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.
Oh, the agony.
LOL
She did pieces on the Little Elian scandal? That would be interesting.
Thanks for the tip. If ever there were a more manufactured "scandal" than Gannon's, it's probabliy the Little Elian episode whereby no less than Bush ended up arguing for what once was Hillary Clinton's approach to family court disputes (e.g., "divorcing" one's parents).
Curiouser and curiouser.
Best regards, Pissant. We may not agree on Coulter but I suspect we've far more in common where it counts than most of the "conservatives" posters here who, aping Coulter as best they can I guess, fling insults with all the grace of a pipefitter in six-inch stilettos.
Like I said, I'm sure much of my criticism of the woman stems from the fact she turned out to be such a colossal disappointment for me.
I hope you are able to focus on the narrow point I made. You said it was a "fact" that he was a "favorite". He was not.
You have watched more than a few press briefings, I hope.
How did Gannon/Guckerts "softball" questions help the WH?
How many of these questions were asked in a 2 year period?
Bush's own administration officials admitted that sex was part of the State Department's policy (as both entertainment and compromise).
Granted, that's not exactly operating "out of the White House" in the same way callboys operated out of Frank's basement but if the buck stops at the Oval Office and prostitution is part of the budget, indeed it is traced to the White House.
Even beyond the fact the First Lady had no problems with teenage tricks at midnight and applauded the Liberal Mainstream Press for not following the story, this much should be the least bit unsettling for redblooded Coulter-conservative types.
Or not.
Almost.
That is, needless to say, not even remotely a "fact" - it is your own spin on what she did say, which was that she was not concerned for her safety or the safety of the President.
Really, now.
Meet Askel Wormtongue. Standard tactic: launches a barrage of outrageous and insinuatingly personal posts, then flips to wounded victim mode when somebody takes the bait...
To Ann: BULLSEYE! Yet again you nailed it.
Now if only we could force the NYT to make Dowd admit to her Dowdification about the "day pass" misrepresentation by omission.
They didn't and
not many.
I noted before that those who get in a lather over his "softball" questions tend to ignore the answers that were given.
No fun in that. It would be the lie to the "WH plant" theory.
"Favored" would be the better term. How else to explain his being in the room in the first place.
I read more transcripts than I watch actual press briefings. (Haven't had a TV for a while now and haven't had cable since 1988.)
Even given the fact that reporters slant their questions and insert what editorial comments they can as a rule, Gannon's still stood out for their utterly smarmy and dimwitted caliber. "How can you work with crazy folks like that?" What is that?
Indeed the White House should be embarrassed this yahoo got a pass. The fact he's getting one from the likes of Coulter, et al., as part of some attempt to expose the hypocrisy of the left (amid a scandal of the hypocritical right), is ludicrous.
When it's a situation of "less said the better," there's got to be a reason for the continued life of this scandal ... herein revived by no less than Mz. Coulter. That's the part which intrigues me.
Trust all is well, Cyncooper. I do see what you're saying.
One of them was kinda funny, it was about Clinton being the first "black" president, and Kerry possibly being the first "Gay" president because gays loved him.
LOL! You're too kind.
The "wounded victim mode"?
That's the GOP and Gannon's schtick, not mine.
Why is it that the average reply on FR these days reeks of some elementary school playground?
Because you came back? Can you go away so the average goes back up?
What's your opinion of Camille Paglia, Askel5?
(Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News.")
I think you have wandered into the wrong forum
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.