Jump to content

Charles Foster Johnson: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
→‎Political views: removed AGW whatever that is
Line 58: Line 58:
|title=RedState Proves the GOP Isn't 'Anti-Science' - By Promoting Creationism
|title=RedState Proves the GOP Isn't 'Anti-Science' - By Promoting Creationism
|author=Charles Johnson |publisher=Little Green Footballs
|author=Charles Johnson |publisher=Little Green Footballs
|date=May 12, 2009 |accessdate=May 13, 2009}}; also note the green comments by "Charles" ''passim''</ref> More importantly, Johnson has distanced himself from the right which he considers to have gone into a spiral of madness. He famously wrote an essay about why he split from the right. Johnson has no patience for what he sees as the race baiting, anti-science and anti-intellectualism of the current American right wing. He has written extensively about what he considers to be faux outrages, open lies and propaganda by right wing bloggers, Fox news and commenters like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and Ann Coulter (to name a few). This has led many of his former right wing associates to despise him. His views are centrist, and he has written with some passion himself about how he was misled by propaganda he now utterly rejects.
|date=May 12, 2009 |accessdate=May 13, 2009}}; also note the green comments by "Charles" ''passim''</ref>


==Discography ==
==Discography ==

Revision as of 00:19, 7 November 2010

Charles Foster Johnson (born April 13, 1953) is an American blogger, software developer, and former jazz guitarist.[1] He has played on 29 albums.

Biography

Charles Johnson was born in New York and raised in Hawaii. He launched his first career (as a jazz guitarist) in the mid-1970s. Extensive recording credits include at least three albums that went gold: Reach For It by George Duke, School Days by Stanley Clarke, and Live in London by Al Jarreau.

He later co-founded CodeHead Technologies,[2] which marketed productivity and desktop publishing software (mostly hand-coded in assembly language) for the Atari ST computer. In 2001, Johnson founded a web design firm called "Little Green Footballs" with his brother Michael. Little Green Footballs began as a testbed on the company's website.

Charles Johnson's animated GIF comparison of purported 1970's era typewritten Killian memos with 2004-era MS Word document using default settings

Israel National News has referred to Johnson as a "Righteous Gentile" because of his support for Israel.[3] Johnson was raised Roman Catholic but now considers himself an agnostic.[3]

Johnson is a co-founder of Pajamas Media, selling his stake in 2007.[4][5]

Johnson, as well as other conservative bloggers, gained attention during the 2004 U.S. presidential election for their role in exposing as forgeries several memos purporting to document irregularities in George W. Bush's National Guard service record. (See Killian documents and Killian documents authenticity issues.) CBS news anchor Dan Rather presented the memos as authentic in a Sept. 8, 2004 report on 60 Minutes Wednesday, two months before the vote. Days after the broadcast, Johnson showed the documents, supposedly typewritten in 1973, could have been created easily on a modern computer using Microsoft Word.[6]

In 2007, Johnson rewrote the Little Green Footballs software to use MySQL and AJAX.

In 2009, Johnson indicated that he had "parted" with the right and gave several reasons for his decision to do so.[7]

Political views

According to Johnson, "political correctness has kept a lot of the hard truth from being spread by the mainstream media."[8]

While it is true that in early 2007, Johnson once described the theory of global warming as "the international left’s newest article of blind faith" based on the documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle"; and he once said that he "recommends Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear".[9]By April 2009 he had rejected that documentary as "dishonest"[10]. Charles Johnson began to suspect that such views were propaganda of the same sort used by the far right in terms of promoting Intelligent Design. After researching the issues himself, he became convinced of the soundness of the science of global warming, and for the past two years, the site has been strongly in support of the realities of global warming. He has written that it was the similarities in the talking points between Intelligent Design promoters and people that deny global warming. After the Virginia Tech shooting, Johnson indicated that he opposed stricter gun control by posting on his website an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! which is strongly critical of any such moves.[11]

Johnson sharply disagrees with all intelligent-design alternatives to the modern biologic consensus, and argues that the Republican Party has a "problem" from base to leadership with creationism.[12] More importantly, Johnson has distanced himself from the right which he considers to have gone into a spiral of madness. He famously wrote an essay about why he split from the right. Johnson has no patience for what he sees as the race baiting, anti-science and anti-intellectualism of the current American right wing. He has written extensively about what he considers to be faux outrages, open lies and propaganda by right wing bloggers, Fox news and commenters like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and Ann Coulter (to name a few). This has led many of his former right wing associates to despise him. His views are centrist, and he has written with some passion himself about how he was misled by propaganda he now utterly rejects.

Discography

References

  1. ^ Brendan Bernhard (February 3, 2005). "The Blogger Who Helped to Dislodge Dan Rather". The New York Sun. Retrieved July 12, 2007. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ John Eidsvoog (June 6, 1991). "The Story of CodeHead Software". Retrieved October 15, 2006.
  3. ^ a b Gil Ronen (April 29, 2004). "At Israel's Right". Arutz Sheva Israel National News. Retrieved October 15, 2006.
  4. ^ "?".
  5. ^ "?".
  6. ^ Charles Johnson (September 9, 2004). "Bush Guard Documents: Forged". Little Green Footballs. Retrieved October 15, 2006.
  7. ^ Charles Johnson (November 30, 2009). "Why I Parted Ways With The Right". Little Green Footballs. Retrieved December 1, 2009.
  8. ^ Paul Farhi (August 9, 2006). "Blogger Takes Aim At News Media and Makes a Direct Hit". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 15, 2006. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ Charles Johnson (April 4, 2007). "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Little Green Footballs. Retrieved March 4, 2007.
  10. ^ Charles Johnson (April 29, 2009). "611". Little Green Footballs. Retrieved May 13, 2009.
  11. ^ Charles Johnson (April 21, 2007). "Gun Control: Clever or Stupid?". Little Green Footballs. Retrieved March 22, 2007.
  12. ^ Charles Johnson (May 12, 2009). "RedState Proves the GOP Isn't 'Anti-Science' - By Promoting Creationism". Little Green Footballs. Retrieved May 13, 2009.; also note the green comments by "Charles" passim