Posted on 02/15/2005 11:19:19 PM PST by woofie
The Jeff Gannon story is still bouncing around the Internet, and now there are pictures.
The kind you shouldn't open up in the office.
The X-rated twist has made for a lot of clandestine clicking in a town where Deep Throat conjures images not of a porn star but of a man in a parking garage. But it has also deepened the debate over blogging and the tactics used to drive a conservative reporter from his job as White House correspondent for two Web sites owned by a Republican activist.
In most Beltway melodramas, the resignation ends the story. The problem for Gannon, whose real name is James Dale Guckert, is that he told The Washington Post and CNN's Wolf Blitzer last week that he never launched the Web sites whose provocative names he had registered, such as hotmilitarystud.com. But a Web designer in California said yesterday that he had designed a gay escort site for Gannon and had posted naked pictures of Gannon at the client's request.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
*catching my breath
Thank you
*curtsy
In this day and age, you will be hard pressed to find a Mr. Clean-starched Underwear. That happend 2 decades ago. The bar is higher and times have changed. Nowadays you read a story of some schmuck cheating on his wife, and you just guffaw and move to the next story.
Really? where is this?
I am not defending the guy..I am disappointed..I am saying this is not the big one for the left to hang their hat on..
The MSM has a gotten more power in the White House to screen for dreaded outsiders..online press, especially conservatives.
A gay man has been outed by the left and he obviously had some racy nude pictures on the net..He did admit to his link to the sites creation..He lied about the pictures.
Gannon was a small fish..No one noticed him except the libs who like to ask their baiting questions at the briefings..I think Gannon ask one question of the President, 2 at most..It's the daily WH briefings that the "old media" did not like him in.
I'm too old to think all on any side have clean slates.. I know precious little about the past of any reporters..
I shall get over my disappointment a lot quicker than Gannon gets over the hate mail he's probably getting and his scandal
If people involved with the blogs are not (of) a high moral character ... why would they quit?
I don't know enough of Gannon or the evidence against him to know if it's true or if he is not of a high moral character. I know enough of the MSM to know why they pick this story to chase while they leave other stories alone (Jordan, for example).
Everyone in America gets to express his opinion. Even you. Should we all rush to examine every detail of your sex life before allowing you to post on the internet? Or maybe your sins are of a pure variety, like gossip, pride and subversion.
That would be my guess also ... a couple showed up last night doing the same thing
Bless your heart.
He's only been here 2 months.
Alert and responding..message received and already detected.
I know that if every MSM reporter investigated my life they would find some embarrassing things but I would not challenge them to look.
Left-wing bloggers have now made a name for themselves, and it is not pretty. They have taken the scalp of an on-line conservative journalist by the name of Jeff Gannon, who was virtually unknown until about three weeks ago. His crimes were that he was too pro-Republican, attended White House briefings, and asked questions unfair to Democrats. This became, for a group called Media Matters, the “White House press room scandal.” Never mind that “journalist” Helen Thomas has been giving anti-Bush political diatribes disguised as questions at these briefings for years.
A massive left-wing investigation of Gannon’s personal and business affairs was launched and was said to reveal that he was associated with some homosexual-sounding website addresses. Ironically, the Media Matters group is run by former conservative and once-closeted homosexual David Brock.
The Gannon “scandal” would be laughable, were it not for the fact that Gannon’s personal privacy has been invaded and his mother, in her 70s, had to endure harassing telephone calls from those on the political left trying to dig up dirt.
The campaign against Gannon demonstrates the paranoid mentality and mean-spirited nature of the political left.
But the mainstream media did their dirty work, too. Liberal journalists at The Boston Globe, using material from Brock, weighed in with their own account of this controversial journalist and his employer, Talon News, owned by a Texas Republican activist named Bobby Eberle. Despite all the innuendo and controversy, the fact remains that Gannon had done some excellent political stories on a wide range of subjects, including the CIA and former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. Gannon could have survived the charge of having a conservative bias but when his personal life and family became targets, he decided to call it quits.
It all started when Gannon’s writings were “exposed” for having too many statements taken directly out of White House press releases. Gannon apparently believed that covering the White House meant that he should actually report, in long and complete sentences, what the White House actually said on various public policy issues. He was also accused of tossing softball questions to White House spokesman Scott McClellan and the President himself.
snip
“The left’s whole focus is wrong in this case,” Eberle told AIM. “This is a private company owned by me, with no ties to the Republican Party. We’re on no one’s payroll, except what I choose to pay people.” Eberle has been running Talon News and GOPUSA for over four years. They send out news and commentary and “the conservative message” to about half-a-million subscribers a day.
Despite the Republican-sounding name, GOPUSA, no accusations of direct links to the GOP establishment or President Bush have turned out to be true. Brock and his allies eventually got Gannon’s scalp because of the sex charges. These had nothing to do with his work for Talon News and reporting from the White House, and Eberle never conducted an investigation of Gannon’s financial or personal business before hiring him. But the charges were embarrassing and apparently concerned some private issues that Gannon didn’t want to discuss publicly. And despite what has been implied, he rarely wrote about anything related to the homosexual issue.
Eberle, a major practitioner of the “new media,” apparently didn’t realize that he was threatening the dwindling power of the old media. Gannon didn’t realize that the purpose of the White House press corps is to make Republicans look bad. And when the left-wing media see their power slipping away, they go for blood and nothing is out of bounds. The political left doesn’t respect personal privacy when the potential victims are conservatives.
snip
So the case against Gannon boils down to being too pro-Republican, writing stories with a conservative slant, and being linked to conduct, homosexuality, that is accepted and celebrated by those who were going after Gannon in the first place. The standard of the liberal thought police is evidently that someone’s private life should be protected?except when the accused is a conservative. The old media and their new found friends in the left-wing blogging community will stop at nothing to maintain their political power.
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/k/kincaid/2005/kincaid021505.htm
I would caution people NOT to believe this.
I'm not saying that it's necessary false, but I have serious doubts as explained below.
It does certainly demonstrate that gay baiting is standard procedure for the left and their willing accomplices in the media.
Recall "Mary Cheney is a . . . lesbian" - Jean Francoise Kerry.
Remember that even as the Clintonistas were accusing Ken Starr of running a sex police operation for investigating Clinton's lying in a civil rights suit, they "outed" a young gay attorney on his staff.
It's quite possible that the person making this claim against Gannon is part of the campaign to make sure that no conservative dare join the White House Press Corps, save those with major backers WashTimes, Weekly Standard, etc., who are harder to bring down like this.
Is it time to turn the tables and start investigating the private lives of all the bloggers and journalists who went on the attack against Gannon? Get their divorce papers and settlements (ala Jack Ryan), statements from ex-lovers, etc.?
When 12 players of one football team are piled on one of the opposing players, isn't it a little much when the 13th player jumps on the pile? That's what's happening here.
The fact that the vendetta continues, makes it likely that the attackers are getting "witnesses" who want to join in the massacre of the conservative, regardless of truth.
I only met Jeff Gannon once and was glad to do so. He is a true gentleman who went into enemy-occupied territory (the White House Press Corps) for our side, and has been wounded for his noble efforts.
IF (and I'm not saying it happened) he did some things alleged in his past, things that I wouldn't approve of, I would say that the conduct was so personal that it's not really my business. Just like it wasn't my place to condemn or hassle my secretary for "living in sin" with her boyfriend.
Aren't these allegations similar (in that they relate to personal sexual conduct) to the stories or rumors that the press has condemned when publicized about the elected Mayor of Baltimore? Are the stories more newsworthy when they relate to the former reporter for a newservice than when they relate to an elected official who may be violating a solemn oath of marital fidelity?
The left has shown once again that they don't believe in a right of privacy for private citizens (former reporters) and have no decency and no respect for the rights of others.
The left gay bashed Andrew Sullivan a year or two back. This is just another chapter in their homophobic book of hate.
Since John Aravosis is helping to push this story ... I'm guessing the answer is .... Nope
Blogs are nothing more than glorified community bulletin boards, cutting and sniping stories from the enemy they're trying to take down. What happens when the enemy is destroyed? They start passing around recipes? No thanks.
See 92. My life has not always been moral but I have tried the best I can. However, I would not welcome a MSM investigation of my life.
BRAVO!..Post this as an article..
However, why leave to Conservative Blogs open for attack? If the people involved with the blogs are not a high moral character they should quit and prevent the MSM from attacking. There are thousands of other people out there that can fill the void.
Are you challenging bloggers to investigate FReepers?
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