Whew! I’ve been so busy tending to the dozens of deleted threads being recovered in the LGF memory hole excavation that I totally forgot that I had stumbled upon this a few days ago. My bad:

An open letter to Charles (and others)

dragonfire1981
Opinion • Oct 4, 2010 at 9:35 am PDT • Clicks: 32 • Views: 175

Dear Charles and Lizards,

I found Little Green Footballs in an unusual way.

After picking up Mary Mapes’ book Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power at a Dollar Tree store awhile back I got curious about this blog she mentioned constantly. You’d think after reading the book I’d want to come on here and flame everyone, but I didn’t.

Speaking as both a concerned citizen and as someone with a journalism degree I really do appreciate how great this site is compared to other news sources and blogs out there. Everything has gotten so out of hand since the election of Barack Obama but LGF seems to be one of the few places left where journalistic integrity still means something. I very much loved the expose that was done awhile back on the altered news agency photos of the Israeli flotilla crisis. As a media student, that kind of stuff just disgusts me. Journalism should be about the truth (although it seldom is).

Though Charles does a spectacular job around here, LGF is what it is because of the community. It’s all of us here that make this place great and it’s very refreshing to me to find a community of people online that can have sane, rational discussions on political and theological and sociological issues without degenerating into flame wars and partisan bitch fests. Unfortunately blogs such as this are the exception these days rather than the rule.

I also thank Charles greatly for the incredibly work you put into to getting LGF pages up and running. It’s a wonderful tool and something that has really worked to put LGF head and shoulders above most all other blogs on the web.

The opportunity for us to write our own entries and make our own contributions is fantastic and convenient for someone like me who loves to write.

So I just want to say thank you to all of you, especially Charles. The number of times you go above and beyond for this site is truly astounding.

I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

Oh dragonfire…how much for an ounce of whatever that is?

Seriously, I’ve seen many of these “God, I love LGF!” posts come, and the authors go.  I don’t know if people just post this stuff to brown nose to dear leader or hope to earn a future “get out of jail free card” or whatnot, but it doesn’t seem to change the result.  

So dragonfire, it’ll be kinda cool for awhile, especially if you’re new to the blogging thing.  You’ll assume that everything is swell and CJ is trustworthy, and the community is wonderful.  Eventually, though, you’ll start to notice weird things, like people pointing out that Mr. Journalistic Integrity scrubs his past writings, dishes out some of the stretchiest headlines in the blogosphere, and that he’s taken a far from neutral and objective approach to the delivery (but as one with a journalism degree, Ill assume you caught at least the last one already).  Add the fact that CJ’s jumped to the opposite side of many of the “outrages” he covered just a few years ago, and any reasonable person would wonder what the truth is supposed to be.

Then you’ll start noticing things about the community too.  Like, people get banned a lot.   But, maybe before that, you’d have wondered aloud where some of your pals went.  Like this netizen:

Or, because you’ve been there long enough to know many get banned, but can’t keep track of who, what or why, you may be the person who responds like this:

Now consider that, in just this scenario, not only were Dirk Diggler and Mama Winger banned, but today BeerDrinking_VictoryMonkey and Occasional Reader are too (yes really).  Not sure about Peacekeeper.

The point is, some of your fellow lizards leave those sane, rational discussions… never to be heard from again.   If you keep sucking up, sell out a little and choose your words carefully, you might make a nice pet sycophant in a year or so.   That’s where you go from here, dragonfire.