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.
Glad I wasn't the only one!
=== Ann Coulter is still as beautiful as ever, and her wit just keeps getting sharper.
Oh for Pete's sake ... you're talking about a bimbo who figured Canada BOTH sent troops to Viet Nam AND took in our draft dodgers.
Get real. She's found a niche she can handle with her "how to talk like a liberal" schtick and it suits her well ... as this apologia for Gannon's hypocrisy proves well.
Beats proving she's a "constitutional scholar" by commenting on anything of real substance where the current dismantling of our constitutional republic is concerned.
I guess it's her innate sympathy for utter hypocrisy that causes her to still tout herself as a "constitutional scholar" and legal maven.
If this happened under Clinton?! The whole MSM was and is syconphantic towards Clinton.As the saying is, "A fish will be the last one to discover water."
Little brains of the world unite! :)
"Perhaps someone could let our favorite drag queen..."
Leftists pretend they like strong women, then try to insult them by calling them drag queens (another group they pretend to like). So sad, the girly men of the Rat party get intimidated very easily.
Thank her for what? A defense of some two-bit operator who was either too bone-numbing dumb to cover his two-faced ass or was handpicked for the attention so that folks like Ann Coulter could start grooming the right to not only accept but defend the hypocrisy of the right's own homosexuals.
She sure beats Beverly LaSalle!
Who is this FOOL?
Most are long gone by now but -- unlike Mz. Coulter and her fellow sycophants of the hypocritical -- I prefer substance over symbol and track posters I know will deliver rather than waste my time wading through latest posts.
Let's face it... their posts are fun reading, if nothing else.
Coulter is not a strong woman. She's an infotainer who poses with guns like sundry porn folk do.
Not sure what you are getting at exactly, but I'm sure most Log Cabin GOP'ers ain't too thrilled with Ann Coulter. Ann, like most conservative people do not care if homos are discrete and private. If they are like Andrew Sullivan, yelling "look at me, I'm gay, and you must accept my lifestyle", then there is a definite rub.
Ann is pointing out the hypocrisy of the lefties trying to crucify a guy for being light in the loafers.
What does it tell you about David Shuster that he moved from Fox News to MSNBC? If that move was voluntary, it was the dumbest move in cable TV history.
I have posted a link above to a thread chock full of evidence that the GOP generally -- and Barbara "the Beard" Bush in particular -- practiced "don't ask don't tell" decades before the nation even heard of one Bill Clinton.
Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. It would behoove most on this site to educate themselves from time to time.
And perhaps some should seek professional help.
Wow! I had no idea a troll could last that long. Now I know.
So...Bob (Nov 28, 1997), when are you going to reveal *your* true self.
Just kidding - says the 2005 newbie.
You're one snarky piece of work.
Just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean you have to use derogatory terms. If it did, I might be inclined to call you something rather nasty.
On second thought, no. You're not worth the effort.
What's particularly amusing about that comment is the fact that Ann Coulter manages to couch Gannon's as "friendly questions" at press conferences. Having oh-so-timely abandoned any pretense at being a "constitutional scholar" and carved out for herself a niche as Killer Queen of Liberal Repartee, you would think she would recognize the "liberal" smears a part of Gannon's comments. His were not questions but editorial comments combined with utterly retarded personal attacks. However, given the tone and substance (or lack thereof) of Mz. Coulter's columns as a rule, I can understand why she rushes to his defense. As for your comments on closet queens ... I see no reason to respect anyone simply for whatever skin, sex, orientation, handicap or what-have-you they were born with or chose for themselves. Nor do I condemn them for same. But if you think that a raft of closet queens at the top of the GOP is not a problem, you got another think coming.
"Coulter is not a strong woman. She's an infotainer who poses with guns like sundry porn folk do."
Your posts reek of jealousy and bitterness. Are you Maureen Dowd?
You are a friggin' (jealous) idiot and a troll to boot ...
Obviously True Statement to everyone here ...
... since you know all about how "sundry porn folk poses", we who belongs on this site, presumes you is one ...
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