Posted on 02/23/2005 4:52:17 PM PST by perfect stranger
Posted: February 23, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 Universal Press Syndicate
In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown websites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA agents.
The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on the trail of a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago. Are we supposed to like gay people now, or hate them? Is there a website where I can go to and find out how the Democrats want me to feel about gay people on a moment-to-moment basis?
Liberals keep rolling out a scrolling series of attacks on Gannon for their Two Minutes Hate, but all their other charges against him fall apart after three seconds of scrutiny. Gannon's only offense is that he may be gay.
First, liberals claimed Gannon was a White House plant who received a press pass so that he could ask softball questions – a perk reserved for New York Times reporters during the Clinton years. Their proof was that while "real" journalists (like Jayson Blair) were being denied press passes, Gannon had one, even though he writes for a website that no one has ever heard of – but still big enough to be a target of liberal hatred! (By the way, if writing for a news organization with no viewers is grounds for being denied a press pass, why do MSNBC reporters have them?)
On the op-ed page of the New York Times, Maureen Dowd openly lied about the press pass, saying: "I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed?"
Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that dyspeptic, old Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president. Still, it would be suspicious if Dowd were denied a press pass while someone from "Talon News" got one, even if he is a better reporter.
But Dowd was talking about two different passes without telling her readers (a process now known in journalism schools as "Dowdification"). Gannon didn't have a permanent pass; he had only a daily pass. Almost anyone can get a daily pass – even famed Times fantasist Maureen Dowd could have gotten one of those. A daily pass and a permanent pass are altogether different animals. The entire linchpin of Dowd's column was a lie. (And I'm sure the Times' public editor will get right on Dowd's deception.)
Finally, liberals expressed shock and dismay that Gannon's real name is "James Guckert." On MSNBC's "Hardball," Chris Matthews introduced the Gannon scandal this way: "Coming up, how did a fake news reporter from a right-wing website get inside the White House press briefings and presidential news conferences?"
Reporter David Shuster then gave a report on "the phony alias Guckert used to play journalist" – as opposed to the real name Shuster uses to play journalist. (You can tell Schuster is a crackerjack journalist because he uses phrases like "phony alias.") With all the subtlety of a gay-bashing skinhead, Matthews spent the rest of the segment seeing how many times he could smear Gannon by mentioning "HotMilitaryStuds.com" and laughing.
Any day now, Matthews will devote entire shows to exposing Larry Zeigler, Gerald Riviera and Michael Weiner – aka Larry King, Geraldo Rivera and Matthews' former MSNBC colleague Michael Savage. As a newspaper reporter, Wolf Blitzer has written under the names Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak. The greatest essayist of modern times was Eric Blair, aka George Orwell. The worst essayist of modern times is "TRB" of The New Republic.
Air America radio host and "Nanny" impersonator "Randi Rhodes" goes by a fake name, and she won't even tell people what her real last name is. (She says for "privacy reasons." That name must be a real doozy.) As Insideradio.com describes Rhodes, she refuses "to withhold anything from her listeners" and says conservatives "are less likely to share such things." How about sharing your name, Randi? We promise not to laugh.
Democrats in Congress actually demanded that an independent prosecutor investigate how Gannon got into White House press conferences while writing under an invented name. How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for president.
Liberals keep telling us the media isn't liberal, but in order to retaliate for the decimation of major news organizations like the New York Times, CBS News and CNN, all they can do is produce the scalp of an obscure writer for an unknown conservative Web page. And unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, they can't even get Gannon for incompetence on the job. (Also unlike Raines, Rather and Jordan, Gannon has appeared on television and given a series of creditable interviews in his own defense, proving our gays are more macho than their straights.)
Gannon didn't write about gays. No "hypocrisy" is being exposed. Liberals' hateful, frothing-at-the-mouth campaign against Gannon consists solely of their claim that he is gay.
re: carved out for herself a niche as Killer Queen of Liberal Repartee)))
Well, now, isn't that quite an achievement, in and of itself? I don't accept that that is all she's done--I found "Treason" a remarkable and beautifully documented, compelling retelling of the Whitaker Chambers saga. Around here, I don't think that's appreciated as much as her Eternal Legs. I even called Ann a "Mane-Flipper" at one time, but so much of that is burlesque.
That is, in the same sense that Rush uses braggadocio, Ann uses mini-skirts.
The Gannon thing was a shakedown. I resent highly its intimidatory nature--if all Gannon has "done" is to embarrass himself in his private life...well, he needs to come back to the WH. Wouldn't that just kill the liberals?
We all have, in our local churches, a very worthy and kind lady, Mrs. McPhereson, whose son is (as we say in the South) sweet. None of us would grieve Mrs. McPhereson for the world, and none of us would really want to be unkind to her son. I regard homosexuality as a kind of affliction; I do not understand it. But I do know that I am not required to approve of it.
Mrs. McPhereson's son can still make a living, can write things that I might want to read. I don't have to applaud his sexual behavior to do that.
And Mrs. McPhereson's son provides the flowers for the church altar from his shop...
I'm not sure you are understanding me. I do not buy the idea that Gannon/Guckert did not deserved to be purged from the press corps. Re-read my earlier numbered post. But the hypocracy is on the left for being the homo & porn tolerant party, then castigating someone for participating in that depravity. Ann is simply pointing that out. If you have read her over the years, you know she is not a homosexual advocate.
BTW, Sclafly is a Coulter fan.
The Washington Times is part of the crackpot left?
I see.
The joke is your lame attempt to tie Bush to Gannon as if he put him there.
Go weep in your pillow that the lovely "scandal" is a big nothing.
What a classic line. LOL!
=== --I found "Treason" a remarkable and beautifully documented, compelling retelling of the Whitaker Chambers saga. Around here, I don't think that's appreciated as much as her Eternal Legs.
Unfortunately, her legs are as ephemeral as the "values" of the "conservative" justices appointed by our alledgedly "pro-life" politicians.
I used to be a Coulter fan before she sold out. As it is, I'll stick with bona fide brainiacs like Schlafley instead.
It's funny you bring up Chambers. I've been a fan of his since first I read Witness in high school. Wasn't until years later when I picked up a copy of the complete exhibits of the ACLU's appeal on behalf of Hiss that certain unsettling truths came to light.
Mostly courtesy of Nixon's pressing Chambers to reveal the homosexual relationship between him and Hiss.
The GOP may have a long history of attracting genuine converts from the left (as opposed to the likes of Whoreowitz, for example), but just as lengthy is its history of prying into personal lives for the applying of pressure or control.
Sad but true.
As a resident of the French Quarter for over 15 years, I can vouch for the fact that plenty of homosexuals are just as put off as I or anyone else by the "Gay Pride" or "Gay as Victim" schtick. They see it for what it is.
And I too believe homosexuality is an aberrant affliction. I'd like to believe that most of my gay friends were "born that way" but the fact of the matter is that most were raped or seduced into the lifestyle and can't figure out how to get back across the Rubicon.
I figure that's what accounts for the particularly shrill and bitter screeching sound of the Gay Pride contingent.
Thank you falpo, I am a newbie and was becoming a bit confused
Bang, Coulter leaves the Earth scorched again.
No mercy for pitiful liberals.
bump for Danger!
Oh, please. Dangerous?
The "defense" isn't of him but of the idiotic attempts to use him to attack the WH.
Isn't she good?
It's my understanding that they are great friends and mutual admirers.
But I think even Coulter herself would admit she's no Phyllis Schlafley and never will be. That's just one reason we see so much of Coulter but you have to subscribe to the Mindzenty Report or other truly rightist publications to read Phyllis on a regular basis.
This article is great stuff for those who believe that "scandals" erupt somehow as a result of the great differences and enmity between the parties. Why don't you ping me in the future to an article you believe best exemplifies those conservative Coulter beliefs and values in action?
I'm particularly interested -- in light of the current dismantling of the Constitution -- in any articles she writes as the "constitutional scholar" she is. I should think events of late should provide ample fodder for substantive critiques of the ongoing transformation of our government.
For that reason alone, I find it sickening and stupid that she wastes her time defending a schmuck like Gannon.
That is not a fact. That's a talking point but is not a fact.
Oh brother.
Coulter and Hannity aren't "conservatives". They're entertainers.
Genuine rightists get drummed out of this place so fast it'll make your head spin.
Read her pieces on Elian Gonsales collected in "How to Talk to A Liberal, If you Must" if you want a good example of her take on the law, the Constitution, and that whole sorry episode.
=== That is not a fact.
Res ipsa loquitur, cyncooper.
The guy had no business being there in the first place and -- given the caliber of his "friendly questions" -- never should have been called on more than once if indeed the White House press briefings are at all tailored to delivering concrete information about critical events and decisions.
You hate David Horowitz, too?
Maybe we could spend a long time being shocked, really shocked, that some Republicans aren't Jesus, but I think I'd rather look at what we could do right now. Liberals are shrieking at Gannon like the high school girls hurling tampons in the locker room in Carrie...it's just so out of proportion. I think it's an opportunity.
The Washington Times is not the one suggesting that a homosexual pedophiliac prostitution ring was operating out of the White House.
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