Sockpuppet Censorship

Oh, the joys of being Greenwald!

In an entry to his blog on Salon.com yesterday, noted sock-puppeteer Glenn Ryan Ellers Wilson Thomas Ellensberg Greenwald attacked Charles Johnson, the face of the "pony-tailed jazz guitarist/web designer 9/11 liberal" stereotype so commonly associated with modern conservatism.

After briefly mention other denizens of the riech-wing establishment, Ellers Thomas chastised Johnson for comments left by frequent visitors in a post to Johnson's rather obscure blog about nauseated footballs.

Wrote Ryan Ellensberg:

But commenters at Little Green Footballs have not only expressed surprise, but outright support, for Mohammed's assassination plot against a former U.S. President. They are out in droves expressing sorrow that Al Qaeda did not have the opportunity to carry out its plot.

Let us first recall that LGF's Charles Johnson was one of the leaders of the Outrage Brigade driving the big "story" -- that made it into virtually every national media outlet -- of how anonymous HuffPost commenters expressed sorrow that the bombing in Afghanistan did not result in Dick Cheney's death. In her post that spawned the media coverage, Michelle Malkin touted Johnson's righteous condemnation that "this kind of sick, twisted thinking is everywhere in the 'progressive' blogosphere...And it's even sicker than it appears at first glance, because many of these freaks want to see Cheney dead so that he can't become president if someone assassinates President Bush."

Yet here are multiple comments from Johnson's standard, regular followers -- all of whom have to register as LGF users, a device Johnson uses to ban commenters of whom he disapproves -- expressing explicit support for Al Qaeda's plot against President Carter:

GREWTEG, the author of the best-selling How Would a Patriot Act? (who answered his own question by moving to another country) then provided screenshots of seven comments from six commenters, pulled from a comment thread presently 474 comments long. In the part-time Brazilian's defense, he probably completed his Salon.com entry several hours before his 10:14 AM posting time, meaning he was cherry-picking through a smaller, more representative number of comments, which at the time he completed his article was only made up of about 461 comments.

The comments, other than the 454 or so he ignored, are devastating.

The first two commenters, "buzzsawmonkey" (clearly a relative of manbearpig) and "blame canada" are in favor, at least rhetorically, of allowing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to finish alleged assassination plots against former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

The next three commenters--well, two news ones, and manbearpig buzzsawmonkey again--repeat the theme.

Glenn Wilsonberg then states:

And more commenters than one can chronicle offered the "justification" for murdering Carter; it's the same "rationale" previously provided by John Hinderaker: namely, Carter is on the side of Islamic Terrorists:

He then posts the two he/they could chronicle.

Not content to cherry-pick these seven comments from roughly 461 as being representative of the commenters, GREWTEG then decides that since Johnson hasn't deleted these comments, that he must therefore, ipso facto, QED, E Pluribus Unum, and carte blache, agree with each and every one of them! (my bold below)

Can we crank up the outraged media stories? How long do you think it will be before we hear from Howard Kurtz with a front-page Washington Post story, Wolf Blitzer and Sean Hannity with dramatic television coverage? Having blog commenters cheer on the assassination plots of U.S. officials is big, big, big news, we recently learned.

Here, one of the largest right-wing blog communities which pretends to be opposed to Al Qaeda is expressing support for Al Qaeda murder plots against former U.S. Presidents. The significance is overwhelming and self-evident, and many American journalists have shown how commendably eager they are to transcend partisan differences and rise up in righteous condemnation against this sort of "sick" bile.

And, several important factors distinguish this story from the HuffPost story, making it more meaningful. Unlike Huffington Post, which deleted the comments in question, Johnson has left them on his blog. Even more significantly, Johnson actively and regularly deletes comments he does not like, which lends some credibility to the notion that he approves of these comments, or at least does not find them sufficiently offensive to delete them, the way he does with scores of other comments.

Ah-Hah!

Take that reich-wingers!

Because Johnson does not censor each and every comment on his blog, he is therefore guilty of copious amounts of non-censorship, clearly a hanging crime under the Brazilian-American Sockpuppet Speech Act of 1798.

As we well know, responsible citizenship requires copious amounts of censorship, from censoring the networks allowed to carry debates, to stipulating acceptable public appearances by public servants.

By allowing comments on his blog that may not match his own views, Johnson clearly goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse.

What does he think this is, a free country?