I have not thought much about Likudnik bikini blogger Pamela Geller since writing about her heroic wartime bikini blogging deeds in 2008. But now she is under attack from a former conservablogger who claims he always believed in abortion rights…
Of course, that description makes Pamela Geller’s feud with Little Green Footballs founder Charles Johnson sound infinitely more substantive than it actually is. Still, these are substantially substance-free times for times for amateur online punditry, and tomorrow’s Times magazine highlights their war as a possible sign that the grassroots conservative movement is less mighty and monolithic than those fearsome Tea Party militias make it seem.
The feud dates back to 2007, when Geller and Johnson, once thought to be ideological comrades, were both asked to speak at a Counter-Jihad conference. Johnson skipped it, Geller attended; Johnson noticed the president of a despicable Belgian fascist party was in attendance; despite having previously condemned (as Islamofascist) the country’s attempts to ban Zioni-Christian fascism, he tells the Times he began reexamining many of his platforms, alliances and life choices, a process in which he would inevitably conclude that Geller was not simply a stupid person but the Poster Girl of Eurofascists. (Another fresh Johson profile in Vanity Fair helpfully adds that Johnson was also disillusioned by the (predictably?) violent reaction to a creationism takedown he penned in 2008.)
In any case, as this guy could tell you, the downside of the whole lockstep, guns-and-bluster, “You lie!” mendacious certainty in which they seem so universally, energetically inculcated is that it makes “changing one’s mind” almost impossible for a right winger to achieve without diverting all of his/her attention to answering the never-ending accusations of treason. For many I’m sure, the money helps. Though something about Pamela Geller still seems batshit enough that she’d do it for free.