Charles Foster Johnson

Charles Foster Johnson (born April 13, 1953) is an American blogger, software developer, and former jazz guitarist. 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, 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 1970s 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. Johnson was raised Roman Catholic but now considers himself an agnostic.

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

Johnson, and 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 September 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.

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.

Political views

Charles Johnson's views on political issues took a sharp turn to the center in 2009.

His essay "Why I Parted Ways With The Right" is very clear.

"1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them."

Those issues include:

1. Barack Obama. A critic of Barack Obama in the lead up to Obama's election as President of the U.S.. Charles Johnson has became supporter in 2009.

2. Sarah Palin. From a supporter, Charles became a harsh critic of her, describing her as crazy.

3. Global Warming. Years ago, Johnson once referred to it as a fraud, and mocked Al Gore for promoting Global Warming. After researching the science of the issue, Johnson became increasingly dubious of tactics and arguments from right wing pundits who deny the existence of Global Warming. Charles Johnson wrote that such views were propaganda of the same sort used by the far right in terms of promoting Intelligent Design. Johnson sharply disagrees with Intelligent Design creationism as an alternative to the modern scientific consensus. Johnson has since become a strong advocate for climate awareness and preventative action to be taken in response to anthropogenic global warming. During the days of the Climategate controversy, he was appalled at the media's handling of the event and was quick to point out the errors in allegations against the scientists. He followed their exonerations in the academic world closely. He has written extensively on what he considers to be the frauds and smears of anti-climate propagandists. As part of his overall pattern of rejecting propaganda, he wrote A Climate Skeptic's Conversion.

"I was also a “skeptic” for a long time, although that word implies a reasoned opposition that really wasn’t the case. In truth, I had been fooled by the massive amount of anti-AGW propaganda being fed into the national debate by right wing groups. Almost two years ago, I began detecting a distinct fishy odor, when I read articles debunking the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” pointing out the numerous errors and deliberate deceptions in the film. And since it was clear that the issue was going to be a serious point of contention in the US I made a determined effort to educate myself. Instead of getting all my information from “skeptical” blogs and news sources, I started reading books and scientific journals and everything else I could get my hands on. I’m kind of obsessive when I get interested in a subject. (OK, not “kind of” — “definitely.”)"

At some point during that process I began to realize that I couldn’t deny any longer, and that my opinion had changed from unreasoning “skepticism” to acceptance of the scientific evidence. I didn’t go into this expecting to come out as a proponent of AGW, but the vast weight of the evidence forced me to accept it.

The kinds of policies that need to be implemented to stave off the danger are another matter; my main focus right now is providing as much factual information as possible to try to get past the first hurdle — the huge, ongoing campaign of disinformation and denial."

4. Right wing media which he considers to be propagandist, conspiracy theory pushing and fear mongering. He criticised Left-leaning media such as the Guardian and MSNBC in the 2007 US Presidential Campaign as biased towards Obama. He still sharply criticizes them for biased reporting on Israel.

5. Militant Islamism. Johnson is a harsh critic of Islamism and Islamic terrorism. However, Johnson has been very strong in distinguishing between terrorists and innocent people. He remains a strong supporter of the state of Israel. In his split from the right, Johnson made clear that he has no tolerance for the increasingly shrill, bigoted and sometimes genocidal calls against all Muslims to be heard from certain members of the American right wing punditry, many of whom used to be his associates in the blogoshpere. Johnson was alarmed and dismayed at increasing association of those bloggers with neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate and white supremacist movements. He made very clear that he wants no part in any group with such people.

Johnson has distanced himself from the right which he considers to have gone into a spiral of madness. As of 2010, Johnson has clearly expressed on numerous occasions, that he 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. He considers himself to be a centrist, and he has written with some passion himself about how he was misled by propaganda he now utterly rejects.

Discography

• 1976 School Days with Stanley Clarke
• 1977 I'm Fine, How Are You with Airto Moreira
• 1977 Reach for It with George Duke
• 1977 Garden of Love Light with Narada Michael Walden
• 1978 Don't Let Go with George Duke
• 1978 Don't Ask My Neighbors with Raul de Souza
• 1979 Follow the Rainbow with George Duke
• 1979 Future Street with Pages
• 1980 Nielsen Pearson with Nielsen Pearson
• 1980 Rocks, Pebbles and Sand with Stanley Clarke
• 1981 Pages [1981] with Pages
• 1983 Not the Boy Next Door with Peter Allen
• 1984 In London with Al Jarreau
• 1984 Live in London with Al Jarreau
• 1987 All In the Name of Love with Atlantic Starr
• 1988 Guitar Workshop: Tribute to with Otis Redding
• 1989 One Passion with Michael Paulo
• 1991 Dream On with George Duke
• 1993 Art & Survival with Dianne Reeves
• 1994 L.A. with Hiroshima
• 1995 Piel Ajena with Eduardo Capetillo
• 1996 George Duke Greatest Hits with George Duke
• 1996 Is That the Way to Your Heart with Kazu Matsui
• 1998 A Song a Day
• 2000 When I Hold You in My Heart with Clay Mortensen
• 2000 Rare Collection with Jaco Pastorius
• 2001 Pages [2001] with Pages
• 2003 Punk Jazz: The Jaco Pastorius Anthology with Jaco Pastorius
• 2003 In Between the Heartaches with Phyllis Hyman

External links

• ArtistDirect.com - Charles Johnson musical biography
• ArtistDirect.com - Charles Johnson recording credits
• John Hawkins. "The Charles Johnson Interview". Right Wing News. Retrieved July 5, 2006.