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.
Uh-uh - it doesn't work that way. It may be fact that unsavory folks got into the White House, but nothing that follows in all that junk is "fact", not even in the most generous definition of the word. "Inference", perhaps. "Speculation", probably. "Wild-a** guesses", pretty likely. But "fact" it is assuredly not - not until there's something more on the table to substantiate it. And by "substantiate", I mean actual evidence, not some elaborate patchwork-quilt consisting of an enormous chain of rumor, innuendo, speculation, and guesswork, all built on one tiny seed of truth - namely, that some weirdo pulled some strings to get a tour of the White House. How can I challenge the "integrity" of the facts in that thread, when there are no facts?
Particularly in light of those conservatives bent on digging up Clinton's past and who have embarrassed themselves more than once by readily lapping up whatever personal accusation an anonymous source might offer...
Surely you're not really this irony-proof, are you? What would you have me make of a conservative who appears to be readily lapping up whatever personal accusation offered about George H.W. Bush and his family?
Perhaps someone could let our favorite drag queen in on a secret: Just like legal abortion, "don't ask, don't tell" is a GOP policy. The hypocrisy of the Big Girls of the GOP stands out like the size-queen ostrich feather in Trent Lott's ten-gallon.
Who would have EVER thought she could get ALL her obsessions in ONE sentence!
Are you outing the 41st President of the United States???
Askel is the Joe McCarthy of gay hunting.
It was pretty talented, I admit. But I'm still trying to understand "the size-queen ostrich feather in Trent Lott's ten-gallon.
He is a she.
I'm enjoying this thread; a whole new group of Freepers are now getting a bird's eye view of her obsession with abortion, gays, and the Bush family.
Wonder what they'll all think if she REALLY gets cranked up and talks about the Bush family murdering people?
Yes.
Ann is defending this gay guy just to take a shot at the MSM/liberals. Bottom line is if Gannon (and the party) wasn't ashamed of (his) being gay he (they) wouldn't have quit his job (kicked him to the curb). Let this story die. It's as pointless as most of the stuff Ann writes.
Looks like Beretta's, er, I mean a Beretta to me. Gal can sure shoot straight, don'tchaknow!
Sort of makes Lyndon LaRouche seem sane.
Geez Ann, so much for the, 'words will never hurt me' rhyme.
Killer wit and sarcasm. Each paragraph is a scream!
So do you think that link might explain John McCain's recent statement that Hillary Clinton would make a good president?
I got on this thread late and sent that post early so after reading all the posts, I realized he was a she. Thats what I get for posting without catching up. LOL
The only person I can think of who has such a personal hatred for the Bush family and writes inuendos and outright lies about them is Kitty Kelley. You don't suppose....?
Ann ping!
Meanwhile yesterday, Democratic Reps. John Conyers (Mich.) and Louise Slaughter (N.Y.) asked the Government Accountability Office to expand its investigation of illegal government propaganda efforts by looking into Guckert's work as a White House reporter for the Web sites Talon News and GOPUSA. They claimed the administration "gave prepacked print stories to Mr. Guckert, which he reprinted wholesale."
Its illegal to give out press releases?
It's a way of honoring those not on it.
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