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Charles Foster Johnson

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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 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.[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, 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.[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

Charles Johnson's views on political issues at the centre of the public debate took a sharp turn to the Left in 2009. 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.[8] and in his first year in Office, Charles Johnson has become a staunch supporter in 2009.

2. Sarah Palin. From a supporter, Charles became a harsh critic of her, describing her as crazy[9].

3. Global Warming. Years ago, Johnson once referred to it as a fraud, and mocked Al Gore for promoting Global Warming[10]. 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 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 came under criticism by conservative bloggers such as Tim Blair for making the claim, that he is glad the Climategate controversy (which he termed "nontroversy") came to light, because until then he did not know that anyone is (presumably, as dumb as to be) sceptical of Global Warming. He was appalled at the media's handling of the event and was quick to point out the errors in allegations against the scientists and 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.

4. Left-leaning media such as the Guardian and MSNBC. He criticised them in the 2007 US Presidential Campaign as biased towards Obama. Later he would come to defend them against claims of bias, and actually claim the media was too conservative and was responsible for his previous conservative views which he since abandoned.

5. Militant Islamism. Charles is a harsh critic of Islamism and Islamic terrorism. However, Johnson has been very strong in comments 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.

According to Johnson, "political correctness has kept a lot of the hard truth from being spread by the mainstream media."[11] 

Johnson sharply disagrees with all intelligent-design alternatives to the modern scientific 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. 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

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. ^ http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/he_was_for_it_before_he_was_against_it/
  9. ^ http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/37387_Video-_The_Sarah_Palin_Voters_Guide
  10. ^ http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/24534_Heed_the_Goracle
  11. ^ 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)
  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

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