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Little Green Footballs (LGF) (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/) is a principally political blog run by California web designer Charles Johnson. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Johnson transformed his blog's discussion of bicycle racing, programming, web design, and the occasional humorous news item into a very active discussion of the American War on Terror and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although LGF is usually characterized as politically conservative (or sometimes alleged to be right wing•), prior to 9/11 its webmaster often expressed liberal political views and was critical of George W Bush.
For "promoting Israel and Zionism" and "presenting Israel's side of the conflict," LGF won the "Best Israel Advocacy Blog" award from the Jerusalem Post in 2005.• Gil Ronen, a reporter for Israel National News, has written:•
If anyone ever compiles a list of Internet sites that contribute to Israel’s public relations effort, Charles Johnson's site will probably come in first, far above the Israeli Foreign Ministry's site.
In the United States, LGF is perhaps best known for playing a key role in exposing the forged Killian documents about President Bush,•• that preceded the resignation of CBS' Dan Rather. The site won the Washington Post's reader poll for Best International Blog in November 2004.• The site also played a large role in exposing the forged and altered photographs in the Adnan Hajj photographs controversy.•
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Ideological influences
Posts on LGF frequently cite the writing and views of Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer, Mark Steyn, Oriana Fallaci, and James Lileks.
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"Idiotarianism" and the "Fiskie"
LGF webmaster Charles Johnson coined the internet neologism and political epithet "Idiotarian,"• and runs an "Idiotarian of the Year Award" named for journalist Robert Fisk.
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Killian documents
LGF was one of four sources, along with the Power Line and Allahpundit blogs and the Free Republic discussion forum, who conducted the initial investigation of Dan Rather's assertions on 60 Minutes that the Killian documents were genuine.
Within hours of the segment, the authenticity of the documents was questioned by posters on Free Republic, a conservative Internet forum, and discussion quickly spread to various weblogs in the blogosphere. This discussion was touched off by a user known as "Buckhead," who is also a Republican lawyer. The following morning, several blogs including Power Line
These commentators were criticized by Jonathan Klein, a former CBS News executive, as persons working in their living rooms in their pajamas. In response, some of these individuals started calling themselves Pajamahadeen.
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Doctored Reuters photographs
On August 5, 2006, LGF showed how a photograph of Beirut after an Israeli air strike taken by Adnan Hajj was manipulated before being published, a serious breach of journalistic ethics.••
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Charitable contributions
Little Green Footballs supporters have helped raise thousands of dollars for Spirit of America's "Friends of Iraq Blogger Challenge".• • Supporters also donate pizzas for IDF soldiers.•
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Pajamas Media
In late 2005, Johnson, along with blogger and author Roger L. Simon launched a news site called Pajamas Media (briefly called Open Source Media) featuring mostly conservative bloggers and journalists (e.g., Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Michael Barone, Tammy Bruce, John Podhoretz, Michael Ledeen, Cathy Seipp) with some liberal participants (e.g., David Corn, Marc Cooper). The name refers to Jonathan Klein's comment about bloggers working in their pajamas.
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"Palestinian Child Abuse"
Johnson often posts photos taken by Associated Press and Reuters photographers, among others, of Palestinians dressing their children in terrorist and/or military clothing emblazoned with slogans such as "Allah is the one true prophet" or "death to Israel." These children are often shown carrying guns and bomb belts, usually real but sometimes fake. Johnson refers to such treatment of children by their parents as "Palestinian Child Abuse."•
Johnson also uses the term "Religion of Peace" (sometimes abbreviated as "RoP") in the title of posts which reference new Islamic terror attacks.•
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Rachel Corrie
Johnson has stated many times that he is disgusted with media coverage of the death of ISM activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed in Rafah, a town in the Gaza Strip.• Johnson also claims that the ISM, rather than being a pacifist organization, is explicitly pro-Palestinian and sympathizes with Palestinian terrorists; in support of this view, he has cited a diary entry from Corrie in which she claims that the Palestinians are justified in their terror attacks because the Israeli military's capabilities, aided by the U.S., put the Palestinians at a disadvantage.• an image rarely shown in mainstream news sources.
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Claims of Anti-Arab racism|anti-Arab and Islamophobia|anti-Muslim sentiment
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council of American Islamic Relations called Little Green Footballs "a vicious, anti-Muslim hate site" and claimed the FBI has "investigated several threats of physical harm against Muslims posted by Little Green Footballs readers". •
Blogger Eric Boehlert has claimed that LGF is "concerned with highlighting that most of the MSM Mainstream Media reporting from Iraq and the Middle East is biased in favor of Islamic terrorists" and that it "oozes overt bias for Arabs and journalists (and most of all, Arab journalists)"•
Antonia Zerbisias in the Toronto Star described LGF as a "virulently anti-Muslim/Arab website". •
RJ Smith, writing in Los Angeles Magazine, has alleged that LGF is a "dysfunctional mix of beautiful photos Johnson takes on coastal bike rides and constitutionally protected hate speech" which "believes all Muslims are terrorists until proven innocent." •
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Accusations of bias
Fans see Little Green Footballs as an alternative media outlet which provides a counterweight to alleged anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Conservative bias of mainstream media outlets such as Reuters - "al-Reuters" in LGF slang.
Critics point to the hyperbolic language, references to violence against Arabs, Muslims, and liberals and ethnic slurs employed by some commenters and charge the webmaster with encouraging groupthink, jingoism, anti-Arabism and "Islamophobia".* * Supporters argue that using slurs is acceptable, given "there is a fine tradition of dehumanizing the enemy in our foreign wars". *
Fans of the site claim Johnson has never personally used ethnic slurs on the site and has implemented a comment-submission filter which replaces offensive terms (e.g., "raghead") with innocuous descriptors (e.g., "Arab") *. Johnson also runs an altered version of the Serenity Prayer in the comments section urging posters to think before posting.
LGF posters argue that those who accuse the site's commenters of religious and ethnic bigotry make such accusations in an attempt to police or censor opinion by characterizing any criticism of Islam or Muslims as pathological and "Islamophobic". *
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Netiquette and redirects
Johnson and LGF "regulars" (the self-proclaimed "Lizardoids") have engaged in a number of high-profile feuds and flame wars. At various times, these debates have pitted LGF supporters against readers of a number of other blogs and alternative media sites. The debates have even "spilled over" to Wikipedia.••
When such confrontations trigger a stampede of visitors from hostile sites, Johnson sometimes redirects the traffic thus generated to the Israel Defense Forces homepage.
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Slang and posting protocols
Slang can sometimes be found in the LGF comments areas. Sometimes, the webmaster, accepts credit for coining the political epithet "Idiotarian." Other terms popularized by the site include "moonbat" and "Islamonazi." LGF regulars are known as "Lizardoids."
Like other political forums on the Internet, LGF attracts dissonant commenters. LGF states that it does not ban posters for dissenting opinions while critics deride LGF and claim that dissenters are drowned out by supporters and that even "legitimate critiques" have been banned outright . Per one LGF user's "Troll Detection Kit":
Trolls' beliefs follow a standard outline, whose roots are in the anti-American, Jew hating, Marxist rhetoric of Noam Chomsky, Said, etc. along with generous doses of Jewish loony-leftist rhetoric, courtesy of Israel's New Historians (read: anti-Zionists) and Jewish anti-Semites such as Ben Shapiro.
(Note: The author was probably confusing Ben Shapiro with Adam Shapiro, the Co-Founder of the International Solidarity Movement.)
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Registration
As the volume of comments from argumentative newbies rose with the site's increasing profile, many regular users requested a simple registration system; Johnson obliged them in June 2004. Registration was closed in 2004, and is briefly opened on an irregular basis.
This has been challenged by critics from both sides of the left-right divide, making the point that it discourages honest bipartisan debate; but it is praised by those who requested registrations who think that both trollish behavior and preaching have been reduced.
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Mainstream
Since founder Charles Johnson's claimed post-9/11 "turn to the right", many mainstream media sources have accused LGF of promoting ethnic hatred. This has led some LGF fans to conclude that the mainstream media is itself biased against LGF. Here are a few examples they use to back this claim.
In October 2002, MSNBC's Will Femia wrote of LGF:
This site is the focus of considerable controversy for its focus (and particularly the focus of the constituents in its comments section) on Islamic culture and dogma as the source of Islamic terror. As a popular, active, and well presented site, it is worth checking out, but some may find its content hateful or even racist.
On September 25 2004, the New York Times Sunday magazine ran a cover story about political bloggers. Although Johnson had been interviewed for 43 minutes by author Michael Klam, neither he nor his weblog got a mention in the final piece - Klam focused instead on longtime rivals Wonkette and the Daily Kos. Johnson struck back with a post entitled "They Smile in Your Face"• (an allusion to the 1972 soul hit "Back Stabbers" by the O-Jays), noting:
There is not one word about the anti-idiotarian blogosphere... The mainstream media’s shameful, arrogant bias is up there for all to see.
Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott has characterized the LGF community as "sort of like a disorganized Nuremberg Rally, a lot of angry ruffians with nowhere to go...."• after Johnson described an attack on Daniel Pipes by Woolcott as "the sort of high-toned writin’ that made Vanity Fair the journalistic juggernaut it is today."•
Johnson has frequently complained about the failure of Google News to index his blog. In March 2005, he called attention to that service's inclusion of the white supremacist National Vanguard site, while not including LGF.• He has also pointed out repeated inclusion by Google News of terrorist-affiliated "news agencies" such as Al-Manar.
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Conservative
Syndicated columnist James Taranto defended LGF after MSNBC 'smeared' Johnson.•
I'm losing patience with this notion, surely one of the most successful media Big Lies of the past few years, that Charles runs a racist hate site. By now it's been repeated so often that even normally reasonable people believe it.
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Pro
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Anti
Catalyst - "Hate site comes out on top in Jewish Blog Awards"
The Great Society - "The "Responsible" Debate and Political Discourse of Little Green Footballs"
The LGF Quiz - "Little Green Footballs or Late German Fascists?" A comparison of Nazi speech and comments found on Little Green Footballs.
LGFWatch - "Keeping an eye on those rabid racists at Little Green Footballs"
Peking Duck - "Charles Johnson does Auschwitz -- and gets it all wrong"
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Feuds & flamewars
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Other
Jewlicious - Overview of LGF, LGF Watch, LGF Watch Watch, etc.
Jewschool - Overview of LGF feuds & flamewars
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