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.
If you have read Coulter, which you say you have, then you will realize that she is 10 shades more conservative than any other writer/pundit out there. I cannot think of one issue on which she does not hold a far right (and I mean that as a compliment) opinion. You may not like her looks or her rhetorical style, but a quisling she ain't.
There are very few as conservative as me, but she is one.
A perfectly good pic morphed into an askel thread.......
I have read many posts, blogs and references to websites and photos purporting to be Gannon's/Guckert's; but with all these stories, and with all the lefties out there digging for dirt/"proof" of Gannon's/Guckert's gay prostitute business, they haven't got a "I hired Gannon/Guckert" firsthand account of his misdeeds? With all the out-in-the-open gayness in this city especially, I find that noteworthy.
Back to the way people here on FR are so quick to try, convict and sentence the man, on the word of leftist reporters no less, I'm too far from perfect myself to start throwing boulders at the guy. Just another character flaw on my part, I guess.
This is not the DLC or some sort of relatively mainstream leftist organization that has found this material worthy of repeating - this is the extreme crackpot left. Whether he lifted it from them, or they from him, is neither here nor there - the mere fact that such things are touted by the extreme crackpot left should be enough to give one pause when considering their worth.
Are you bi-polar or just an icehole.?.
But thanks anyway.
This is Ann's best column since the Specter column back in last year's Pennsylvania's Senatorial primary.
Sounds like you might have some inside info there Asskel. Or maybe playing out a fantasy?
LOL!!! Ann Coulter ping.
No wonder the Helen Thomases and Maureen Dowds of the world don't like her.... too much to compete, hehe.
After all, they've convinced me of the urgency, what with this horrible Gannon/Guckert thing!!!
Askel5 already knows that. You are being baited. Ignore it.
And it's to her credit that she is a Schlafley fan. Unfortunately, Ann is no Phyllis Schlafley and never will be.
She, moreso than posters on this thread, ought to know well how insidious and dangerous is the hypocritical homosexual elite primarily the problem of the right. The fact she is here to help Flyover Country rustle up some indignation and defense of the likes of Gannon is unsettling to say the least.
Oh please don't kill me if I find the painting of Gannon as some Victim utterly disgusting and inexcusable.
It strikes me as passing strange we're the party who'll take Karla Fay Tucker's life in a heartbeat -- there being no room for metanoia and sincere conversion among drugged out murderers, I guess -- but rush to the defense of a calculating queen.
To me, there's a world of difference between the bad judgment of a teen and the creepy calculation of an adult with an ability to cash in on the gay porn and escort services of the right's elite while simultaneously making a name for himself by encouraging the homophobia of the rank and file right.
I do admire Coulter's "witty" ability to spin Gannon as Victim with all the adroitness of Karl Rove. But, then again, I've always been fascinated by the art of propaganda and the willing nature of those who buy it. MORE PICS PLEASE!!
You are confused.
This latest column is less about defending that creep "Gannon" than it is about exposing the hypocrisy of your scumbag liberal Democrats who are trying (weakly and unsuccessfully) to make a mountain out of a molehill strictly for the purpose of trying to embarrass the White House.
You need to learn to recognize hypocrisy when you see it. Or just look it up.
LOL. No we don't
=== Just an a--hole that shows up every once in awhile
Hey ... long time no see. You do remember me, don't you? We met at the Florida Chapter inaugural meeting.
=== to show how stupid some freepers can be.
You said it, not me. =)
Trust all is well, cksharks.
The scumbag Democrats have no intention of "letting this story die". Thank God there is somebody as witty and gutsy as Ann Coulter around to (yet again) brilliantly EXPOSE THE HYPOCRISY of the scumbags.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, this column is less about "defending" that creep "Gannon" than it is about exposing the scumbags as the hypocrites they are for trying to bloat and prolong a nothing story out of all proportion in order to try to embarrass the White House.
Regards,
LH
=== Imagine the prose that would come from the child of a union of An Coulter and Mark Steyn..
You might as well imagine the prose forthcoming from the union of Carson McCullers and Oscar Wilde while you're at it.
Trust all is well, Ken5050.
(What hands I've got left ... been literally working 'em to the bone lately. Now that I've had a little sleep today, my third day off in two months, I can say it does kinda feel good to work so hard for a change. =)
This week I've been making 300 construction workers and crew in toolbelts happy.
Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it ... =)
(Been feeding the folks at "Extraordinary Makeover-Home Edition" out in Plaquemines Parish. They even had a unit of reservists -- who happened to be staying at the same hotel as the production folks -- show up from Georgia. In short, I'm in heaven.)
An absolutely perfect Ann Coulter article.
And with that ... I'm laughing my way out the door.
Next time, maybe Mz. Coulter will apply her saber wit to a gutsy defense of someone other than a rank Hypocrite next time she wants to expose the hypocrisy of the so-called left.
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