Have They No Shame?
No, Actually, They Don't
Powerline blog
The American left has been guilty of many contemptible actions over the past twenty years, but few are so deeply offensive as its treatment of Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon (His real name is Guckert, but he adopted Gannon as a pen name). Gannon is, apparently, a homosexual with a rather sordid past, including stints working as a gay escort. He is now trying to make a career for himself as a reporter; until a week or two ago, he worked for the online Talon News Service. He was able to get one-day-at-a-time passes to attend White House press briefings, where he committed the unpardonable sin of asking questions that had a pro-Bush administration twist. (Sort of like Helen Thomas, only in reverse, and nowhere near as one-sided.)
The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. A study conducted a few years ago found that the White House press corps is 90% Democratic; apparently the left won’t be satisfied until the figure is 100%.
So liberals began “investigating” Gannon. They found that he was a homosexual and started posting photos of him on their web sites, along with vicious personal attacks. Gannon, stunned by the virulence of the left’s attack on him, quit his job at Talon. Subsequently, a low-life named John Aravosis who is a gay activist and has a web site, found nude photos of Gannon and posted them online.
Ever since this “story” broke, we have been inundated by emails from leftists demanding to know why we aren’t covering it. Actually, we have done a single post on the controversy, which explained why we don’t think there is any story there.
The claims against Gannon are:
1) He isn’t a “real” journalist.
News for the left: you don’t have to take a test. He was working as a reporter until you drove him out of the business.
2) He was a Bush administration plant.
There is, of course, no evidence for this whatsoever. And don’t you think that if the administration decided to “plant” a journalist to ask friendly questions, they could come up with someone with a bit more distinguished pedigree? The real issue here is that Democrats believe that Democratic press secretaries should be asked friendly questions, and Republican press secretaries should be asked unfriendly questions.
3) He had something–God knows what–to do with the Valerie Plame story.
Again, no one has ventured a coherent explanation of this theory, let alone bothered to hint at what the evidence for it might be. Given that Ms. Plame was last seen posing for Vanity Fair in a “spy” outfit, I don’t think we’re on the trail of an espionage breakthrough here. And wasn’t it supposed to be Karl Rove who tipped off Bob Novak?
The bottom line is that there isn’t any story here, other than the bottomless depravity of liberals in America. How any of their purported “grievances” against Gannon justifies posting nude photos of him is inexplicable.
Yesterday I filmed a “Reliable Sources” segment with Howard Kurtz that will air on CNN tomorrow morning. One of the other guests was the above-mentioned Mr. Aravosis. He is obviously a man for whom the concept of shame has no meaning; I was embarrassed to be on the same program with him. Today, Kurtz writes about the Gannon affair in the Washington Post. Kurtz got an interview with Gannon, who has been keeping out of sight since he was driven out of journalism by the left.
Gannon turns out to be pretty eloquent:
<<<
Jeff Gannon, the former White House reporter whose naked pictures have appeared on a number of gay escort sites, says that he has “regrets” about his past but that White House officials knew nothing about his salacious activities.
“I’ve made mistakes in my past,” he said yesterday. “Does my past mean I can’t have a future? Does it disqualify me from being a journalist?”
Gannon chastised his critics, breaking a silence that began last week when liberal bloggers disclosed his real name, James Dale Guckert, and a Web page, which he paid for, featuring X-rated photos of himself. “Why would they be looking into a person’s sexual history? Is that what we’re going to do to reporters now? Is there some kind of litmus test for reporters? Is it right to hold someone’s sexuality against them?”
Dismissing speculation that he had a permanent White House press pass, which requires a full-blown FBI background check that usually takes months, Gannon said he could not get one because he was required to first get a pass from the Senate press gallery, which did not consider him to be working for a legitimate news organization. Instead, he said he was admitted on a day-to-day basis after supplying his real name, date of birth and Social Security number. He said he did not use a pseudonym to hide his past but because his real last name is hard to spell and pronounce.
>>>
Aravosis is quoted, too, and he makes no sense:
<<<
John Aravosis, a gay activist who posted the pictures of Gannon on his Americablog.org, said the issue is not Gannon’s right to be a journalist but his “White House access. . . . The White House wouldn’t let him in the door right now, knowing of his background.”
Aravosis said Gannon is guilty of “what I call family-values hypocrisy. Basically, he’s asking the gay community to protect him when he attacks us.”
>>>
That is really one of the stupidest things I’ve read in a long time. Just try to parse Aravosis’s logic: The issue is Gannon’s White House access. But why is that an issue? There was nothing special about Gannon’s access, he got it the same way as everyone else. His “access” is an issue, according to Aravosis, because “the White House wouldn’t let him in the door right now, knowing of his background.” Huh? That is one of the most stunning non sequiturs ever. First of all, what is the evidence for the proposition that the White House would deny access to a reporter who was once a gay escort?
The proposition is absurd on its face; it wasn’t the White House that drove Gannon out of his job, it was Aravosis and his friends. Second, even if that claim were true, so what?? How on earth would the White House’s attitude twoard gay escorts justify Aravosis in posting nude pictures of Gannon?
Aravosis claims further that Gannon is guilty of “hypocrisy,” an all-purpose charge that generally turns out to mean little or nothing. The “hypocrisy” in this case supposedly arises from “asking the gay community to protect him when he attacks us.” This is another stunningly stupid statement. Every word in it is false. Gannon, first of all, never attacked the gay community; the gay community, in the person of Aravosis and others, attacked him. Neither did Gannon ask the gay community to protect him; Aravosis just made that up. On the contrary, the only reason Gannon needed protection is because he came under a vicious, unprovoked, personal attack from low-lifes with web sites, pre-eminently Aravosis, Kos and Atrios.
There is, I guess, a story here. But it has nothing to do with Jeff Gannon, a poor guy who thought he could put his past behind him and pursue a career as a reporter. No, the story has to do with the depth to which the Democratic Party and the American left have fallen. Desperate to change the subject in the wake of the Eason Jordan debacle, they seized on poor Mr. Gannon, made silly, baseless accusations against him, denounced him for being a homosexual, and, in the ultimate indignity, tracked down and published nude photographs of him. All to distract attention from Jordan, and to punish Mr. Gannon for the “sin” of being a Republican.
Rarely have I seen such deeply contemptible conduct.
Posted by Hindrocket
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