Journalist Charles C. Johnson (center), seen here signing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
We generally ignore the exploits of conservative "journalists" here, but when last we saw Charles C. Johnson I believe he was being arrested for his bold invasion of a Mississippi nursing home in order to expose—to be honest, I'm not sure we ever determined what he thought he was going to expose. Something about why Sen. Thad Cochran was bad. In true conservative "journalist" fashion, however, My Little Sherlock has continued to screw up
everything he's touched since then.
Since Rolling Stone's disputed story on rape culture at the University of Virginia began to unravel, conservative writer Charles C. Johnson has made it his mission to [expose] "Jackie," the reported victim of a brutal gang rape at a campus fraternity house.
Last week, Johnson was widely condemned for publishing an unconfirmed photo and full name of Jackie on his website, GotNews.com. He also published a screenshot of Jackie's purported Pintrest account, followed by a post that pulled an image from that account and identified the woman in the picture as Jackie.
Alas, it turns out his picture of "Jackie" was a photo of an entirely different woman, a rather internet-famous photo that had gone viral years ago. You can't expect the masters of conservative journalism to know these things—they're too busy snooping through nursing homes and bringing fake props to their super-important "gotcha" journalism segments.
He's fallen for stories with viral potential before. Johnson once reported that a New York Times correspondent covering the Benghazi attacks, David Kirkpatrick, had posed for Playgirl. That information came from a satirical article in a spoof issue of the Princeton student newspaper. A story Johnson wrote on then-Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker not actually residing in Newark was debunked, and another on Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) soliciting underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic unraveled.
Ah, I see the problem here. We in the industry call this
sucking. As in: You suck as a journalist. Alternate formulations are (1) You are a stain on your self-declared profession, (2) You have the investigative skills of a pork roast, (3) Your repeated and ongoing pattern of incompetence and failure evinces a great and all-consuming void within you that threatens to absorb all those you interact with in an ever-expanding event horizon of self-enforced stupidity from which none can escape.
Nonetheless, he does seem to have the magic required for a Fox News gig. I suggest a working title of "Things We Wish Were True." Get Steve Doocy to co-host and you've got yourself a solid morning show.