Flame Wars

Someone asked me about the article "Right-Wing Flame Wars", that was in this last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.  The article is about Mr Charles Johnson, and his blog Little Green Footballs.  The blog can be found here.

Little Green Footballs came to my attention about three and a half years ago, when it asked the question "Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut?"  It turned out that the respected news agency had been doctoring the photographs.

I had always assumed that the blog was a pro-Israeli effort and that the writer or writers were Jewish.  The article from the NYT Mag tells us that Mr Johnson is "an agnostic and a Gentile."  But the Blog has an Israeli slant and I had also always wondered if the name referred to the Palestinians.  But the blog is not just about Israel.  Like a lot of interesting blogs with a larger world view (e.g., Gates of Vienna or the French focused ¡No Pasarán!) it has a wide range of interests.

Which brings us back to the article in the NYT Mag.  The writer suggests that Mr Johnson writes with a heavy hand, and commenters on his blog are even more heavy handed, if not vicious.  Given the small audience of this blog, that does not yet seem to be a problem.  I have received one comment I took to be spam and I deleted it, but made a not of it in the Comments section.  Some are very careful, not allowing comments to be posted until they have been reviewed.  I am giving the visitors a little more freedom, believing that the People are, as a group, inherently good.  It might be what one might call an economic point of view.

It turns out that a small fracas has sprung up due to efforts to define purity.  This is a long and involved discussion, best left to the article itself.  I am a bit distrustful of purity.  None of us has it exactly correct.  How does The Adding Machine song go?

We laugh, we cry,
We live, we die,
and when we're gone
the world goes on.
We love, we hate,
We learn too late
how small we are,
how little we know

I think this situation with Little Green Footballs is an unfortunate tempest in a tea pot.

If you are made at Little Green Footballs move on.  If you are not, stick around.

Regards  —  Cliff