This thing is getting very, very strange. Jeff Gannon, of Talon News, got daily White House press passes and asked massively softball questions of the McClellan and Bush. Except Jeff Gannon has no background in journalism, and Talon News seems to be funded by GOP money (hint: that makes him not a journalist, and why didn't the White House know it?).
That would be weird enough, but now it turns out that Jeff Gannon isn't really Jeff Gannon, but is Jeff Guckert. And Jeff Guckert had run some male-escort websites that seem to include himself as an escort. Yes, you read that correctly: the White House gave a press pass to a GOP funded non-journalist who asked several questions of Bush and many questions of McCellan, and who was also a male prostitute (the non-journalist, not McCellan). Some of the escort websites were active for the first month that Gannon/Guckert was working in the White House.
While I wish I could write something original that seems devistatingly funny about this, the most perfect paragraph comes from The Poor Man:
Everyone is still missing the point of the story. The story is not, as nitwits like Howie Kurtz maintain, that people are being mean to someone just because he's conservative. The story is not that Gannon is a hypocrite for promoting an anti-gay agenda. The story is not even that the White House gave such access to a reporter for a dummy news service operating under an assumed name, and may have used him to expose Valerie Plame. This is not the story.
The story is that God exists.
Think about it: what are the chances that a media whore like Gannon would turn out to be an actual whore? It's impossible. It boggles the mind how infinitely unlikely this is. It's like if you found someone pirating CDs, and it turns out he actually had a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder and sailed around the Caribbean saying "arrrrrr!" and plundering booty. You wouldn't believe it. But there it is: impossible, but true. Impossible truths are miracles, and only God can work miracles. Ergo, God exists. Q.E.D
That pirate thing just kills me.
Posted by baltar at February 15, 2005 12:44 PM | TrackBack | Posted to MediaDigby was good on this too, though this is funnier.
Posted by: Armand at February 15, 2005 01:16 PM | PERMALINKIs this whole thing newsworthy, or just funny. I can't decide.
Posted by: baltar at February 15, 2005 01:27 PM | PERMALINKIt's both. I mean that the White House was obviously letting this guy in and using an alias to spread propganda ... that seems newsworthy. And as to how he's linked to the Plame mess ... that could be very newsworthy.
Posted by: Armand at February 15, 2005 01:41 PM | PERMALINKOK, but no one seems to be picking it up. It doesn't seem to be getting any sort of play in the major media. And I'm not sure I understand the Gannon/Guckert link to Plame, but I'll google it and see if I can figure it out.
Posted by: baltar at February 15, 2005 01:58 PM | PERMALINKfor more humor, see tonypierce, quoting wonkette, inter alia.
Posted by: joshua at February 15, 2005 03:05 PM | PERMALINKYay! That Wonkette bit is the funniest thing I've read in weeks.
Posted by: Armand at February 15, 2005 05:02 PM | PERMALINKRight, you do a column on a journalist who runs an escort service, but when a democratic governor makes his lover homeland security advisor, it's not found on your blog. For all the shots you take at Fox News for being biased, doesn't that hit home, just a little?
Posted by: Morris at February 15, 2005 05:43 PM | PERMALINKMorris,
We all do things besides blog. I am not required to take notice of all events in the world, nor to comment on them. And Fox news is biased, and I take shots at them because they claim not to be. There are innumerable "opinion" sites out there; Fox News claims to be a source of news and not opinion, and that's why I heap scorn on them (since they are clearly not about news).
If you want to pay me to blog, so I can devote my waking hours to this, then you can chastise me for missing the Governor of New Jersey and that whole mess. Until that happens, I do the best I can with the topics that interest me. In any event, this Gannon/Guckert thing is much, much weirder than the NJ Governor thing (which was just simple cronyism with some homosexuality thrown in as an irrelevancy).
Posted by: baltar at February 15, 2005 06:28 PM | PERMALINKMorris, you'll bring in Homeland Security, when your boy just disastrously tried to install in that position the woefully underqualified Bernie Kerik? To be DHS FOR THE COUNTRY!!!!
Give it a rest. That Bush has ministers of propaganda is old news. That there this freaking incompetent, perhaps, isn't.
Posted by: joshua at February 16, 2005 09:37 AM | PERMALINKOf course that their freaking incompetent is old news - but that doesn't mean that it's not still important news.
And beyond that, this story is just so sordid and the level of incompetence and shamelessness is so high - how can you expect us not to mention it? I've got to say that if you are going to run on your love of family values and and belief that gays are 2nd class citizens (at best) installing a gay hooker as a key, visible part of your propoganda machine is a ... well, I'll be nice to the White House, call it an "interesting choice" and leave it at that.
Posted by: Armand at February 16, 2005 01:52 PM | PERMALINKAnd I just noticed another weird turn via Atrios - he was taking part in press conferences before "Talon News" even existed. What is going on here?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110858859888190647
Posted by: Armand at February 16, 2005 08:56 PM | PERMALINKYeah, I saw that too. It really is strange, and looks more and more like someone in the White House let him in (how else could have have gotten a press pass? He wasn't a journalist even in the sense that a blogger is.). Very, very strange.
Posted by: baltar at February 17, 2005 02:54 PM | PERMALINK