Since wingnut blogger Patterico is bringing up, and distorting, an incident from years ago in his latest post, I thought I should write a short explanation of the facts about this incident, so I can point to it when people like Patterico (aka Patrick Frey, a Deputy District Attorney for LA County if you can believe it) start up again.

Here’s the post from Mr. Frey: Patterico’s Pontifications » Charles Johnson: An Unlikely Crusader Against Racist Comments.

Indeed, one of Johnson’s buddies (with whom he is still friendly) actually admitted planting racist comments at Hot Air in 2009. Specifically, in September 2009, trusted LGF Lieutenant Killgore Trout went over to Hot Air in the middle of the night to plant some racist comments.

Read the rest if you dare; it’s one of those strange wingnut fairy tales that has sprung up about me, often told when the tribal elders want to terrify the remaining members out of becoming a traitor, like little old me. The truth of it is irrelevant to people like Patterico and his audience; they’re already well aware of the facts, they just get off on the frisson of mean-spirited deception. So this isn’t for them, but for me to be able to say, “Here’s my final word, I have nothing more to say about this trivial incident, go look at this LGF article instead.”

First, you should understand the real reason Frey is bringing up this fairy tale again: he’s attempting to make excuses for the horrifying deluge of right wing racist comments we’ve been exposing on sites like FoxNews.com and Breitbart.com, and pretend that those comments are “planted” by people like LGF member Killgore Trout.

If you’re interested at all (and I’m so done with it I had to argue myself into writing this), here are the facts of what happened, that fateful night in September, 2009, the night when Killgore Trout got drunk and changed the course of blog history (not).

Our story begins with the election of Barack Obama, America’s first black President.

By 2009, right wing blog readers were getting so rabid in their hatred toward Obama that we began to be interested in what was happening in the comment sections of those blogs — because the overt racism had reached a level where the N word was actually becoming a frequent occurrence, and all kinds of other racial slurs were being posted as well.

One legendary night, Killgore Trout had a bit too much to drink (that’s what he says, anyway), and got fed up with the disgusting comments he saw being posted and not denounced or deleted at the right wing blog Hot Air.

Killgore had an account at Hot Air, and actually used to be a pretty regular participant in their discussions. So on this legendary evening, he decided to stage a protest against this overt racism. He posted a series of comments with the name he’s known for, “Killgore Trout,” using racial slurs and daring someone to call them out.

All of these comments were posted with the same name he uses at LGF to this day. He didn’t try to pretend he was someone else, and he made it overwhelmingly obvious why he was doing it. This was the last comment he posted on that historic night:

Ok, I’ll conclude my experiment….

Nobody’s minding the store. Hot Air, like so many other right wing blogs doesn’t care. Nobody’s minding the store. Absolutely nobody else chimed in and saif that they were uncomfortable with the Michelle Obama/wookie comparisons. Nobody cares and nobody finds this slightly unusual. This is the direction that conservatives have chosen. Good luck with your openly racist agenda.

/I’d still like a job that pays well enough to ignore this shit.

To sum up, nothing was ever planted by Killgore Trout. He used his own name and made it clear what he was doing and why. When Patrick Frey claims this was a case of “planting” comments, he’s being deliberately deceptive because he’s well aware of these facts.

And even more to the point — I didn’t put Killgore Trout up to it, or plan it with him. If he’d asked before getting all up in it, in fact, I would have advised against it.

It was kind of an obnoxious stunt, but it certainly got their attention. Hot Air tightened up their moderation a little after that, a tacit admission that KT had a point. The overt racism problem on right wing blogs was getting out of control.

Unfortunately, it’s only gotten worse since then. Much worse.

And people like Patrick Frey and many others in the right wing blogosphere are contributing to the problem by pretending it’s all a plot by liberals to make them look bad, instead of clearly speaking out against the problem of racism in right wing media.

Related:
Yet Another Deluge of Racist Hatred and Calls for Genocide at Breitbart.com
Still More Overtly Racist Comments at Breitbart.com
Another Sickening Deluge of Open Racism at Breitbart.com
Breitbart.com Commenters Spew Racist Hatred at Trayvon Martin
Fox News Commenters Respond to Whitney Houston’s Death With Deluge of Hatred and Racism
Fox News Commenters Respond to Common Story With Deluge of Racism and Hate
Update: Four Hours Later, Fox News Commenters Still Spewing Racism
Fox News Commenters Cheer for Serbian War Criminal
Fox Nation on ‘Fast and Furious’: A Deluge of Death Threats and Racism
Fox News Commenters Respond to Somalia Story With Deluge of Racism
Fox News Audience Spews Racial Slurs at Morgan Freeman
Fox News Commenters Spew Racial Slurs at President Obama (Again)
Fox News Commenters Spew Overt Racism at Wyclef Jean and Haitians