Little Green Footballs investigated by FBI! Oh my!
Thu Aug 10, 2006 at 08:49:19 AM PDT
Heh heh. Gosh, who ever woulda thunk
THIS could happen? Its not like LGF is a blog that makes brutish racist comments, like, all the time or anything.
The bit about LGF getting visited by the FBI is toward the bottom of this piece essentially about Charles Johnson, the heroic founder of Little Green Footballs. The article is not great, and I THINK its supposed to be critical of the black/white worldview of the LGF types, and how certain media issues feed their thinking, but again the article is pretty weak. At any rate, the FBI detail was amusing to me.
Here are some nice bits from the article. First, an example of Johnson's dedication to the truth :
In Johnson's view, the news media haven't adequately sounded the alarm about threats to Western societies posed by radical Islamic groups -- something he says he seeks to redress through his politically conservative blog.
"My main take is that political correctness has kept a lot of the hard truth from being spread by the mainstream media," says Johnson, 53, a professional musician in Los Angeles who spends most of his time maintaining his blog.
Yeah. That darn mainstream media! So, so liberal!
"The vast, vast majority of Muslims want to get along and live a comfortable life just like everyone else," he says. "But the mainstream media shies away from showing the public the real face of Islamic extremism. They don't want to offend. And they are influenced by some strong advocacy groups that are funded by Middle Eastern countries, which are actively engaging with the mainstream media to promote a point of view."
Uh-huh.
Not everyone, though, is a fan. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights organization often vilified on Johnson's blog, calls Little Green Footballs "a vicious, anti-Muslim hate site . . . that has unfortunately become popular."
The irony, Hooper says, is that if the same kind of "hatred" that appears on LGF appeared on Muslim sites, it soon would be used by LGF's fans to justify their worldview.
...
The FBI, according to Hooper, recently investigated several threats of physical harm against Muslims posted by Little Green Footballs readers.
Johnson acknowledges the investigation but says Hooper's organization initiated the complaints to try to stifle free speech on his blog. And Johnson names the Council on American-Islamic Relations as one of the groups he's referring to when he talks about the undue influence of Arab-funded organizations on American society and the media.
Stifle free speech? Alrighty then. There's no word on what the outcome of this FBI investigation was, or if this is something that's routine with community sites. Has dKos been investigated for anything speech related?
I confess, I have never once given LGF a web hit. All I know of the site is purely secondary. It does seem to be the most popular conservative community site on the net, edging out Free Republic. Does LGF have a certain something that the others dont?
If this has been diaried already lemme know.
Permalink | 19 comments