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August 19, 2008
So I Got Booted Off Little Green Footballs...
I thought censorship of dissenting opinion was largely a tactic of the Left. Well apparently Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs doesn't take criticism any better than Daily Kos.
Of late, Johnson has been devoting many of his posts to an assault on Intelligent Design theory. It's certainly not my place to discern his motivation for such vehemence, or to dictate what he posts on his own website, but because of his crusade, LGF has become a more tiresome place to visit. And not just for me; many of his commenters seem equally annoyed.
So I tried to log in today to comment on a non-ID post, and I get the message "Account Blocked". I think "OK Mazur, what the hell did you write?" By searching under another LGF username (don't worry, I have several), I found that my last comment on this thread had been deleted:
The post in question was one in which he opens registration for a brief time to bring new "hatchlings" on board (in this particular case, it wasn't so brief). Thankfully, someone had quoted my comment, which helped jog my memory:
I know, it's his site and he can do what he wishes. And maybe I was impolite. But is it my imagination, or does a ban seem a bit harsh? Look at what Mazurland has tolerated from the likes of Chad, or the Free Buffalo guys. I believe some dissent actually helps stimulate discussion. I mean it's not like I was commenting on his equally annoying posts, where he brags about fumbling tweaking the code of his sluggish, "feature"-laden site.
August 19, 2008 by Chris | Permalink
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Comments
I like LGF, but had almost referred to it as Little Green Sycophants, but thought I might get banned.
Posted by: mike | Aug 19, 2008 7:31:05 PM
I think I pissed Charles off in this thread. I signed in as one of my logins, "Kumbaya", since of course, Mazeman had been banned. I was accused of being a sock puppet and an agitator. The comment in my original post was the "worst" I ever submitted to LGF, and I still don't think it was ban-worthy. I told people to feel free to search any of my previous comments to see if I was some trouble-maker. Long and short; "Kumbaya" is now banned.
Not that I really care. It's Charles' site, and he can do whatever he wishes. It was just so reminiscent of me being banned from KOS for agreeing with Bush, or something. Sad. I thought "we" were different.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 19, 2008 7:55:14 PM
Chris, I don't think you were insulting. But LGF is doing a pretty good job of cleansing.
Johnson has done some great service, particularly against Islamofascism and Dan Rather. But some of his fixations are tiresome.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 19, 2008 10:16:00 PM
BTW, I got myself banned there, too. #952 in the same thread is me. I screen copied my comment and may do a follow-up. You know, I've often read LGF's posts, but seldom the comments. There are always so many. Scrolling through the ones for that post, made me realize what a bunch of code-talking inbred monkeys most of the regulars are. Johnson wants a court where he can hold forth.
PS, Mazeman. You have your own blog. I guess now you'll have to actually use it more...
Posted by: Marty | Aug 19, 2008 10:47:07 PM
Yeah, and there seems to be a lot of Charles Johnson worship from LGF members, as well as from himself.
You'd think an internet big boy, who knows everything about politics, computer code, biking, and now Creationism would be a little thicker skinned, and not allow an innocuous zinger from one of his minions to bother him so.
I can't imagine banning someone who said that I post too much on a given topic, but then I'm not acquainted with the overwhelming pressure his fame and prestige must create.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 19, 2008 10:48:18 PM
Marty,
So were you banned, or just had your comment deleted?
What did you say?
Posted by: Chris | Aug 19, 2008 10:53:31 PM
I also posted this at FreeRepublic.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 19, 2008 11:13:20 PM
To bad you missed the boat on education, or you would know that
1. there is no religious reason to support intelligent design,
2. there is no evidence of intelligent design, and
3. there is no known mechanism by which intelligently designed fossils can be created, then inserted into the fossile record at different layers that correspond with geological ages.
Good luck on repairing that deficency.
Posted by: Don Meaker | Aug 19, 2008 11:17:46 PM
Oh, and if you have several names, and post under them pretending to be different people, then you ARE a sock puppet.
Posted by: Don Meaker | Aug 19, 2008 11:18:59 PM
I've gathered several LGF usernames. I would snag one when registration was open, since they are so hard to get. The purpose was so that I could give them away to like-minded folks who might contribute positively on LGF. I've done this, but still have a couple left. The only names that I have personally used to post on LGF were "Mazeman" (most commonly) and "Kumbaya" (to see if it worked --a total of three posts, two being from today when my Mazeman account was locked). I don't claim to be a major contributor, but you're welcome to search the comments from those name to see I'm not a rabble-rouser.
This isn't about me hating LGF. I feel it's a great site. It's about me feeling slighted, and censored, for a comment that was so innocuous.
As for the ID debate, you're assuming you know my opinion. In reality, I really don't care. I never read much of those threads And I'm not deficient in post graduate Science training, if you must know. But those ID threads are like if Charles started posting crock pot recipes; at first I'd say "why is he posting this?" Then, when they occur several times a day, it would get tiresome. But if I commented that maybe he's posting too much on crock pots, I get the hammer. His site. His decision. Makes you wonder about why the fixation and his defensiveness though...
Posted by: Chris | Aug 19, 2008 11:52:29 PM
I think Don has jumped in to defend (?) Johnson without knowing the nature of the problem. I can understand that he wouldn't have come here to Mazurland, CHris's own blog, to see that he really has no dog in the fight. He has, to my recollection, never posted here once on the controversy. But he also did not do as CHris suggested and look at some of his many comments as Mazeman at LGF. I would be surprised if there were any, simply because he has never posted at his own blog about it.
He also seems to have a simplistic view of the ID/evolution debate. I have posted several times about the controversy, though it's a small percentage of my posts. I am ambivalent about the controversy. I do think that evolution should be taught in school. I also think it's probably right. But it is also not "science" in the same way physics is. And neither is ID. But not all IDers are closet young earth creationists, despite the association in the PA trial of a few years ago. It would take too long to go into these distinctions here, and I gather from reading what Don and many of the other LGF commenters have written (talk about snarky!) that distinctions might be lost on them. But, if you are interested, you can certainly GOogle "Mazurland Creationism ID" and find out how little we write about the controversy, but also how relatively informed we are about it.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 7:24:23 AM
Glad I'm not the only one turned off by CJ's latest, misguided fixation. And you're right. He conflates "young earth creationist" with "Intelligent Design". So does his mouthpiece here in this thread. Nothing about intelligent design, properly understood, presupposes a young earth or the impossibility of a fossil record. Quite the contrary, there is a prominent strain of thought that says the design itself, such as it was, occurred iteratively -- and would thus be virtually indistinguishable -- from a post-event analysis point of view, of course -- from what is being called "evolution".
So yeah, LGF has sadly become unreadable to me as well. I thought about posting in the forums occasionally to give voice to these concerns, but your travails, Chris, prove the worst of my suspicions -- that I would go down the Kos-esque memory hole. Sad times for an otherwise formerly important blog.
One other note: when I first started reading his anti-ID posts, I groaned to myself that, considering his recent dust-up against finding common cause with euro-neo-fascists (a worthy effort), he was rapidly lumping himself in with another unsavory group of characters (Dawkins et al. -- while he's quick to claim that evolution and faith are compatible, his compatriots are NOT).
Posted by: Ben | Aug 20, 2008 7:39:42 AM
BTW, I did get banned. My comment was blocked almost immediately. No chance for it to be saved in someone else's comment. I don't know if he sends an email when he bans you. I didn't get one. But when I tried to log back on, I found I was banned. I did a screen capture, but it's on my other computer at the moment. I also did not save the text. Basically, I said that I knew mazeman/kumbaya personally and that (1) he did not have a dog in the fight they thought he did; (2) previous commenters were missing the point he was trying to make (3) (and this was what probably got me banned) that the analogy they used about not insulting the host was flawed. While it's true that a guest should not insult his host, the first rule of hospitality is that the host does not insult the guest. I said that I'd gotten kicked out of a party for saying something to a host who had gotten obnoxious, but that his wife later apologized to me for the host's rude behavior. The story is made up, but the point is valid.
Anyway, Chris, your behavior was pretty good throughout. Your comment may have been snarky, but it was not inflammatory, crude, or obscene. You were also very careful in your own defense. Yet commenters seized on things you never said (e.g. defending creationism), spoke from ignorance about your views, said things that were beside the point, accused you of not understanding censorship (when in your comments you repeatedly said that you knew it was Johnson's site and he could do as he wished). The sock-puppetry accusation holds, I guess, though you did have that second account *before* the accusation and had never used it before to be a sock puppet. And you were pretty clear in your comments as kumbaya that you were, in fact, mazeman. True sock puppets purport to be someone else.
Anyway, it's all a tempest in a teapot. Unfortunately, it shows how small and insular the LGF world is becoming. I'll always be grateful for the services that site has performed, and I may visit from time to time to see how their jihad against jihad is coming. But their jihad against ID is turning off a lot of people, even people who aren't in the fight.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 9:13:02 AM
BTW, traffic was *way* up yesterday. And this morning. Maybe they'll accuse you blog pimping, though I'm sure we'll be back to relative obscurity by tomorrow.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 9:18:14 AM
I was waiting for someone in the comments to attack Mazurland because it doesn't have the traffic of LGF. It didn't happen, but would have been irrelevant.
I didn't get an e-mail from Johnson. I only found out trying to log in yesterday. It would be nice to warn people, but again it's his site, and it's hard for a celebrity to devote time to such things. I was hoping he's do a separate post on this (like he does with certain e-mails that bother him), not for the traffic, but to tell me I actually got under his skin. I purposely waited for an open thread (while he was probably cutting his salad and having his first glass of Chardonnay) to link to this post, and submit it on his front page links, and on Free Republic.
As he came back to his computer, he probably thought WTF?!, but it was too late to erase it all.
Of course, that may all be fantasy.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 20, 2008 9:34:23 AM
BTW
Thanks for sticking up for me guys. After being attacked after posting this at LGF, I was wondering "Am I being an idiot and just don't see it?" It's good to hear, from people that matter, that at least I wasn't totally off base.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 20, 2008 9:42:26 AM
PS: You all probably don't remember that I was actually banned from Free Republic. Recall a few years back, I did a Scrapplefacey, though kind of tasteless post on Cindy Sheehan's ridiculous self-promotion. I had actually agonized a bit before posting it, but you guys said go ahead. I also pimped it a little bit. It got quite an amazing, and extreme, response from crazed leftists, probably the most fun we'd had in a while, and maybe one of the last times Chad made an appearance. After the fun died down, I pimped it at Free Republic. They yanked me without explanation. Here's the email I sent to Chris and Paul:
Remember just before I posted that nasty satire on Cindy Sheehan, I was worried that it was too over the top? Well, I posted it and whored the thing around despite my misgivings. It generated a bit of a stir for a couple of days. Then I just decided to let it roll off the screen in peace. The other day, after Chris emailed us about the Free Republic, I decided to revive it one more time. I signed up and posted an advert for it over there, making sure to use keywords like "Satire", "Humor" and "Weird". Well, those bastards yanked my one and only post and also yanked my posting privileges! No explanation. I felt bad, but wish I knew why they dumped it. I re-read the posting guidelines and figure I might have skirted one or two of them, but didn't think it was flagrant. However, somebody no doubt thought it was offensive. On re-reading the post, I winced yet again. It is a bit crass for our standards. I am inclined to yank it from our site as well!
On re-reading the post, yet again, it is definitely a bit over the top. Maybe worthy of getting banned, though that was not my intent. But I can see where sensitive people could take offense. I would have liked to know if it was the offensiveness of the satire or the perhaps blatant blog-pimping (or both) that got me canned. You guys still defended the post in email after I sent this to you, and told me not to yank it.
Really, though, we're usually pretty tame over here...
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 10:42:59 AM
That post was pretty damn funny.
"Tasteless" would have been if she consumed the remains of her Bush-murdered son prior to her self-immolation.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 20, 2008 10:53:49 AM
BTW, Chris, I see we still have LGF on our blogroll. So we're being big about it.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 11:44:57 AM
I read LGF. Saw your comment pre ban and I cringed a little but didn't note it at all. I read your comment as "laughing at the blog owner because he was anti ID and all the smart people were leaving his blog". I wasn't that surprised that you were banned. You weren't making a positive contribution beyond ragging on the blog owner. And you made a real bad impression in that better things probably couldn't be expected from you. Your "he he " sock pockets notes also lead me to believe your intentions aren't the best.
All that being said. What blog owners usually don't recognize when they indiscriminately ban people. Is that every poster assumes they could be next then. It has a chilling effect on a blog over time. You see people misinterpet posts all the time. Everyone. A blog owner should assume that people misinterpet bannings unexplained. And people will graviate to the bad interpetations.
LGF via it's position has a lot of devious people intent on derailing it. You placed yourself in that basket. Thus the ban. If you had been honest and polite and had a valid opinion on blog content you wouldn't have been banned.
Posted by: dg | Aug 20, 2008 3:18:07 PM
dg,
The subject of the thread in which I made the comment that got me banned was the opening of LGF registration for new "hatchlings". So yes, my comment was very pertinent to "blog content" for that particular thread. It was almost immediately deleted, and (which I found out later) I was immediately banned. If it hadn't been quoted later in the thread, I never would've known what the heck happened.
Was it impolite? Maybe. But I find it hard to believe that a blog owner at any level of traffic is so thin-skinned as to not let something that innocuous stand. I mean, just by beginning a blog, you expose yourself to scrutiny, and yes, criticism. There were critical comments in this thread. Did I ban anyone? No. It stimulates discussion. And if my comment at LGF was so wrong, Charles could've just let his minions defend him. I would have been properly chastised, and learned.
In terms of my "intentions", I'll say it again: I challenge anyone to search Mazeman's or Kumbaya's comments and find one that was disruptive or off-topic.
But again, it's Charles' blog, and of course he can do whatever he wishes. But his decision was not based on my past behavior, or any assessment of my potential, or knowledge of my ID beliefs (which I never commented on). The comment stands alone. To me, his RESPONSE smacked of KOS-like paranoia.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 20, 2008 3:42:43 PM
I guess you're saying maybe that big time bloggers who allow comments shouldn't be thin skinned? I think you're right that over time, you;ll get the yes-man echo chamber. Johnson, it seems, is a little hot under the collar, both about the ID controversy, and his obsessive handling of it. It really is a lot more complicated than he thinks.
BTW, other than being snarky (and LGF isn't a snarky site?), Chris was not impolite, nor dishonest. When he used his alternate login to defend himself, he did not lie about who he was. His opinion on the content, and the long-term repercussions for LGF of its "filtering" (not censorship! heavens!), would seem to be a valid point.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 3:42:45 PM
Sorry. My comment above was directed to dg, not to Chris.
Posted by: Marty | Aug 20, 2008 3:44:33 PM
PS: This whole issue about me having more than one username is moot. I never used Kumbaya (until I had to defend myself after banning), so the existence of that second account certainly didn't enter into Charles' decision to ban me. Thankfully I had it, so I could shine a little light on this episode.
So there you have it; two people banned from LGF-- myself (Mazeman, Kumbaya), and my brother who tried to defend me (and lives in a different state). All over that little comment.
No different than Markos Moulitsas.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 20, 2008 3:54:30 PM
You were probably banned hastily. LGF is a one person operation unlike KOS. The LGF owner is probably busy and tired of the sleighting personal comments about his choices and feels it is just better to get rid of them. Who really wants that? In a busy life doing my job and I get a snarly phone call or email, I am real likely to just discard it and get on with more important business. There are plenty of polite people wanting my attention.
And you should have probably did a /s at the end of your lfg post.
In reading the LGF blog, I think the blog owner has a lot of experience with removing subscribers.
your initial post I didn't think was that bad really in relation to all the posts there. you subsequent replies were polite. some of the members there responded to you poorly. I think all three nics were probably banned because they were seen to be the same person.
The Belmont Club does make the good point that you do that the value of groupthink in a blog often results from a broad range of opinions. Running off the subscribers and or having posters witch hunt them before they have a chance to state who they are defeats the blogging purpose.
Anyway you can still post there with another nic. Rotate your IP address,change browsers, clear your cookies and temp files and you are good to go.
Posted by: dg | Aug 20, 2008 4:15:21 PM
