After a pitstop for an Italian dinner on Tuesday night, right-wing agitator Charles C. Johnson showed up at what he thought was the residence of his biggest online adversary — a man who just so happens to share his name — and snapped photos of himself standing outside the complex’s gate holding conspiracy theory bumper stickers.
Johnson said he retrieved the address to the Pacific Palisades apartment online.
“At the world headquarters of Little Green Footballs…” Johnson tweeted, appending a hashtag to signify his latest obsession.
At the world headquarters of Little Green Footballs…. #Ebola pic.twitter.com/9Yxci3wyiL
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) October 29, 2014
Little Green Footballs, of course, is the online home of blogger Charles Johnson. But the apartment shown in the tweet hasn’t been his actual home for more than 10 years.
“Actually, when I first saw it I didn’t recognize the place because I haven’t lived there for so long,” Johnson of Little Green Footballs told TPM on Wednesday. “I thought he was just making a joke at first and I looked at it again and realized that’s the place I used to live.”
The conservative Johnson, who’s kicked up dust during the last several months in an attempt to put his stamp on seemingly every news cycle, told TPM in an email that the stunt was meant as a bit of humorous revenge.
“The lesser Charles Johnson encouraged his followers to stalk me for daring to report the name of the Ebola nurse, Nina Pham, 12 hours before the rest of the media,” the founder of the fledgling GotNews.com said in the email. “He’s kind of crazy and I’ve talked to law enforcement about what can be done about his sending stalkers my way. Showing up at his apartment complex door was intended as something of a joke. I knew he would go nuts on Twitter all night, which he promptly did.”
The Little Green Footballs founder didn’t find it funny, calling it a “total violation of privacy.”
“For somebody who calls himself a journalist to do something like this, it’s way, way over the line,” he told TPM. “If I had kids, I’d be even more upset. This is basically threatening. The guy has posted pictures of himself holding guns online. It’s a very threatening, stalker-ish thing to do. What can I say? I’m just very upset about it.”
This sort of thing has been par for the course for the two, who have been at constant war with each other on Twitter in recent weeks.
When the GotNews blogger was booted off Twitter earlier this month for the second time — a punishment that was dealt after he once again posted someone’s personal information in the name of Ebola prevention — he blamed the Little Green Footballs blogger.
The appearance outside the apartment building was a continuation of that tradition for the conservative pot-stirrer.
“The Internet is a nifty place where you look up all kinds of information,” he told TPM.
