A brief recap for people who can't stand to follow American politics: for some months now, a "reporter" called "Jeff Gannon" has been regularly called on to ask questions at White House press briefings by press secretary Scott McClellan, often when McClellan was being pressed hard by other (actual) reporters. Gannon's questions were invariably highly partisan "soft balls" along the lines of "And doesn't that, combined with the now-proven al Qaeda link between Iraq -- between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist organization -- unequivocally make the case for going to war in Iraq?"
(Link: http://mediamatters.org/items/200502020014)
Then, at Bush's Jan 26 news conference, Bush himself called on Gannon - who asked him a "question" that featured made-up quotes from Democrats, and finished by asking how Bush could work with people (Democrats) so "divorced from reality"?
That got people's attention. For one thing, it wasn't a question - it was an invitation to partisan vituperation. For another - who was this Jeff Gannon guy? No one in the press corps had any idea.
Gannon described himself as being the "Washington Bureau Chief" of "Talon News Service". A very little digging turned up the fact that "Talon News Service" was in fact simply a website owned by Republican operative Bobby Eberle, and that Gannon's "news" stories were frequently nothing more than cut and paste jobs on White House press releases. So how did this guy get a highly coveted White House press pass?
And then it turned out that his name wasn't Jeff Gannon at all. He was really James Guckert. And James Guckert was the owner of some decidedly... interesting... domain names with names like 'militarystuds.com'. At first Gannon/Guckert said that he had merely registered the domain names for a customer. But it now turns out that Guckert was in fact a male prostitute offering his services for $200/hour or $1200/weekend.
(Link: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02 ... -jeff.html - caveat lector)
So... a fake reporter using a fake name, who is in fact a male prostitute, was granted daily White House passes, and was frequently called on for questions by the White House press secretary. Hmmmm. How could such a thing happen? Gannon had in fact been denied Capitol Hill press credentials when the committee in charge of issuing them could not confirm Talon was a legitimate, independent news organization.
Curiouser and curiouser. And all this by the party that favors a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage!
My favorite comment on this whole story comes from http://thepoorman.net/gl/article.php?st ... 4161107130:
You couldn't make this stuff up.
Quote: CORRECTION: Hacktacular White House reporter Jeff Gannon is not, in fact, a man-pimp, as we had previously reported. He is actually a self-pimping e-he-whore. (Link not safe for work, or dinner.) The Editors apologize to Mr. Gannon for the error.
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.
The rest of the story is that God's metaphors are about as subtle as a David Byrne art concept or, equivalently, getting clocked on the head with a cinderblock. Yeah, "whore". It's a "big suit", David. We get it already. I think brainless plankton on Neptune get the symbolism here. Jesus.