09.03.09

And he was so good at one time

Posted in Culture at 12:18 am by Administrator

I’d like to think that I’ve been at this cultural / economic / political / public-policy blogging endeavor long enough now to have developed some chops.

I know that in my other areas of focused work – general-feature writing, arts journalism, blues-based music performance – I have attained a level of confidence that allows me to make assessments of the work of others in those fields.  I like to think that I can tell when someone is really on top of his game, and when someone is slipping.

Hopefully I’m developing that kind of inside understanding of how to blog.  I feel that when I follow a particular blogger for a while I can see how he or she is progressing – or not.

Having thus set the table, I can say that I think Little Green Footballs has run its course.  Proprietor Charles Johnson has fallen prey to something I’m always on the lookout for here at BN – the tendency to carve out an eccentric – make that kinky – set of preoccupations, make it the driving thematic core of one’s observations and conclusions, and thereby be so blinded to the contributions of decent, courageous, even exceptional champions of liberty as to scorn and mock them.  Johnson has gone there.

He started out as one of the Internet’s great champions of Israel.  In fact, the Jerusalem Post awarded him with its “Best Israel Advocacy” recognition in 2005.  For some time in the middle of this decade, he was consistently right on about nearly everything that was at stake in our society’s national discourse.  He helped get Pajamas Media off the ground.

Then he started obsessing over certain things that I actually agreed with him about.  His denunciation of creationism is laudible.  Its influence is something that needs to be mentioned from time to time, for instance.  Ditto Pat Buchanan’s associations with Vlams Belaang and similar wacko groups.  The problem, though, was that he made them his primary focus, even as our blessed land was sliding into TCM-thrall.

I can live with someone whose worldview, at the spiritual level, incorporates a six-day creation scenario as a matter of necessity – a view which, let me be clear, I find as wacky as Johnson does – if that person harbors an otherwise fully fleshed-out conservative take on the human predicament.  I’m not inclined to go in for a throw-em-overboard-first-and-ask-questions-later modus operandi.

He’s now at the point at which governors such as Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin are thrown overboard because they haven’t puked all over themselves sufficiently to satisfy him that they wouldn’t force creationism down kids’ throats.  Pam Gellar, who runs the blog Atlas Shrugs, is on his raving lunatic list, even though he should welcome her tireless efforts to bring to light the arcane detais of the worldwide jihadist threat, the basic mysogeny inherent in Islam, and the life-or-death daily struggle of Israel to exist and get some kind of respect in the world.  Johnson has decided that Glenn Beck is a buffoon.  Tell that to the viewers and listeners making for his soaring ratings.

He also has come to spend much more time on his nerdy extra-political preoccupations such as bicycle mechanics, web design, and guitarists with fast fingers.

His latest thrust is ho-humming the upcoming TCM talk to the nation’s schoolkids, saying that righties, a segment of the populace he seems quite pleased to distinguish himself from, have over-hyped the threat from TCM pronouncements all along.  Apparently he has not given much thought to the accompanying set of questions to which BN gives considerable attention in the post below, as well as the overarching context in which this is occurring, also covered in that BN post.

I’ve mentioned twice in recent posts my ponderings over my own brand.  I hope I am going about the process of zeroing in on that with more finesse than Johnson.  He has in effect re-branded himself, just by virtue of crystalizing his basic kinkiness and convincing himself that it amounts to some kind of compelling cleverness.

Goodbye, Charles.  If what you’re up to these days constitutes your idea of important opinion-dispensing, I can only hope something gives you a much-needed upside-the-head experience.

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