal vendettas;
    
I am neither forgiving nor forgetter,

    And will not brook a failure of obesiance

    By anyone I feel owes me allegiance.
    Yes, I took Rather down, on grounds that he
    Could not support what he claimed factually;
    But now I set my sights at lower bar
    (On personalities, not things that are)
    While I squat ‘midst the wreckage I have made

    Like mad Kurtz ruling from his bush stockade,

    Ringed ’round with skulls. For I no longer deign

    To weigh a fact itself; instead, maintain

    That source determines truth, and to that end
    The nature of veracity I bend,
    Citing to midden-heaps of rankness such

    That I would not long since have scorned to touch.

    A turtle is a lizard in a shell,
    And I, lord of my self-created hell

    Remain King Yertle of the Turtle Stack

    Exalted on my Posting Turtles’ backs–
    Yet conscious, as I proclaim my renown
    
It’s just posting turtles, all the way down, 

    Which is why I respond with rage and fear

    Should anyone mouth what I deem a sneer
    
Or contradiction. So I flip a switch,
    And all posts stop together, with a bitch

    Given reign of my elegant designs.

    Yet, if I still retained but half a spine
    
I would despise appearing to be led

    As I now seem to, by the lesser head.

    Hark! Look you! See how Glenn Beck weeps!

    Do you not loathe the company he keeps

    Regardless of whatever he might say?
    Here is the global warming word today; 

    Do not dissent, the banning stick is toward
–
    I care for no voice save that of accord!

    buzzsawmonkey (ab5dbf)

  261. Made a comment, didn’t know about the sarc tag (/). Was called a troll, a neonazi, a fascist, a arab sympathizer, a Jew hater, etc., all for responding to a comment that I found offensive. Even though I backed off and tried to quiet down the ruckus several times, I was shouted down. I left the post and found that I was banned later. Some folks commented that they thought I was banned without warrent, and they were advised to shut up as well.

    There is no free speech at The Village.

    Bunk X (4b69d7)

  262. I was banned several months ago. I don’t remember the exact exchange, but Charles essentially said I was “crazy” to be worried about Obama’s actions to date – I replied “yeah, I’m the crazy one”. That was it – comment deleted & banned. I notice that critical comments are very rare over at LGF these days, and I wonder why and self-respecting person would stick around.

    Steve K. (ef1732)


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