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.
Bush is not particulary doing well on social policy kinds of things.
The reigning queen of piercing sarcasm. Gotta love her work. :-)
Why do liberals out conservative gays. To hurt conservatives. Let's face it, with rare exception, gays are going to be the last people invited on our short list of guests.
How many times has Matt Drudge's sexuality come into question on this site? How many times has Ron Reagan Jr's sexuality come into question. Quesitoning someone for being gay for political purposes is not limited to just liberals or the wacky right wing of the policial spectrum.
Here's a portion of the example: And of course, there's Ron the Lesser Reagan, who isn't gay, but might as well be. 9 posted on 02/14/2005 1:05:21 AM PST by L.N. Smithee (NHL Owners and Players: Take the advice of Benjamin Franklin - "Unite, or die.")
"I want a urinal in mine."
LOL I know someone who actually did put a urinal in his basement.
Is your real name Maureen Dowd by any chance?
First off .. making a comment on a message board and stalking a person at their home and threaten family members are two different things
I call liberals loons all the time .. that doesn't mean I go and stalk them
I don't give a dang what side does it .. stalking people and threatening them is wrong
Unfortunately, there are too many Christians that are vile in their life. We all struggle, but jeesh. The stuff on his web sites were pretty raunchy. I don't think that most Christians would find any of that acceptable, especially if he was active within the last 2 months.
And I don't the accept the I'll repent because I was caught act that only lasts as long as the light remains on the subject.
Must be the competitive instinct.:-)
I agree. But we cannot prove that all the threatening and stalking came from the left. So far, this forum has implied it has.
The politics of destruction isn't limited to the party of the left.
LOL! Yep!
Linda could have slept forever in a VA park. There is a big difference stupid.
Joe, did you just, kinda-sorta, a teenie little bit, insult the left??????? I mean you implied that they could be as destructive as the evil right? I am stunned.
Your slipping.
I'm just tired of us complaining about something and then when our side gets up to it's ankles in it, we find a way to create a state of victimization.
hey Latin spewer,
"A defense of some two-bit operator"
Yeah poor Leftie media and blogosphere, thanks for that admission, they have only two bit operators on the right to challenge while the right has so much more fun with the supposed cream of the crop of left wing biased journalism like Dan Blather.....
"defend the hypocrisy of the right's own homosexuals"
so honey are you going to admit the delicious hypocrisy of the left on the overfocus on Mr. Gannon's homosexuality, we thought you guys didn't care about sexual preference, seems not only do you care, but you find it giggle material....
not very mature huh....so you can chuck your air of moral superiority on that ground
I won't hold my breath on your admission on the last score.....
Linda's dog wasn't even in the fight. How would she end up in the park?
You don't know much about the story do you? I can see that in your posts.
Let's see .. it started with David Brock .. a liberal
Then the Dkos, the Du, Astrois ran with it .. all liberal websites
Keith Oberman, Dana Milbank and Howie Kurtz jumped on it .. all liberals
Here's a question for ya
Why are you defending the liberals so much?
Ummm .. No one is saying those picture where right
But I find it interesting that you are defending the liberals who stalked him and his mother
That's why I asked for a clarification. To see what the real story is.
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