Talk:Little Green Footballs

LGF was never "right wing"

My friends consider me a bleeding-heart lefty and even I'm more conservative on most things than Charles. The people saying he started out "right wing" before turning liberal seem to be making a big mistake: Being caught up in the post-9/11 anti-Islam fervor had nothing to do with "right wing". He was merely a left-winger caughter up in the post-9/11 anti-Islam fervor. You could argue that he was once "mildly conservative" on a handful of issues but "right wing"? That's the opening line of the entire article and it's linked to one single opinion column using it as an umbrella term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.246.164.189 (talk) 01:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

replacing valid contrib

recently there was an editwar and the result was the removal of a valid contrib. the way this unfolded was as follows:

-a factual, neutrally-worded and validly sourced contrib was included and remained there for better than a month with no controversy.

-charles johnson, the article's subject, along with confederates he enlisted, began blanking the section without going to talk. when they finally entered the talk page, they continued their edit war from a position of conflict of interest with personal attacks.

-invalid BLP and RS objections were cited to defeat the contrib.

the result is that, through a campaign of WP:IDONTLIKEIT designed to defeat valid contributions, the article's subject was able to defeat inclusion of a fact which he acknowledged himself, but would prefer to have dressed only in his own spin or not at all, and a campaign of disruptive and violatory editing was rewarded with their preferred outcome.

the BLP/RS objection was and remains to be invalid. i will explain:

-the substance of the claim is that charles johnson had been caught in the act of revisionist editing of his blog. the source cited was a blog which, for general purposes, complied with the RS specifications for blogs because it was the blog of a professional journalist published under the imprimatur of a major daily newspaper.

-nonetheless, the RS validity of that particular entry was disputed on the claim that it rested the weight of it's substance on a link to a non-RS compliant blog rather than first-party explication.

-this second, derivative claim is false. there are two links stemming from the source; one was to the non-RS compliant blog, the other was to Johnson's own blog, admitting that he had been "caught" and spinning it as the innocent correction of a grammatical error.

the result of the [Noticeboard] ruling was given by the senior editor brought into this talk page at the conclusion of the edit war and was, quoting, "If you have Johnson, on Johnson's blog, saying he picked his nose, then you can use it. He's a reliable source for what he said/did himself."

the substance of the erroneously deleted edit, that charles johnson had been caught in the act of revisionist editing, is not "controversial" in any valid sense of the word and the source provided in the contrib is not in violation of the BLP or RS specifications.

consequently, i am re-adding the contrib. Notanipokay (talk) 22:26, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with everything said in the historical summary above, and I'm not sure the two sections added by Notanipokay couldn't be better worded, but I do agree with the gist of the argument that it's appropriate to note LGF revisionism here. Mark Shaw (talk) 16:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

mark, i would eagerly accept your edits on the section. i really don't care if my original wording is intact. i shouldn't care at all about what becomes of any wikipedia article. what does bother me is the way the subject of this article was able to red-pencil it's content. Notanipokay (talk) 05:15, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Charles Johnson has sent a confederate to canvas a mod named SpikeToronto to re-red-pencil the article to his liking

"It's that same obsessed weirdo again, putting back the badly-sourced edits that he was told he could not make, several times before. If you would leave a note for the admins, I'd appreciate it. I can't do it myself."(link)

"sure, the last admin and i were on the level about it all. ill write him after im done with this paper." (link)

"Thanks. That guy should be blocked from making edits -- he's demonstrated many times over that he's not on the level, and now he's sneaking back in to make edits he was told he could not make."(link)

Notanipokay (talk) 06:15, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've taken a closer look at the edits in question (represented by this diff). I'm not going to make any changes myself as I have a slight conflict of interest as a booted former LGF commenter, and don't really want to get involved except as an observer. But, for the record, it seems to me that the "alteration and deletion" section, at least, needs to be rewritten in a less accusatory and more neutral tone. Notanipokay seems to be trying to wave a bloody shirt here. While I approve, to some degree and for personal reasons, of the idea of seeing CJ portrayed as a buffoon, I have to point out that it's simply not encyclopedic. Let's stick to the facts and apply as little slant as possible. Mark Shaw (talk) 21:11, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

how about, "johnson responded to allegations of revisionist editing by writing that he had been 'caught' correcting a 'mistake'"? i don't know if that sounds more neutral. another editor who had come to defend johnson suggested a wording which explicitly stated that johnson's intent was to bring the older post in line with his current views. again, i'm not insisting on my wording here, but i don't know how to make it more neutral than it is. sometimes it's just that way. there's no way to say "mr. x was convicted of fraud" more neutrally than "mr. x was convicted of fraud." Notanipokay (talk) 23:47, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Name Origin

While the name may have originated with a Muppets-driven Japanese song, Kermit's inspiration undoubtedly derives from a form of soft green vitamin-pill our mother gave us in the 50's and 60's, which we promptly dubbed exactly 'Little Green Footballs', as in "Here come the little green footballs.", and a web-search shows we were not alone. A D-supplement that apparently survives to this day which some people still call 'little green footballs', e.g.:

I have read a suggestion of 1000 IU daily PO, for every 25# of wt.....if obese perhaps more rather than less.....

and yes the little green footballs are Vit D2......not the useful form.

[emphasis added]

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/vitamin-d-511928-page2.html

JohndanR (talk) 16:30, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Aricle overhaul?

How about scrapping this article and building it back from the ground up? It's been a long time since I edited this article, and coming back it looks more disjointed than ever. I think this is an article that could seriously benefit from a complete overhaul. Look, there is something very unique about Little Green Footballs. It is a web site that went from virulently political right to virulently political left. This wasn't just small shift, the web site has a very angry tone, and doesn't do anything in moderation; it goes for broke on it's ideological opponents. It's extremely rare for any popular political pundit or website to change it's point of view so drastically; in fact I can't think of a single example of another pundit that has ever done this. But the problem is, this woudln't be easily apparent to anyone reading the article for the first time. The terms "centrist" or even "center-left" very poorly describe someone who runs so hard in one political direction, and then years later just as hard in the other. The "recurring themes" are one example. Johnson no longer mentions Rachel Corrie, or "Palestinian child abuse". Similarly, he said nothing about creationism or ID before 2007, but the article makes it sound as if these are all happening at the same time. Of course, there was the very early period where it was just a blog about bicycling. Perhaps one solution would be to divide the article into sections: pre-2001, 2001-2008, 2008 until today. What do you all think? BuboTitan (talk) 18:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

"It's extremely rare for any popular political pundit or website to change it's point of view so drastically; in fact I can't think of a single example of another pundit that has ever done this." It has happened. Please see Blinded by the Right, which involved the author (David Brock) coming out as gay, and repudiating conservatism, which he saw as being incompatible with his authentic self. Cheers, Reninger (talk) 10:50, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Another pretty obvious example is Arianna Huffington, although one imagines Johnson was less driven by the need to be fashionable at all the right parties. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to present this theory of the development of Johnson, even as article structure, without solid reliable sources discussing it. Nevard (talk) 09:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. That would be the only way to make the article coherent, or sufficiently incoherent, if you will. It is correct that LGF has gone through three stages, two of them political and diametrically opposed. For some reason, Charles Johnson has made a great effort to hide and/or alter the 2001-2008 period, with banning posters from this period (4000+ I believe), removing posts, deleting comments (both his own and others) and unregistered visitors can't access comments pre 2009 or so, which is quite extraordinary, considering the impact and popularity this blog once had. So, dividing the article into three parts is a great idea, but researching the 2001-2008 period, or anything predating 2009 for that matter, may turn out to be difficult. Gus 123 (talk) 17:15, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I have some editorial advice for the above rewrite, which I encourage. Remember that this is about the blog, not Charles. The entire intro reads like it's about him. It's not. Here's an outline:

Intro Quick summary of what the blog is like right now. The words "Charles Johnson" should appear no more than once in the intro, to help set the tone for future edits.

History

1. Discuss the blog's origin as a photography, programming and occasional news blog with only a few readers
2. Discuss the blog post-9/11 when it shifted focus to the discussion of militant Islam and became super-popular with a huge right-wing following.
3. Discuss the Killian tapes and such, since they happened next. You may mention Charles Johnson again.
4. Discuss the blog's shift in focus without any negative information, including its relative readership compared to the other periods in the blog's life - the BLOG'S, not CHARLES - keep it about the blog.
5. Leave us at the current day, which was described by the intro

Topics

1. Ask Charles for a thumbnail sheet of photographs published on the blofthat can be displayed on Wikipedia
2. Get some sample article titles about programming IF he still blogs about it.
3. Mention intelligent design and whatever he blogs about now.

Controversy

This is where all the critical stuff goes, like most of Wikipedia. It should be here so it doesn't taint and color the whole article. We don't need to think worse of Mr. Johnson with every paragraph we read. Instead, we should concentrate all the negative stuff here and explain it.

Again, this can be done through the mere act of copying and pasting the existing content into new section headings and just tying all the sentences together. No information or significant wording need be changed.

Full disclosure: I was an LFG Lizardoid Minion from 2002-2006, when I stopped going for no apparent reason. But I'd never go back there or even read it now, because I think that guy is certifiable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.110.162.193 (talk) 23:44, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

There is an oft-referenced Wikipedia essay that discourages the use of such criticism sections as being likely to lead to undue weight on negative criticism. Keeping criticism inline helps ensure that negative views are counterbalanced by positive. As for the origins of the webblog, I just haven't seen any decent sources written by anyone who cared enough to write about the subject (being funny as well as juvenile would have helped). Nevard (talk) 09:54, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Parting ways with islamophobia

Sometime during 2007 the blog switched from promoting islamphobia to making a break with that movement. Perhaps that should be mentioned in the article as it's a quite dramatic change. I think it might have been somewhere around this. // Liftarn (talk)

He made a break with some figures of the "counter-jihad" movement, but he continued to make paranoid claims through the 2008 election (e.g., that Michelle Obama was "friends" with a Hamas agent and that Pres. Obama himself was a secret Muslim) and beyond until the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy, which was led by the two closest of his former associates. It seems clear that he only abandoned islamophobic cant (while, in the same move, adopting equally-strident anti-islamophobic rhetoric) as a means of prosecuting a personal vendetta. 06:37, 12 March 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:CCA3:460:E038:355F:9661:5DB6 (talk)